The thread where I post strange items I come across in my legal news reporting job

"Our sales goal is not just to go out horny and have a one night stand with a new client with sucking, blow jobs and lots of new passionate fucking. No our sales goal is to keep the relationship beyond dirty sex the first night and get the customer to marry us for a long term relationship."

I found the quote very Mamet-worthy.

tho I have to say, my own personal goal is a one night stand with a new client with sucking, blow jobs and lots of new passionate fucking

Ohio v. Wellman, July 25
Tenth District
http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/rod/newpdf/10/2006/2006-ohio-3808.pdf

Defendant was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for killing Michael Jessie with a baseball bat after Jessie shot and killed defendant’s husband, "Big Johnny," outside their trailer home. Defendant’s son, “Little Johnny,” had attacked Jessie right before defendant attacked him, and defendant argues that the evidence is insufficient to show that Little Johnny’s attack was not the cause of Jessie’s death. J. McGrath finds that the testimony did not involve hearsay, and that other evidence, such as the coroner’s report and other witness testimony, was sufficient to show that defendant caused Jessie’s death. Affirmed.

In response to that one, the guy that covers Indiana just sent me this one:

Camp v. Anderson, July 25

http://www.courts.state.wi.us/ca/opinion/DisplayDocument.pdf?content=pdf&seqNo=25999

While defendants' son, a thirteen-year-old, and plaintiffs' son, a three-year-old, were playing in the yard, defendants' son threw plaintiffs' son's dog into the air and then jumped on it, injuring the dog severely. Defendants' son also chased plaintiffs' son with feces-covered cattails. The dog was later euthanized. J. Peterson finds that the circuit court improperly concluded that plaintiffs' intentional infliction of emotional distress claim was not an actionable tort in Wisconsin because plaintiffs' claim satisfies the elements of negligent conduct, causation and injury, and is not otherwise barred by public policy. Reversed.

A Washington State man claimed that as a member of the “Embassy of Heaven Church” he had taken a vow of poverty and was unable to take gainful employment to pay child support. (He also claimed to be "devoted to serving Jesus Christ).

His wife disputed this, claiming instaed that the church is a sham and that her ex-husband charges thousands of dollars to teach people how to set up phony churches as tax shelters.

The appellate judge ruled for the plaintiff, opining that asking plaintiff to seek gainful employment and pay child support did not infringe on his right to freedom of religion.

(From Cloverland Green-Spring Dairies v. Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board, U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit (a case regarding the "byzantine" milk pricing schemes mandated by Pennsylvania):

As Judge Jerome Frank of the United States Court of Appeals fr the Second Circuit once observed (in terms more gilded than our era musters): "The 'milk problem'is exquisitely complicated. The city-dweller or poet who regards the cow as a symbol of bucolic serenity is indeed naive. From the udders of that placid animal flows a bland liquid indispensable to human health but often provoking as much human strife as alcoholic beverages...The milk problem is so vast that fully to comprehend it would require an almost universal knowledge ranging from geology, biology, chemistry and medicine to the niceties of the legislative, judicial and administrative processes of government ... It has been estimated that 'no other commodity in the United States has ben involved in as many legal challenges in regard to how it is marketed' as milk.

Wot's that got to do with the price of milk indeed.

I saw a "Ride the Ducks" vehicle in DC! It was one of those boat-bus tourist vehicles (which are apparently called ducks).

From an appeal of a Child In Need of Services adjudication (findings of fact quoted from the original CHINS proceedings):

[i]Mother has exhibited unstable and/or erratic behavior on a continuing basis, which includes, but is not limited to:
(a) storing dead birds in her freezer;
(b) telling [Father] that she had miscarried his child six weeks into her pregnancy, then showing him the purported fetus and burying it in the yard while performing some type of ceremony around a tree;
(c) drugging Father with sedatives she placed into cookies she baked for him on the same day she allegedly terminated the relationship
(d) demonstrating self-destructive behavior by slashing her abdomen with a locking blade knife and making a four inch cut after [her lover] told her his wife was pregnant with twins[i/]
...

WHAT

i hope that gets adjudicated with great haste

It gets worse - it appears that the mother engaged in a years-long campaign to convince her daughter (starting when the daughter was 3) that she had been sexually abused by her father when in fact there was no evidence to suggest that it was true. She seems to have even coached her daughter to say all kinds of things in interviews, not only about sexual abuse, but about how the dad was mean to her mom and was a bad person in general. Psychologists did not find the abuse stories credible based on her testimony and behavior.

OMG:

296. Mother is currently unemployed and attending school to become an airplane mechanic

The child was deemed "in need of services" with regard to her mother but not to her father, of course, and the mother's appeal failed.

From an appeal of a conviction on criminal confinement and identity deception charges:

"The criminal charges stemmed from a series of incidents in which the defendant, pretending to work for a radio station, telephoned at least three adult men and informed them of a radio contest in which they could each win a new car or cash if they would drive from their places of employment to a particular address (which happened to be the defendant's residence), enter and remove all of their clothes, and exchange them for a T-shirt. Each of the men appeared at the defendant's home, and two of the men satisfied the fictitious contest requirements but received no prize. Each man contacted the radio station and discovered that hit had no such employee and was not sponsoring any such contest."

A husband and wife couple run a daycare center in their house. The husband molests one of the children they watch, and the parents of the victim sue the couple. The couple then try to get their insurer to cover their losses from the lawsuit. (they lost, naturally)

LOLOL:

Chante Williamson v. Drop A Load Laundry; Wash A Load Laundromat; 350 W. St. Georges Ave.; Does
7/12/2007 L 2449-07 KAB

I just read a criminal appeal the other day about a dude that was arrested for stealing some bbq ribs.

Hurting, have you ever run across this story?

http://www.artandantiques.net/Articles/Art-Crimes/Ruling-Upheld-for-Authenticator.asp

http://www.ims-expertservices.com/newsletters/april/law-firm-must-pay-expert-041707.htm

I ran across the dockets for it while temping for the firm I work for 4real now, it's really unfuriating.

Are you infuriated by the end result or by the initial suit? Because I do think the initial suit was pretty ridiculous.

(based on what I've just read here, I mean - I haven't seen this case and haven't read the complaint)

... actually I'm a little surprised that the news on this is so recent! the stuff i read was about the malicious prosecution suit itself, a few years ago (the details of which are infuriating). this news is all about the appeal of that result, which does give you a little more confidence in the legal system. and humanity.

it gets confusing, but it is a good story. i was just supposed to pull the relevant docket numbers out of the documents, but i ended up reading them all because it was so fascinating (ah, temps). It seems so dry in all the legal/journalistic retelling until you think it through and realize how spectacularly evil the guy is.

1. Rich Asshole owns old western painting, wants to sell it. it's signed by Famous Western Artist A.

2. Art Expert looks at it, says the sig is faked, and it's actually by Less Famous Western Artist B, and is worth lots less. (LFWA-B is, incidentaly, AA's grandfather)

3. RA tries to auction the thing anyway, Big Time Auction House has the thing evaluated by several other experts who all say, "no rly -- it's a LFWA-B painting, sry no sale"

4. instead of dealing with the truth, RA responds by killing the messenger, cooking up a scheme with Lawyer Friend to sue AA for the difference in value between what the painting is really worth an what they WANT it to be worth, plus extra for pain and anguish at "losing" that value.

5. AA's reputation is wrecked, he's bankrupted by his defense, sinks into depression, etc. even when the facts eventually make clear that RA's suit is futile, having the only tangible effect of immiserating AA, they continue, apparently just for that purpose alone. either the value of a painting is less important that destroying a guy who crossed them, or they filed suit as an offhand joke and didn't give enough of a fuck to quit.

6. AA sues RA and LF's firm for malicious prosecution, which he wins. Montana appeals court trims his award somewhat (both appealed the award amount, i think)

7. montana supreme finally gives AA his full award amount. hooray!

it kind of deserves to be a new yorker story or a bit on this american life or something

haha whoops: AA = Art Expert. Art Axpert?

ah, ok.

Yeah, definitely sounds like justice was served.

BTW, the evidence wasn't even that strong on the guy convicted of rib theft, and it was affirmed anyway! I think there ought to be a legal provision that says "Look, this is ribs we're talking about."

stop practicing law without a license hurting

I promised a while back that I'd post one of these next time I saw a good one:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2189/1493518314_68fe4fa936.jpg?v=0 http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2400/1493518914_502de7774d.jpg?v=0 http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2159/1492665867_7706914988.jpg?v=0

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2405/1493520044_1bc5d675a3.jpg?v=0 http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2292/1493520698_09f263a890.jpg?v=0

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2146/1492667559_2b200a490b.jpg?v=0http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2055/1492668783_983e97ba22.jpg?v=0

and, the finale:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2378/1492669721_1e51513d20.jpg?v=0

what's "femfam"

I wondered the same. Google yielded no answers

sad story :( hope the guy gets justice

The bizarre thing is that it does start off like a plausible claim and only gets really batshit when he starts talking about how he lost everything (which seems possible but unlikely) and how he's about to lose his "invention", and then obv. the last page...

I guess he could be a guy who's both mentally unstable and really did get cheated out of his money.

"you cant used cridite cards" :D Love it.

If only I could change my login to that :(

Poor people without access to good legal services are really funny, huh guys?

When y'all went into my account y'all was just like roaches. I couldn't even get bread off my table, if I'd brought some toilet paper.

***

This is hell of sad, though.

Nubb, for every one of these suits there are 10 coherent ones by "poor people without access to good legal services" that aren't particularly funny or bizarre. This person is obv. not mentally stable. Which is ultimately sad, but not for the reason you're giving.

"This person is obv. not mentally stable."

Where did you do your joint JD/Ph.D. program again?

I wish you years of impotent rage and social exclusion, so that one day you will produce some cheap giggles for a smarmy asshole.

5. A crime

Yeah, Hurting, don't you know that Funny and Sad have been mutually exclusive ever since NINE ELEVENS?!?! Who do you think you are, Cap'n Hawkeye?

OMG real name of Indiana criminal defendant:

Random Justice Phillips

If I were ever to write a dryly funny short story about a sleepy country town, I'd find a way to work in the name of a lawsuit I'm looking at: J.F. Schrader vs. Porter County Drainage Board

Drainage board help keep things dry, yes.

Employment Discrimination lawsuit:

African American security guard (part of whose job is to watch a CCTV system) complains that a white co-worker is deliberately dressing as a KKK member and stalking around in view of security cameras. When the guard complains to his supervisor and shows him the tape, the supervisor laughs and insists the co-worker is just pretending to be a chef.

wau

waaaauuu

security guard pretends to be chef on duty.
what is the world coming to. Where does this case originate??

Essex County, NJ

yeah my aunt once had a bunch of those assholes leave a burning crossaint on her lawn

East Orange, NJ police officer arrested in PNC Bank for trying to cash his own paycheck (which was a PNC check) and calling customer service when they refused him.

Also, I get to write up a 3rd Circuit Mumia Abu-Jamal appeal tonight -- just published today.

Also Rageing Warr has another appeal in Indiana.

Mumia opinion is 118 pages :(

Hurting, any link about the Police PNC thing

PNC Bank is bullshit they gave me the same crap when i tried to cash a payroll check issued by their fucking bank.

Just read the complaint so no link yet. Of course I'm just giving the version in his lawsuit. Which also includes, btw, a claim that a teller told him she would have no problem with him cashing the check if he were white.

Hairpieces Korea Co., Ltd. vs. Hairpieces, Inc.

Will this case come to be known as Hairpieces v. Hairpieces?

This isn't so much strange as sad and fucked up and depressing:

http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/063107p.pdf

There was a good article in the NYTimes this weekend that provided the context. I can't find it online now. But the jist is that the Circuit held that the FDA's regulatory authority and expertise preempts lawsuits against drug companies for injury from drugs.

Drug companies have been arguing for this doctrine of pre-emption for a long time, and they just won a big battle.

The problem, of course, is that the FDA doesn't actually have adequate resources to adequately test and regulate drugs and relies on the information provided by drug companies.

A stupid quote from the conclusion: "It is important to note that we express no view as to the merits of the issue of whether SSRIs contribute to adult suicidality. We are not scientists and we do not puport to have any expertise on that issue."

Well gee, we're not ballistics experts either so maybe we have no business ruling on criminal appeals dealing with shootings.

Here's the Times piece:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/washington/06patch.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5124&en=dbf93bc2eea21541&ex=1365220800&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

one of the most underrated threads on ilx

yes.

i love when this pops up on new answers.

aw

I wish I had more of these! My job is so boring most of the time!

A+++ thread would click again.

Oh, I did read a lawsuit a couple of that was sort of funny in a dude-being-butthurt way. The plaintiff had entered a "putt-off" contest sponsored by the Canadian Tourism Commission and had technically (according to him) won, but other contestants were allowed to enter after time was supposed to be up for entry, and one of those contestants was declared the winner.

To be fair, dude was supposed to have won a diamond worth $40,000 and a trip to Canada, so he's not suing over nothing.

(couple of days ago)

a chick from my hometown is suing victoria's secret bc she bought a bra there and the underwire popped out and "lacerated" her breast so now she can't be a "model" anymore.

lol everyone is always "lacerated." Plaintiffs never just be gettin cut.

Nude breast model?

i am thinking "model" is code for "stripper"

who knows, though, there could be a fetish market for that sort of thing...

I wonder if "lacerated" is code for "popped an implant".

http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/08a0152p-06.pdf

The dude in this appeal basically tries to argue that his trial court shouldn't have allowed the jury to listen to CDs of recorded conversations he had because they hadn't been admitted as evidence. The CDs were made from MP3 files that had been admitted as evidence.

Not surprisingly, the dude's argument failed.

The dissent on a sentencing opinion I'm looking at concludes with the last seven lines of Dover Beach, which do not seem to actually have any relevance at all to the issue at hand.

From the department of crucial details, a sexual harassment complaint against PNC Bank based on an incident in which a supervisor placed a pornographic male doll on a female workers' desk:

10. When the top of the object was pressed, relative to the size of a statue, a giant penis erupted out of its pants ina luridly graphic pornographic presentation of a sexually aroused male erection.
11. The statue was less than one foot high and the penis about six inches long.
12. Proportionate to the size of an average male, the erect penis was three feet long.

a giant penis erupted out of its pants a giant penis erupted out of its pants a giant penis erupted out of its pants a giant penis erupted out of its pants a giant penis erupted out of its pants a giant penis erupted out of its pants a giant penis erupted out of its pants a giant penis erupted out of its pants a giant penis erupted out of its pants a giant penis erupted out of its pants a giant penis erupted out of its pants a giant penis erupted out of its pants

lol penis is hueg

This is a great thread.

We used to send around random decisions we came accross during law school. Some crazy, crazy shit, especially if you delve into the child custody cases.

Motor vehicle accident litigators in New Jersey love the phrase "violently tossed about"

Plaintiff in a zoning complaint I'm looking right now is The Dubefest Corporation.

OMG P&Z BEEF

I love the thrilling mundanity of a zoning war.

Woman in Bergen County is suing her credit union because she turned around from the counter and walked into a post.

A Union County, NJ man named H0ward Br0ckm8n is suing, pro se, a local newspaper (the one I used to work for, in fact) for libel and slander because they *falsely reported that he had been arrested for elder abuse*. The plaintiff lives in Elizabeth. The article -- attached to the complaint as evidence -- identifies the arrested person as a Hillside resident.

NYC man is suing Microsoft because Word highlights "Obama" as a misspelling and suggests "Osama"

"Obama is going to be our next president. This is outregous. We (?) want to take them to court to correct this mistake/bug. This bug has hurt me...I e-mailed an article on Obama. I copied and pasted it. In one place Obama came out as Osama. I am extremely hurt and misreable."

A child actor in a show at Sussex County, NJ's Wild West City theme park was somehow allowed to use a revolver loaded with live ammunition in a "mock shootout." One of the bullets struck a child bystander in the head, causing him brain damage and paralysis.

Hilarious!

Indeed, not a very funny story. But nonetheless it jumped out at me, especially since it concerns a creepy-looking theme park that I pass every week on the way to the Sussex Courthouse (where I am now). They have a billboard after the entrance that says "Whoops, ya missed it pardner!"

I love it when judges sneak in deadpan humor:

Smith v. Indiana, July 08

http://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/pdf/07080802mgr.pdf

Defendant was convicted of cocaine possession. J. Robb finds that the search of defendant's toilet that led to the arrest was unreasonable because defendant did not consent and because the search could not have been part of a "protective sweep," since "a toilet tank is not an area from which a person could launch an attack." Affirmed.

Another good recent one:

http://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/pdf/07080802ebb.pdf

This guy was convicted of child exploitation for having a brief sexual relationship with a 15-year-old. One of the pieces of evidence was a photo of her performing fellatio on him. After never having brought it up previously in more than seven months, the defendant suddenly claimed that the penis in the photo was not his because he had an "X" tattoo on his penis and the penis in the photo did not. A tattoo pen was shortly thereafter found in his jail cell.

http://news.justia.com/cases/featured/illinois/ilndce/1:2007cv04192/211173/

No longer in the job, but a friend came across this in a Massachusetts case:

"Cottam took his first dose of Trazodone at night before bed and awoke the next morning with an erection that persisted throughout the day. The erection became uncomfortable later that evening. Cottam did not contact his doctor, deciding instead to wait until the following day when he had a previously scheduled appointment with his primary care physician. He took his second dose of Trazodone before bed that evening."

Dicta:

All four entities are subsidiaries of Bronson Lee Partners Fund III, LLC, a Chicagobased “private investment firm specializing in distressed real estate and delinquent tax
receivables located in Maryland and Washington D.C.” Bronson Lee Partners,
bronsonlee.com (last visited Oct. 24, 2022.
Earlier opinions of this Court and the Supreme Court of Maryland (at the time named
the Court of Appeals of Maryland)* have noted similarities between the names of the
purchasing entities and characters played by Rodney Dangerfield in the 1980s classic
comedies Caddyshack (Al Czervik, Ty Webb, and Danny Noonan) and Back to School
(Thornton Melon). In its reply brief in these cases, Thornton Mellon insists that it “is
not named after the infamous Rodney Dangerfield character, Thornton Melon, from
Back to School,” that “the similarity in names is merely a coincidence,” and that
although “[o]ne may question Appellants’ taste in movies, but Appellants would prefer
that future readers of opinions involving their cases not mistakenly believe that they are
bad spellers.” So noted. We note as well the similarity between the name of Thornton
Mellon’s parent company and the 1974 martial arts film Bronson Lee, Champion, one
in which Mr. Dangerfield played no role whatsoever, and let readers draw their own
conclusions.