Groups » Legal Humour
The 10 weirdest legal cases of 2009
-
J. M.
Dec 19 2009, 09:04 AM1. In Florida, Judge Patricia Kinsey heard the case of a man who sued a men’s briefs manufacturer claiming he was injured on a beach holiday by their badly designed underwear. He claimed the briefs “gaped open and acted like a sandbelt on my privates”. The judge found herself required to analyse the relationship between male anatomy and underwear, but she wanted some independent evidence. A male criminal lawyer who was passing time in the gallery agreed to testify and was thanked for his “surprisingly candid testimony” despite the intimate questions.
2. Homer has been referred to in English cases many times but such allusions previously only referred to the ancient Greek poet. However, this year, for the first time, a British lawyer cited Homer Simpson in court. John Walker was addressing the bench about a client who had pleaded guilty to a firearms offence. He had been caught with a million-volt Taser gun which he’d fired at his own chest “to test it”. To mitigate the offence, Walker told the court: “There have been scenes in The Simpsons when Homer has given himself electric shocks and leapt in the air screaming with his tongue hanging out. This was a bit like that.”
3. In a criminal case in Ottawa, Laura Emerson stood accused by witnesses of using the courthouse where she worked as the base for a prostitution business. Emerson was accused of luring young women to become prostitutes and even taking calls from clients during the working day. Cynical opponents of the legal system observed that whether someone approaches the courthouse as a defendant or as a punter, they will end up being treated the same way.
4. The law is not only concerned with things of high intrinsic value. In 2009, Daniel Bennett began litigation against the University of Leeds for it having disposed of 5s 7lbs of lizard excrement he had meticulously collected from remote parts of the Philippines as part of his doctoral research. For seven years, Bennett had painstakingly investigated the diet, life and behaviour of a very rare butaan lizard. His primary evidence was in the form of the faeces that he collected from the jungle. One day, Bennett arrived at back work after a break to find his collection gone. “There was,” he testified in understandable outrage, “no sign of my 35kg bag of lizard s**t”. It had been incinerated. After 16 months the university offered him just £500 compensation. It was then that the writ hit the fan.
Related Links
* Weird cases: don't laugh at my daughter
* Weird Cases: what not to wear in court
* Weird Cases: hijacking a legal career
5. In Boyton Beach, Florida, Jean Fortune was prosecuted after he called 911 because his local Burger King had run out of lemonade. Fortune arrived at the drive-thru restaurant hungry after work and argued with the cashier when she said the restaurant had no lemonade. He dialled 911, then, while the police raced to the scene, expressed his fury to the emergency service operator. The police affidavit records Fortune’s emergency as “unhappy with his order”.
6. Mothers around the world are usually keen to speak regularly with their sons after they leave home. Hence the celebrated Jewish exchange when a son phones his mother after a long gap:
SON: Mum, how are you?
MOTHER: Very weak, I haven’t eaten in 28 days.
SON: That's awful. Why haven't you eaten in 28 days?
MOTHER: Because I didn't want my mouth to be full of food if you should call.
In Austria, however, a mother who made a fusillade of daily phone calls to her son over a period of two years was convicted of stalking him and fined €360.
7. At Newcastle Crown Court, a woman’s rapturous screaming during sex was held to be unlawful. Council environmental officers were dispatched to set up recording equipment in a property neighbouring that of Caroline Cartwright to measure the level of shrieking and moaning that could be heard through the walls and outside on the street. The judge said “At the point of climax there may be some involuntary noise” but three hours of shrieking was unacceptable.
8. Three nuns caught driving at 112 mph explained to the Italian police they were racing to the Pope as he was injured. It was a Blues Brother’s-style “We’re on a mission from God” defence. When police caught the car, Sister Tavoletta explained that she had just learnt on the radio that Pope Benedict XVI had slipped and injured himself in his bathroom. They were proceeding with God’s speed to the pontiff’s holiday chalet to help him. The law, though, would not absolve their offence. Sister Tavoletta was fined €375.
9. In a case from Ohio, Judge Stephen Belden decided that a defendant in a robbery case was offending the dignity of the court by talking too much. The judge, however, chose an unorthodox way to establish decorum: he ordered the defendant’s mouth to be sealed with duct tape — a court exercise you will not find on the judicial training syllabus. The defendant was objecting to the state lawyer who had been appointed to his case. When he persisted with his complaint the judge ordered the bailiff to gag him. Why the court had a ready supply of duct tape to be used on the judge’s order was not explained.
10. When the French tennis star Richard Gasquet tested positive for cocaine, he said he must have absorbed the drug during passionate French kissing with a woman he had met the previous evening. He had befriended a woman called Pamela in a restaurant and they later engaged in many kisses — “and good ones too”, he testified. An International Tennis Federation tribunal found that there had been at least seven passionate kisses of up to 10 seconds each and that cocaine thereby entered his system. The tribunal found that is was natural for Gasquet to have been attracted to Pamela and restricted his penalty to a 10-week ban.
Source: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/columnist...
Reply
You have to be a member of "Legal Humour" in order to reply.
Join