A federal judge in Orlando, Florida recently brought the children’s game of rock-paper-scissors to national attention through Forbes magazine and CNNMoney.com. Dated June 7, 2006, Fortune writer Roger Parloff describes two attorneys in a federal case who could not agree on a location for a deposition even though their offices were four floors apart on the same building. Rather than decide the matter, Judge Presnell ordered each attorney to mount the federal courthouse steps on June 30, 2006, accompanied by a paralegal witness, to play a decisive round of rock-paper-scissors, in which that the winner would choose the place for deposition as long as it was in Hillsborough County, Florida. Seemingly intimidated by the threat of rock-paper-scissors, the World RPS Society (www.worldrps.com) reported on June 9 that “the lawyers have settled our differences by agreement. We won’t have to resort to RPS combat.” . “Since then, the judge has issued his order.
One may think that the game “Rock, Paper, Scissors” is an “arbitrary” way of making decisions. In Lindson v. Ins. of Allstate Co., 694 A.2d 682, 685 (RI 1997), the court was faced with the allocation of coverage among several insurance companies where none would admit primary coverage. The court considered using a “rock, paper, scissors” approach to determine which insurers should provide primary coverage for the claims at issue, but found that approach “arbitrary.” In that case, the court chose to “stop the relentless ‘cartoonists’ battle’ waged by, between, and among the various insurance companies” by finding that the coverage liabilities of all insurers should be shared proportionately.
Despite the Rhode Island court’s reluctance to use “rock, paper, scissors,” variations of “rock, paper, scissors” have been used to resolve disputes for more than 50,000 years, according to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. online. According to the Official Rock-Paper-Scissors Strategy Guide (available on Amazon.com), an earlier game was played by early Homo sapiens around 50,000 B.C. C. “to settle feeding and mating disputes.” This game only involved a stone (scissors were not invented until the 6th century in Italy). The ‘caster’ tried to fist the rock into the ‘catcher’s’ body, while the ‘catcher’ tried to avoid this by positioning his hand to catch the rock. After changing positions, the ‘thrower’ who placed the most stones on the body of the ‘catcher’ won.
It seems that the Japanese invented the modern tripartite game they call Janken, based on Guu Choki Paa’s way of thinking: “snake fears slug, slug fears frog, and frog fears snake.” Moving away from snakes, slugs, and frogs, the Japanese developed a new version in which “the tiger feared the warrior, the warrior feared his mother, and the warrior’s mother feared the tiger.” Marco Polo reportedly brought this game back to Europe, and Venetian merchants traded it for rock, paper, and sword to settle trade disputes. One of the funniest variations of the game comes from Indonesia and apparently involved an elephant, a person, and an ant. The elephant can crush the person, the person can crush the ant, but how can the ant defeat the elephant? It crawls on the elephant’s ear and drives it crazy.
The game may have migrated to the United States via Jean Baptiste. Jean Baptiste was the French general who helped George Washington during the American Revolution. Why this game became associated with the Comte de Rochambeau is unknown, but it raises questions about the means by which Washington secured Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown. However, this theory may explain why the game is often called “rochambeau” or “roshambo”.
In any event, it is clear that Judge Presnell was not the first to use rock-paper-scissors to settle commercial disputes in modern times. The August 2005 newsletter published by the Institute for Conflict Management (http://www.icmneutrals.com/news.html) describes a 75-year-old Japanese businessman trying to choose between Christie’s and Sotheby’s to auction off his artwork valued at $17.8 million. he collects-for a commission of more than $2 million to the successful firm. Believing that both companies were equal and not wanting to insult either, he said that the winner would be determined by a game of rock-paper-scissors. That way, the loser would be considered “unlucky”, not “undeserving”. Sotheby’s said that “this is a game and we didn’t really think much of it. We didn’t have a strategy in mind.”
The Christie’s representative spent the weekend before the challenge researching the psychology of gambling and talking with friends. One had 11-year-old twin girls who offered the following analysis to Christie’s: “Since [Sotheby’s] they were beginners, scissors were safer” for Christie’s, because “rock is too obvious and scissors beat paper. to beat you.” As the girls predicted, Sotheby’s opted for the role. Based on the girls’ advice, Christie’s opted for the scissors and won the $17.8 million auction contract.
It goes without saying that rock-paper-scissors is not a suitable method of resolving all disputes. However, when appropriate, you may want to check out the World RPS Society, Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide, your young nieces or nephews, or attend the next tournament near you. Tournament listings can be found at http://www.usarps.com (held in June 2006 in Las Vegas, Nevada with a $50,000 grand prize) and http://www.worldrps.com (to be held in Toronto, Ontario in September 2006).