The California Financing Law requires each licensed lender, broker, and program administrator licensee to pay its pro rata share of all costs and expenses of the administration of the law, as estimated by the Commissioner, for the ensuing year and any deficit actually incurred or anticipated in the administration of the law in the year in which the assessment is made. Cal. Fin. Code § 22107(a). A licensee's pro rata share is the proportion that a licensee's gross income bears to the aggregate gross income of all licensees as shown by the annual financial reports to the commissioner, for the costs and expenses remaining after the amount assessed. Id.
The CFL requires the Commissioner to notify each licensee of the amount assessed and levied against it. The minimum assessment is $250 per licensed location. Licensees must pay the assessment by October 31. The failure to pay the assessment will result in the loss of the license.
This Brief Defends Parody With Parody
Even an intermittent reader of this space will know my fondness for the Latin language. See, e.g., The Latin Lawyer - How To Write Like Cicero!, Contractual Latin, Bothered By Silent Letters? Sometimes Latin Is To Blame, What Is The Plural Of Mandamus?, and What's With The "O" in Delicto? Thus, I was particularly amused to learn that my love of Latin is shared by The Onion which explained its Latin motto, tu stultus es, in an amicus brief filed yesterday with no less than the United States Supreme Court in Novak v. City of Parma, Ohio, (U.S. Supreme Court Case No. 22-293):
The Onion's motto is central to this brief for two important reasons. First, it's Latin. And The Onion knows that the federal judiciary is staffed entirely by total Latin dorks: They quote Catullus in the original Latin in chambers.1 They sweetly whisper "stare decisis" into their spouses' ears. They mutter "cui bono" under their breath while picking up after their neighbors' 5 dogs. So The Onion knew that, unless it pointed to a suitably Latin rallying cry, its brief would be operating far outside the Court's vernacular.
For those who are unable to translate tu stultus es into English - you are stupid.
Before anyone takes unintended offense, this is the translation of The Onion's motto and not an insult directed at the readers of this space. As The Onion explains in its brief:
[T]he phrase "you are dumb" captures the very heart of parody: tricking readers into believing that they're seeing a serious rendering of some specific form—a pop song lyric, a newspaper article, a police beat—and then allowing them to laugh at their own gullibility when they realize that they've fallen victim to one of the oldest tricks in the history of rhetoric.
Footnote
1 As for this blog, I can recall only one instance of quoting Catullus: Commissioner Files Private Fund Adviser Exemption With The Office Of Administrative Law.
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