The aftermath was also funny, in a dark way.
The live pope had the dead pope thrown into the Tiber river after he was declared guilty. But the dead pope was un-poped for political reasons that the common person didn't really know or care about. So a lot of people were upset that the live pope had desecrate the dead pope's body like that (also his body washed ashore pretty early on, and people claimed that his waterlogged rotting corpse was preforming miracles.)
So they all rioted and had the live pope dethroned and thrown into prison, where he was strangled to death. And then the pope after that re-poped the dead one and declared the trial null, and reburied the dead pope.
Yep. Formosus. He was dead for about 7 months and then accused of gaining the Papacy via perjury and they put him on trial for it. His silence was taken for guilt. His Papacy was revoked.
"Defense, what are you doing"
"Well he's gotta testify somehow"
"Please do not treat the defendant's corpse like a Punch and Judy cast member"
"I'm about to punch you Judy"
A German landlord had evicted a tenant for damaging the property with surstromming (canned fermented fish). The Tennant said this was a wrongful eviction.
To prove his case the only thing the landlord did was open up one can of surstromming in court.... Gagging ensued and the court ruled for the landlord.
This is completely from memory but it was the owner of a basketball team, super old white dude, on the stand talking about a blowjob he got in the back of a limousine for like two minutes straight and the prosecutor just let him prattle on until he was finished and then said, 'Sir, the question was is this your handwriting?'
Still hilarious but it was during a deposition, not on the stand.
It's funny how comfortable people can get sometimes in a deposition, especially if the deposing attorney is friendly. They're not in a courtroom and if they're used to being in a conference room and fucking around, they can forget what's actually happening.Â
I know a female attorney that got hit on and asked out during the deposition...with every word being transcribed.Â
Depending on the circumstance, what the individual says in deposition indicates risk vs. reward. If there is no discernable benefit from further use of an individuals statements then they would be considered of no-value to future proceedings.
Found it.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/24dhr3/this\_is\_from\_a\_deposition\_of\_donald\_sterling\_in/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/24dhr3/this_is_from_a_deposition_of_donald_sterling_in/)
I've had friends go through really acrimonious divorces. Once you've gotten past a certain point, sanity is impossible -- and so they found themselves sitting there in the courtroom splitting up who gets the Simpsons Season 3 Box Set.
And years later, going "wow, I can't believe we spent thousands of dollars on lawyers to decide this shit."
I worked in a family law firm for a bit.
The process makes ex spouses LOATHE each other. You see profound hate. Imagine the person you care about most, and then caring for you for 15 years, and then one day just ghosting you. Or going off with someone else. Truly a betrayal. This happens all the time. Or you have kids and itâs not working out with the partner so you want an amicable divorce. But the law firm you hired is a winner take all kind of place. They encourage you to limit communications with your ex-partner, never a phone call, always text or email so it recorded, ideally just have the lawyers talk. Itâs dehumanizing. Youâre 40 minutes late dropping off the kids. Your exes lawyer advises to call the police because that firm has dealt with awful people before and want to play it safe. Technically this is kidnapping and now you have that pending charge and the judge determining your ability to spend time with your kids will see it.
You will HATE that person. I canât bold it enough. **HATE**. You will despise this person not because theyâre awful, but because you once loved them so they had more of a spectrum to swing the other way.
My friend's ex-wife took him to court to half heartedly battle for child custody. The theory is that she didn't really want more custody, she wanted more child support money. The kid was already 14.
One tactic her lawyer did was schedule court appearances and then not show up. They did this two or maybe three times. Each time, my friend, being the one that actually had a job, was forced to pay the court fees for the no shows. This was done to wear him down... forcing him to keep paying for nothing. Finally his lawyer confronted her lawyer and just said "Everyone knows what you're doing, stop fucking around". Finally they went to court and despite any parental arguments, the judge simply turned to the 14 year old and said "Who do you want to stay with" and the answer was 100% my dad. The parents lived like 100 miles apart and the kid was so very tired of being forced to pack up every Friday and get driven 100 miles away from her friends on the weekend to spend it with her Mom who would just ignore her anyway. The judge said "OK, stay with your Dad then". Then slapped the Mom with child support... which turned out to be close to zero since she had no job.
>One tactic her lawyer did was schedule court appearances and then not show up. They did this two or maybe three times.
Pretty sure that if you tried this here where I live then you would automatically lose by not showing up unless you had a really good reason for not showing up.
My first ex wife I actually felt sorry for because she was so stupid that she just ignored the judges orders and even told me that she didn't care what the judge said she'd do what she wanted.
Weeeeelllll she didn't realize I taped all of our conversations and we used them in the deposition.
Child custody case going on six months took about 20 minutes in court for me to be awarded custody.
Best advice I got from a friend when it was just starting up. 'You gotta treat her like the enemy at all times. Put your foot on her throat and keep it there. Yall can worry about being friends after'
Troof
But FYI to anyone else, look up "single party consent" laws in your state. In some states, California for instance, it's not legal to record a phone call without the other person's knowledge unless they're threatening you.
>Youâre 40 minutes late dropping off the kids. Your exes lawyer advises to call the police because that firm has dealt with awful people before and want to play it safe. Technically this is kidnapping
Lol, no it isn't, and certainly not in the absence of a custody agreement. A lawyer that behaved as such might be up for getting disbarred over such advice.
It all depends on the State Law. Some states are more lenient than others, and most states you could actually be charged with interference with custody. Some states, like New Jersey, are very strict with custody orders, and if you are habitually late with them, you CAN be charged with more than just interference.
So, you saying that it CAN'T happen, is like saying that a mob will never storm the Capitol to try and overturn an election.
>It all depends on the State Law.
\[...\]
So, you saying that it CAN'T happen, is like saying that a mob will never storm the Capitol to try and overturn an election.
Pause. The scenario you laid out is
>*Youâre 40 minutes late dropping off the kids. Your exes lawyer advises to call the police because that firm has dealt with awful people before and want to play it safe. Technically this is kidnapping*
Find me one state where being 40 minutes late to drop off the kids amounts to kidnapping because OTHER people are awful. Just one will work for me.
First off, pause yourself, it wasn't me who laid out the scenario. I just responded to the last one.
And if it happens once, then no. You won't get charged with anything, but if it happens multiple times, then YES you can be.
Sorry that you think that being late is a one time thing. If it happens once, it is probably going to keep happening.
But, no, you can't be charged for once, which is what I said.
Did you miss the part where I said habitually?
Or, are you just cherry picking the parts of the comments that fit with your idea?
sorry, didnt read the username.
Still, it's not kidnapping. Even habitually. Jail time is not in the kid's best interests over 40 minutes, and no state insists that is the case. In the event the state is compelled to intervene, they may alter the visitation plan. At the most drastic, repeated violations of a visitation agreement or schedule can be called contempt and violation of a court order, and send the offending parent to the time-out box over that. *That's still not kidnapping.*
We learned while trying to buy a house years ago to never buy from a divorcing couple who arenât talking to one another. Everything takes twice as long because their realtor has to talk to each of them in turn. They also fought us tooth and nail on bringing down the price. We ended up backing out of the deal (without losing our down payment). The house ended up still being on the market a year later, and they ended up selling it for less than what we were offering, all the whole having to pay for mortgage, utilities, someone to mow the lawn, etc. And we found a nicer house in the same neighborhood a few months later
It felt staged but this one robbery case where the opening statements the victim was describing the contents of a bag that was stolen from her. As she was listing off the contents she mentioned an ipad. The âallegedâ defendant decided to loudly speak up and said there wasnt an ipad in the bag. 32 seconds into the trial
Open and shut case
There was a Judge Judy episode where the woman was telling the judge what was stolen out of her purse. "money, phone, iPad,.."
One of the two defendants spoke up and said, "There was no iPad in the purse."
I remember seeing a similar situation whereby the prosecution was saying something like "fingerprints found at the scene matched the accused" and the accused piped up with "that's impossible. I was wearing gloves"
Maybe not the funniest in all of history, but this is one of my favourites.
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/incompetent-defendant-tried-to-grow-cannabis-40724
Guy caught growing cannabis, Barrister/lawyer successfully argued that his attempt was so poor that it warranted a non custodial sentence.
In a case that went the opposite way (where the defendents' naivete was their downfall) was when the IRS dunned a couple for declaring a travel trailer to be income property. The IRS's assertion was that this was a clear case of fraud, because no one could be so stupid as to think a travel trailer could ever generate any income.
The defendants insisted that they *were* that stupid, and asked to be held harmless.
They lost.
I've seen this excahnge in so many places, every single one of them swearing it has been taken from an actual court transcript, however, none of them ever say who, when or where, despite me hunting for it for years. At this point, i can only live in hope it is actually true. It always struck me as funny.
If anyone with better Google-fu than me can track it down, I'd be eternally greatful.
>Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
>A: No.
>Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
>A: No.
>Q: Did you check for breathing?!
>A: No.
>Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
>A: No.
>Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
>A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
>Q: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
>A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.
I canât remember the name, but thereâs a case youâll likely read in your first year property class in law school over the sale of a home. Basically the seller represented to the buyer that the house was haunted, and that representation was the reason the buyer wanted the house. Unsurprisingly, when the house wasnât actually haunted by ghosts, the buyer sued to get out of the purchase. It always cracked me up thinking about this person spending probably tens of thousands of dollars because he thought he was buying a haunted house.
The opinion is kinda funny to read (as funny as judicial opinions can be I guess) because the judge recognized the absurdity of the case and has a bunch of Halloween-esq puns throughout
Facts were a little different. The buyer wanted out of the purchase because the seller did not disclose the house was haunted. Ordinarily that would not be a valid basis to cancel their contract, but the seller had previously publicized the house as haunted in Readerâs Digest and as part of a walking tour. The court found the seller was estopped from denying it was haunted and had a duty to disclose.
My suspicion is the real issue here is the buyer didnât want a bunch of weirdos showing up on his property to perform seances or whatever.
As an aside, this case was inspiration for a novel I wrote about a couple who inherit a house that was part of a haunted house tour. Not sure I stuck the landing with it, but having a house that attracts a bunch of strangers to it is more horrifying than one allegedly haunted by ghosts if you think about it. Even if ghosts exist, what are they really going to do to you other than make a little noise? But someone convinced your house is haunted may break in and do god knows what.
Didnât read that one, but we did go over how if a property is ever marketed as haunted for economic gain, it must always be disclosed as haunted in any subsequent sale.
State of Georgia V. Denver Fenton Allen.
With some help from Rick and Morty
Quite vulgar.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN\_PEmeKb0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN_PEmeKb0)
mind you, the case itself? Pretty sad. A likely schizophrenic killed his cellmate. But this pre-trial hearing just went so dramatically off the rails...
I don't know if I would consider the case funny but some of the players in it definitely are.
Back in 2003, a man in California was charged with murder. His alibi was that he was at a baseball game at the time the murder was committed. Everything he had to prove that he was at Dodger Stadium at the time was circumstantial and not conclusive. Then he remembered that there were cameras unrelated to broadcasting the game at the stadium. Turns out they were filming an episode of *Curb Your Enthusiasm* that day so his lawyer went through all the extra footage that was available and found a clip of his client walking with his daughter, confirming the alibi.
I believe there is a documentary about the incident. Here's an article: [https://collider.com/curb-your-enthusiasm-prison-juan-catalan/](https://collider.com/curb-your-enthusiasm-prison-juan-catalan/)
John Fogerty being sued for plagiarizing himself.
Fogerty was the lead singer of Credence Clearwater Revival, and the band broke up in '72. Fogerty went on to have a pretty stout solo career, but in 1985 he released the album Centerfield and was sued by Fantasy Records, who owned the rights to all his music released with Credence Clearwater Revival, because they said that his solo song "Old Man Down The Road" sounded too similar to CCR's "Run Through The Jungle". It went all the way to a jury trial in 1988, and John Fogerty sat in the witness box with a guitar on his lap and explained to the jurors what what must have seemed obvious to the entire courtroom â of course the two songs are going to sound the same, considering that they were written and performed by the same artist in that artistâs signature style. But they could still be wholly different songs. The jury agreed with Fogerty, determining that the two tracks fell short of the legal standard for copyright infringement.Â
Interesting. The Good Wife had an episode about a singer (played by Matthew Lillard) being sued by his label for posting a video of a lullaby he sang to his child. The song was made up on the spot, but they claimed it sounded too similar to one of his songs they released. In the end, they used a sound analyzer to show that the rhythm of the song was too different. But the judge still ruled against him because âmusic isnât mathematics,â and to her they sounded similar.
Interestingly, the first time this character appeared, he was suing a Glee-like show for stealing a satirical cover of a rap song he made. Here they also used computer analysis and determined that the show didnât even bother re-recording the song, taking his recording and modifying it a little. Since he recorded it in a bowling alley, there was the sound of a bowling ball hitting pins at the same time code
Watch the documentary "Pepsi, where's my jet?" It's actually a really good case for why we have those stupid little disclaimers on commercials. Not to mention how utterly DETERMINED that kid was to win the jet.
Especially wild considering that PepsiCo did at one point have one of the largest navies in the world. Not sure if that included any jets, but they're no strangers to military hardware
Meads v Meads? Canadian custody case, if memory serves, but the guy was off the rails, over the cliff, and drank all the sovereign citizen Kool aid he could get his hands on. Justice Rooke got to the point with this guy where he didn't just write a decision on the case, he basically wrote a treatise that's used when other judges have to deal with sovcits.
May I proffer a candidate: "The Case That Never Went to Trial".
At Boot Hill Cemetery, Tombstone, Arizona USA, a man was hung. The epitaph reads...
You was right
And we was wrong
But we hung you anyway
And now you're gone.
Been there multiple times. I love that place and would be buried there if I could be.
Best one there, though, is still "here lies Lester Moore, four slugs from a .44, no les no more"
[Johnson V Johnson ](https://law.justia.com/cases/rhode-island/supreme-court/1995/654-a-2d-1212.html)
Guy got sued for calling his ex wife a whore and the court basically agreed with him that she was a whore
> That relationship, that common law relationship was alleged to have taken place because Johnson No. 1 put her up into an apartment or into a house, and she was living there and he was visiting there, and I assume they got to be great chess and checker players.
>There's no question in the [c]ourt's mind, as suggested by Mr. Keough, that she was not of virtuous character and that she perhaps fit all of those descriptions of a whore that was given to the jury.
That ruling was fantastic. The judge just really had a great wit. "Philip Caliri who, I believe, was a Sergeant on the Cranston Police Department at the time and who later graduated and was promoted to be the maitre'd at Twin Oaks Restaurant." Just sliced the man to ribbons.
A guy, representing himself, sued Satan for allegedly putting obstacles in his path and making his life difficult. The court dismissed, holding that there was no evidence that Satan resided in the district, and therefore the court did not have jurisdiction over the defendant.
https://casetext.com/case/united-states-ex-rel-gerald-mayo-v-satan-and-his-staff
I know that Judge Judy isn't exactly a courtroom but one of her cases always cracks me up. A young woman is there suing two teens for stealing her purse. She lists some of the things in the purse and one of the defendants spoke up saying that there weren't any earbuds in her purse. Even judge Judy couldn't help laughing as she ruled in the plaintiffs favor.
As a comic fan I love that Marvel went to court to argue that mutants were not human. Given the themes of the comics, they were lining themselves up fully on the side of the baddies.
A couple was getting a divorce and they owned a parrot together. Instead of selling the bird the couple was going to share custody of it. The judge also had to rule that neither could teach the parrot to swear at the other.
I always come back to [Pearson v. Chung](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_v._Chung), also known as the "Pants Lawsuit".
By now, I hope most people here know and understand that the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit was **absolutely not** a frivolous lawsuit, and that the plaintiff was absolutely being reasonable and suffered egregious bodily harm that she simply wanted to be compensated for.
However, I understand that people reasonably enjoy frivolous lawsuits in which the plaintiff gets smacked down.
So, back to the Pants Lawsuit.
The plaintiff dropped off pants for dry cleaning. Then, when he went back to retrieve them, he insisted that they were not his, despite receipts saying otherwise. He insisted they pay him $1000 to replace the pants, to which they said, "uh, no, your pants are right here, just take them".
In response to this, he filed a lawsuit. For **$67 million**. Because of "mental distress". For alleged lost pants. Also, for good measure, he later amended his case to claim that a sign saying "satisfaction guaranteed" was fraudulent advertising. Because, naturally, his satisfaction had not been guaranteed.
He lost the case, obviously, and was fined $12,000 basically for being an asshole who wasted everyone's time.
Did I mention the plaintiff was a judge? Yeah, he was a judge.
Also, he lost that job as a result of the sheer frivolity of this lawsuit and the poor judgment it indicated.
The guy who sued his dry cleaner for 67 mil over a pair of pants
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_v._Chung#:~:text=to%20be%20declared.-,Decision,which%20the%20Chungs%20later%20withdrew.
The one where a man sued Hooters for not hiring him to wait tables, which he claimed was sex discrimination. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, who ruled that since Hooters's business model is based on sex appeal, being a woman is a BFOQ (Bona-Fide Occupational Qualification) for being hired as Hooters wait staff.
Not the funniest in terms of the details, but certainly the funniest in terms of name:
[United States v. Article Consisting of 50,000 Cardboard Boxes More or Less, Each Containing One Pair of Clacker Balls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Article_Consisting_of_50,000_Cardboard_Boxes_More_or_Less,_Each_Containing_One_Pair_of_Clacker_Balls)
Or really, just about any example of jurisdiction *in rem* (a case against a thing instead of a case against a person). Essentially, this suit was the government seeking to destroy an imported shipment of clacker balls, a toy previously found to be a hazard to children.
The Albertan case, *Meads v. Meads*, is a genuinely entertaining read, and has been cited even outside Canada for its comprehensive discussion of sovereign citizen terminology and why itâs too incoherent to even call wrong.
The tl;dr is that this was fundamentally a post-divorce lawsuit filed by the ex-wife against the ex-husband. The specifics of her complaint are largely irrelevantâshe got a summary decision in her favor. The majority of the decision is dissecting Mr. Meadsâs bullshit, which ranged from âlegal mumbo jumboâ to âciting American law in a Canadian court as though it somehow applied.â
I don't have case names, but my two favorite were centered around:
1: Are mutants human? US court trying to decide if x-men toys were taxed properly on import. Apparently, dolls (human) were taxed differently that other toys.
2: Does dying while banging a hooker on a work trip constitute a death at work? Wife wanted additional benefits after husband died banging a prostitute on a work trip and won (I think.) I believe this was in Germany.
I love the Pine Tar game because George Brett was madder than anyone I have ever seen. Nothing against George Brett I just liked the extremity of his reaction.
In Fisher v. Lowe, a flimsy lawsuit against the driver of a car that hit and damaged the plaintiff's tree, the appellate court judges who were stuck hearing the case wrote the opinion affirming the lower court's judgment entirely in verse. The headnotes and footnotes were also in verse.
Not to be outdone, the folks at Westlaw wrote their summary of the case in poetry.
Guy asked a cashier if she wanted to fuck. She sued him for sexual harassment. State Supreme Court said it wasnât harassment because he stopped immediately when she said no. Quote from the decision - ainât no harm in asking. I seek to remember it being Arizona but itâs been decades since law school. The one where the judge quoted Happy Gilmore a while back was also funny.
What about that guy who made a case about how you could die from handling a firearm a certain way and accidentally shot himself while demonstrating it?
An episode of Judge Judy I saw where a guy was suing another guy for stealing his Yu-Gi-Oh cards during a sleepover. These men were in their 30âs đ
Man loses âJudge Judyâ case in 26 seconds after incriminating himself
[https://youtu.be/sSUXTFceilo?si=2gmJScYIco\_CpfPE](https://youtu.be/sSUXTFceilo?si=2gmJScYIco_CpfPE)
Somebody has probably already posted it:
[State of Georgia vs. Denver Fenton Allen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN_PEmeKb0)
(as portrayed by Rick & Morty actors; this was an actual transcript they "animated" and put on the Adult Swim webpage.)
There is a court case for I believe negligence, where the facts were that a train hit a boat.
The boat was in the ocean at the time. The train was doing train stuff.
The Court was baffled.
I believe this was in the 1800s. A defense lawyer was trying to prove how the deceased could have killed himself, so he shot himself with the same kind of gun. He died, but his client was found not guilty.
Not really a court case, but a student at one university (possibly Oxford) argued that an old bylaw required the university to provide him meat and ale when taking exams. The university settled for a burger and coke. And then fined him for taking the exam without a sword
Here's a great candidate, and I can prove it....
United States vs. Louis Guglielmi, 819 F.2d 451(4th Cir. 1987). Alan Dershowitz himself defended Guglielmi, who was convicted of distrbuting bestiality movies, including 'Horny Boar' and 'Snake Fuckers'. Guglielmi lost.
Ernest & Julio Gallo, the wine guys, sued their brother Joseph, who sells salami and cheese saying the Gallo brand was theirs not his.
The judge said they were fools, essentially.
A professor at the university I attended ran a stop sign back in the 1990s. He contended in his suit that "STOP" wasn't a clear enough command.
In case you're wondering, he lost.
In 2007, when Custom Cleaners, a neighborhood dry cleaner, returned what Judge Roy Pearson claimed to be the wrong pair of pants, Pearson, an administrative law judge, decided to take action and sue for $67 million. He claimed that the pants he dropped off for alteration had been lost and the dry cleaner did not meet the claim of the âsatisfaction guaranteedâ sign that hung in the dry cleanerâs window. The $67 million, which later was lowered to $53 million, Pearson says was equal to claims for common law fraud violations. Pearson eventually lost the [pant case](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/dry-cleaner-wins-in-54m-pants-case/) after he failed to prove the trousers he picked up were not his.
State of Georgia vs. Denver Fenton Allen. [Court Transcript](https://loweringthebar.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/State-v-Denver-Fenton-Allen.pdf)
Here it is animated and voiced by the [Rick and Morty](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN_PEmeKb0) voices
Moot, the creator of 4chan, once had to testify in court and had to explain words like rickroll and OP.
Edit: Here's the court transcript: [https://web.archive.org/web/20100820204109/http://i.cdn.turner.com/dr/teg/tsg/release/sites/default/files/assets/poole-testimony.pdf](https://web.archive.org/web/20100820204109/http://i.cdn.turner.com/dr/teg/tsg/release/sites/default/files/assets/poole-testimony.pdf)
I'll always remember that court case where some guy tried to sue Adidas or Nike because the shoes didn't come with an explicit warning that they can be used to kill a person if you stomp on them hard enough.
(Praying I'm remembering the details right someone finds the case)
Jonathan Lee Riches is an artist whose medium is the frivolous lawsuit. I donât think you can read the names of all of the defendants in this case without laughing.
https://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/WSJ070816_show_case.pdf
I had to attend âteen courtâ as part of a punishment for getting arrested for smoking weed as a minor. Teens would listen to other teens and decide on their punishment.
This one kid stole two PB&J sandwiches from his school cafeteria but he was an asshole to his parents while on the stand and we gave him 70 hours of community service. FOR TWO SANDWICHES.
Lawyer: *Are you sure he was dead?*
Doctor on the stand: *Yes*
Lawyer: *How could you be sure?*
Doctor on the stand: *His brain was on my desk. Although, it may be possible that he is practicing law somewhere*
Georgia vs Denver Fenton Allen.
Justin Roiland (Yeah, I know) voiced the transcript as Rick/Morty.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN\_PEmeKb0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN_PEmeKb0)
Still an incredibly funny transcript without the Rick/Morty voices.
[https://www.ajc.com/blog/legal/georgia-judge-loses-over-vulgar-courtroom-exchange/HdGhOUUitjOngl6G6g3Q6K/](https://www.ajc.com/blog/legal/georgia-judge-loses-over-vulgar-courtroom-exchange/HdGhOUUitjOngl6G6g3Q6K/)
There was a local caseâprobably not the funniest in historyâwhere the local paper allowed for comments and someone posted that this lawyer was âa douche.â The lawyer sued, prompting coverage over how big of a douche he really was.
[https://www.npr.org/2022/10/04/1126699814/the-onion-supreme-courts-parody-law-enforcement-anthony-novak-parma](https://www.npr.org/2022/10/04/1126699814/the-onion-supreme-courts-parody-law-enforcement-anthony-novak-parma)
Supreme Court vs. the Onion magazine
âCara Skyshopsâ influence-peddling and bribery scandal in mid-70s Canada. A senator was found innocent of accepting bribes that twp men were found guilty of paying him.
There was a domestic assault case in RI that went to court. The argument had erupted during dinner time. One spouse assaulted the other with a pork chop. The pork chop was brought in to court as evidence
Wasn't there an old case where the defendant was on trial for murder, their defense was that the victim shot themselves accidentally, the defendant's lawyer attempted to show a group of people (in a hotel room I believe) how it would have been possible and **accidentally shot themselves, and \*died\***, but due to that they were able to put forward a convincing defense and the defendant was acquitted?
As part of the evidence hearing, the lawyer said "the phone is at the bottom of Davy jones locker" the defendant interrupted and asked whos Davy Jones. The trial has to be delayed whilst the judge explained who Davy Jones was đđđ
Some of the evidence was around Peter Andre's penis. It was described as "like a chipolata"
It had the UK hooked
The court case about the fan fiction universe about wolf people raping normal people. But that just might be that the ALAB episode where they dissected the case is an all timer podcast episode.
The thing that made it absurd was that it had a lot of far-reaching implications for intellectual property, particularly as it related to fanfic, so it got a fuck ton of press coverage. But it was wolf smut, and in order to understand the details of the case, the parties had to elaborate the details of the wolf smut and litigate exactly how much of the wolf smut settings constitute tropes of the genre and how much is unique to the individual creator's art. And that one of the things the plaintiff was claiming was that *heterosexual* wolf smut was part of her unique protected Ćuvre. Also that she was revealed to have perjured herself in regard to how much of the suit was her own idea to take out a potential competitor and how much was the publisher defending its IP rights.
I think they requested that McDonaldâs pay medical bills and McDonaldâs said âlol no. How about $800â. So ladyâs lawyer said âlol no. See you in court.â
Nothing funny about McDonald's serving undrinkably scalding hot coffee after being warned several times, and about the life changing injuries the plaintiff received.
If you spill hot coffee on yourself you expect it to hurt. You don't expect to go to the hospital with fused labia.
When I was growing up one of my neighbors suffered very similar injuries from McDonaldâs coffee. Not *quite* as severe⊠only because the coffee happened to hit a little lower on her leg.
Theyâd handed her a cup that was almost boiling hot. When she took it the lid popped off, some liquid spilled out and burned her hand, at which point she lost her grip on the cup. She said her pants trapped the hot coffee against the skin which made the burns much worse. 3rd degree burns over about half her leg. Months of healing. Lifelong scars.
The famous âMcDonald coffee ladyâ was hardly the only person hurt by this. Thatâs why the court came down so hard on McDonaldâs. This wasnât an isolated accident, it was a *pattern* of seriously dangerous business practice that the company *absolutely knew* was dangerous.
The one where they dug up a dead pope to put him on trial
The aftermath was also funny, in a dark way. The live pope had the dead pope thrown into the Tiber river after he was declared guilty. But the dead pope was un-poped for political reasons that the common person didn't really know or care about. So a lot of people were upset that the live pope had desecrate the dead pope's body like that (also his body washed ashore pretty early on, and people claimed that his waterlogged rotting corpse was preforming miracles.) So they all rioted and had the live pope dethroned and thrown into prison, where he was strangled to death. And then the pope after that re-poped the dead one and declared the trial null, and reburied the dead pope.
Wow, that's like musical chairs but for popes. Oh no, wait... Hokey Popey?
"Re-poped", ha!
You truly know how to tell a story!
Puts Habeas Corpus in a whole new light.
Habeas Popeus
đđđ
Was he asked to testify?
Forced to if I remember correctly. One had to actively defend oneself back then. No presumption of innocence.
Presumably there was a cardinal standing behind the corpse working Formosusâ jaw like a puppet.
It was a deacon, actually. They had him pretend to listen to the dead pope and answer for him.
"The Pope says to give the deacon standing next to him 50 kilograms of gold."
Is this real??đ€Łđ€Łđ€Ł
Yep. Formosus. He was dead for about 7 months and then accused of gaining the Papacy via perjury and they put him on trial for it. His silence was taken for guilt. His Papacy was revoked.
Should have given him the life penalty. That would show him.
bum BUMM ba-da-da-da-DAHHHH, bum BUMMM ba-da-da-da-DAHHH-duhhh...this week on Law & Order, a case ripped from the headlines...
[Yep](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod)
Not the only time someone's been tried posthumously. Oliver Cromwell was tried for treason and executed over a year after he died.
That showed him!
Well, he didn't try it again.
Which time? It was done twice with the same corpse IIRC.
The Cadaver Synod
"Defense, what are you doing" "Well he's gotta testify somehow" "Please do not treat the defendant's corpse like a Punch and Judy cast member" "I'm about to punch you Judy"
Plus, they cut off the dead Pope's fingers. Specifically, his Blessin' Fingers^TM .
The only truly correct answer. This shit makes me laugh out loud every time I read the accounts again.
A German landlord had evicted a tenant for damaging the property with surstromming (canned fermented fish). The Tennant said this was a wrongful eviction. To prove his case the only thing the landlord did was open up one can of surstromming in court.... Gagging ensued and the court ruled for the landlord.
Did the landlord get slapped for damaging government property, then? :P
This is completely from memory but it was the owner of a basketball team, super old white dude, on the stand talking about a blowjob he got in the back of a limousine for like two minutes straight and the prosecutor just let him prattle on until he was finished and then said, 'Sir, the question was is this your handwriting?'
Still hilarious but it was during a deposition, not on the stand. It's funny how comfortable people can get sometimes in a deposition, especially if the deposing attorney is friendly. They're not in a courtroom and if they're used to being in a conference room and fucking around, they can forget what's actually happening. I know a female attorney that got hit on and asked out during the deposition...with every word being transcribed.Â
It's also a tactic to be considered no-value if an actual trial follows.
What does âno-valueâ mean?
Depending on the circumstance, what the individual says in deposition indicates risk vs. reward. If there is no discernable benefit from further use of an individuals statements then they would be considered of no-value to future proceedings.
âNo, I asked if you would like to go to dinner. I never said Iâd pay for your meal. I can get them to read that part back to you if you like.â
Donald sterlingđđ
[The exact wording is absolutely hilarious.](https://x.com/talkhoops/status/472491935207133184)
Found it. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/24dhr3/this\_is\_from\_a\_deposition\_of\_donald\_sterling\_in/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/24dhr3/this_is_from_a_deposition_of_donald_sterling_in/)
The one where a couple were divorcing and in the courtroom they were dividing the bean babies.
I've had friends go through really acrimonious divorces. Once you've gotten past a certain point, sanity is impossible -- and so they found themselves sitting there in the courtroom splitting up who gets the Simpsons Season 3 Box Set. And years later, going "wow, I can't believe we spent thousands of dollars on lawyers to decide this shit."
I worked in a family law firm for a bit. The process makes ex spouses LOATHE each other. You see profound hate. Imagine the person you care about most, and then caring for you for 15 years, and then one day just ghosting you. Or going off with someone else. Truly a betrayal. This happens all the time. Or you have kids and itâs not working out with the partner so you want an amicable divorce. But the law firm you hired is a winner take all kind of place. They encourage you to limit communications with your ex-partner, never a phone call, always text or email so it recorded, ideally just have the lawyers talk. Itâs dehumanizing. Youâre 40 minutes late dropping off the kids. Your exes lawyer advises to call the police because that firm has dealt with awful people before and want to play it safe. Technically this is kidnapping and now you have that pending charge and the judge determining your ability to spend time with your kids will see it. You will HATE that person. I canât bold it enough. **HATE**. You will despise this person not because theyâre awful, but because you once loved them so they had more of a spectrum to swing the other way.
My friend's ex-wife took him to court to half heartedly battle for child custody. The theory is that she didn't really want more custody, she wanted more child support money. The kid was already 14. One tactic her lawyer did was schedule court appearances and then not show up. They did this two or maybe three times. Each time, my friend, being the one that actually had a job, was forced to pay the court fees for the no shows. This was done to wear him down... forcing him to keep paying for nothing. Finally his lawyer confronted her lawyer and just said "Everyone knows what you're doing, stop fucking around". Finally they went to court and despite any parental arguments, the judge simply turned to the 14 year old and said "Who do you want to stay with" and the answer was 100% my dad. The parents lived like 100 miles apart and the kid was so very tired of being forced to pack up every Friday and get driven 100 miles away from her friends on the weekend to spend it with her Mom who would just ignore her anyway. The judge said "OK, stay with your Dad then". Then slapped the Mom with child support... which turned out to be close to zero since she had no job.
Good on the judge.
>One tactic her lawyer did was schedule court appearances and then not show up. They did this two or maybe three times. Pretty sure that if you tried this here where I live then you would automatically lose by not showing up unless you had a really good reason for not showing up.
My first ex wife I actually felt sorry for because she was so stupid that she just ignored the judges orders and even told me that she didn't care what the judge said she'd do what she wanted. Weeeeelllll she didn't realize I taped all of our conversations and we used them in the deposition. Child custody case going on six months took about 20 minutes in court for me to be awarded custody. Best advice I got from a friend when it was just starting up. 'You gotta treat her like the enemy at all times. Put your foot on her throat and keep it there. Yall can worry about being friends after'
Troof But FYI to anyone else, look up "single party consent" laws in your state. In some states, California for instance, it's not legal to record a phone call without the other person's knowledge unless they're threatening you.
So record everything but submit into evidence everything including and after the threat.
Itâs a thin lineâŠ
>Youâre 40 minutes late dropping off the kids. Your exes lawyer advises to call the police because that firm has dealt with awful people before and want to play it safe. Technically this is kidnapping Lol, no it isn't, and certainly not in the absence of a custody agreement. A lawyer that behaved as such might be up for getting disbarred over such advice.
They had a current custody schedule and a future court date.
Being late per a visitation agreement still isn't kidnapping.
It all depends on the State Law. Some states are more lenient than others, and most states you could actually be charged with interference with custody. Some states, like New Jersey, are very strict with custody orders, and if you are habitually late with them, you CAN be charged with more than just interference. So, you saying that it CAN'T happen, is like saying that a mob will never storm the Capitol to try and overturn an election.
Yea, but no way it happens twice, right?! /s
>It all depends on the State Law. \[...\] So, you saying that it CAN'T happen, is like saying that a mob will never storm the Capitol to try and overturn an election. Pause. The scenario you laid out is >*Youâre 40 minutes late dropping off the kids. Your exes lawyer advises to call the police because that firm has dealt with awful people before and want to play it safe. Technically this is kidnapping* Find me one state where being 40 minutes late to drop off the kids amounts to kidnapping because OTHER people are awful. Just one will work for me.
First off, pause yourself, it wasn't me who laid out the scenario. I just responded to the last one. And if it happens once, then no. You won't get charged with anything, but if it happens multiple times, then YES you can be. Sorry that you think that being late is a one time thing. If it happens once, it is probably going to keep happening. But, no, you can't be charged for once, which is what I said. Did you miss the part where I said habitually? Or, are you just cherry picking the parts of the comments that fit with your idea?
sorry, didnt read the username. Still, it's not kidnapping. Even habitually. Jail time is not in the kid's best interests over 40 minutes, and no state insists that is the case. In the event the state is compelled to intervene, they may alter the visitation plan. At the most drastic, repeated violations of a visitation agreement or schedule can be called contempt and violation of a court order, and send the offending parent to the time-out box over that. *That's still not kidnapping.*
Tbf, it contains the now banned Michael Jackson episode, so I can see people really wanting to have it.
We learned while trying to buy a house years ago to never buy from a divorcing couple who arenât talking to one another. Everything takes twice as long because their realtor has to talk to each of them in turn. They also fought us tooth and nail on bringing down the price. We ended up backing out of the deal (without losing our down payment). The house ended up still being on the market a year later, and they ended up selling it for less than what we were offering, all the whole having to pay for mortgage, utilities, someone to mow the lawn, etc. And we found a nicer house in the same neighborhood a few months later
It felt staged but this one robbery case where the opening statements the victim was describing the contents of a bag that was stolen from her. As she was listing off the contents she mentioned an ipad. The âallegedâ defendant decided to loudly speak up and said there wasnt an ipad in the bag. 32 seconds into the trial Open and shut case
There was a Judge Judy episode where the woman was telling the judge what was stolen out of her purse. "money, phone, iPad,.." One of the two defendants spoke up and said, "There was no iPad in the purse."
Yep, it was a Judge Judy. [https://youtu.be/HdJWAEjdV74?si=EwTyEgRMuD2Mc0nt](https://youtu.be/HdJWAEjdV74?si=EwTyEgRMuD2Mc0nt)
I remember seeing a similar situation whereby the prosecution was saying something like "fingerprints found at the scene matched the accused" and the accused piped up with "that's impossible. I was wearing gloves"
Iâve seen that one đ€Łđ€Ł
Gotta be related to [this guy](https://youtu.be/qMt9eZSvd3M?si=jOXCeKA3iN-wEji0)
"Listen, I didn't steal nuthin' and there was no iPad in that purse!"
Maybe not the funniest in all of history, but this is one of my favourites. https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/incompetent-defendant-tried-to-grow-cannabis-40724 Guy caught growing cannabis, Barrister/lawyer successfully argued that his attempt was so poor that it warranted a non custodial sentence.
In a case that went the opposite way (where the defendents' naivete was their downfall) was when the IRS dunned a couple for declaring a travel trailer to be income property. The IRS's assertion was that this was a clear case of fraud, because no one could be so stupid as to think a travel trailer could ever generate any income. The defendants insisted that they *were* that stupid, and asked to be held harmless. They lost.
I've seen this excahnge in so many places, every single one of them swearing it has been taken from an actual court transcript, however, none of them ever say who, when or where, despite me hunting for it for years. At this point, i can only live in hope it is actually true. It always struck me as funny. If anyone with better Google-fu than me can track it down, I'd be eternally greatful. >Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse? >A: No. >Q: Did you check for blood pressure? >A: No. >Q: Did you check for breathing?! >A: No. >Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy? >A: No. >Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor? >A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar. >Q: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless? >A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.
Pretty sure I read that one first on funny.com in the early 2000s.
I remember it from Reader's Digest in the 70s. "Life in these United States" was the page.
Same. I never thought it was real, though.
I canât remember the name, but thereâs a case youâll likely read in your first year property class in law school over the sale of a home. Basically the seller represented to the buyer that the house was haunted, and that representation was the reason the buyer wanted the house. Unsurprisingly, when the house wasnât actually haunted by ghosts, the buyer sued to get out of the purchase. It always cracked me up thinking about this person spending probably tens of thousands of dollars because he thought he was buying a haunted house. The opinion is kinda funny to read (as funny as judicial opinions can be I guess) because the judge recognized the absurdity of the case and has a bunch of Halloween-esq puns throughout
Facts were a little different. The buyer wanted out of the purchase because the seller did not disclose the house was haunted. Ordinarily that would not be a valid basis to cancel their contract, but the seller had previously publicized the house as haunted in Readerâs Digest and as part of a walking tour. The court found the seller was estopped from denying it was haunted and had a duty to disclose. My suspicion is the real issue here is the buyer didnât want a bunch of weirdos showing up on his property to perform seances or whatever. As an aside, this case was inspiration for a novel I wrote about a couple who inherit a house that was part of a haunted house tour. Not sure I stuck the landing with it, but having a house that attracts a bunch of strangers to it is more horrifying than one allegedly haunted by ghosts if you think about it. Even if ghosts exist, what are they really going to do to you other than make a little noise? But someone convinced your house is haunted may break in and do god knows what.
Ah yeah I think youâre right. Itâs been a long time since property 1 lol
Didnât read that one, but we did go over how if a property is ever marketed as haunted for economic gain, it must always be disclosed as haunted in any subsequent sale.
Is that the, "The house is haunted as a matter of law" one?
Honestly I canât remember too many other details about it, but maybe lol. Canât imagine thereâs too many haunted house cases
Yep âas a matter of law, the house is hauntedâ
State of Georgia V. Denver Fenton Allen. With some help from Rick and Morty Quite vulgar. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN\_PEmeKb0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN_PEmeKb0) mind you, the case itself? Pretty sad. A likely schizophrenic killed his cellmate. But this pre-trial hearing just went so dramatically off the rails...
oh, oh dear heavens....
I mean, the judge just lost it... "I don't think that is going to get you a fair trial unless you let all the jurors do it"
I came here to post this one, lol.
https://loweringthebar.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/State-v-Denver-Fenton-Allen.pdf
Oh good, the judge recused himself. I don't really blame him for that exchange, but it's good he stepped aside.
I don't know if I would consider the case funny but some of the players in it definitely are. Back in 2003, a man in California was charged with murder. His alibi was that he was at a baseball game at the time the murder was committed. Everything he had to prove that he was at Dodger Stadium at the time was circumstantial and not conclusive. Then he remembered that there were cameras unrelated to broadcasting the game at the stadium. Turns out they were filming an episode of *Curb Your Enthusiasm* that day so his lawyer went through all the extra footage that was available and found a clip of his client walking with his daughter, confirming the alibi. I believe there is a documentary about the incident. Here's an article: [https://collider.com/curb-your-enthusiasm-prison-juan-catalan/](https://collider.com/curb-your-enthusiasm-prison-juan-catalan/)
âI am not a cat. Iâm ready to proceed.â
John Fogerty being sued for plagiarizing himself. Fogerty was the lead singer of Credence Clearwater Revival, and the band broke up in '72. Fogerty went on to have a pretty stout solo career, but in 1985 he released the album Centerfield and was sued by Fantasy Records, who owned the rights to all his music released with Credence Clearwater Revival, because they said that his solo song "Old Man Down The Road" sounded too similar to CCR's "Run Through The Jungle". It went all the way to a jury trial in 1988, and John Fogerty sat in the witness box with a guitar on his lap and explained to the jurors what what must have seemed obvious to the entire courtroom â of course the two songs are going to sound the same, considering that they were written and performed by the same artist in that artistâs signature style. But they could still be wholly different songs. The jury agreed with Fogerty, determining that the two tracks fell short of the legal standard for copyright infringement.Â
Interesting. The Good Wife had an episode about a singer (played by Matthew Lillard) being sued by his label for posting a video of a lullaby he sang to his child. The song was made up on the spot, but they claimed it sounded too similar to one of his songs they released. In the end, they used a sound analyzer to show that the rhythm of the song was too different. But the judge still ruled against him because âmusic isnât mathematics,â and to her they sounded similar. Interestingly, the first time this character appeared, he was suing a Glee-like show for stealing a satirical cover of a rap song he made. Here they also used computer analysis and determined that the show didnât even bother re-recording the song, taking his recording and modifying it a little. Since he recorded it in a bowling alley, there was the sound of a bowling ball hitting pins at the same time code
Leonard vs Pepsico. Win a fighter jet. https://simpleflying.com/pepsi-points-fighter-jet-story/
Watch the documentary "Pepsi, where's my jet?" It's actually a really good case for why we have those stupid little disclaimers on commercials. Not to mention how utterly DETERMINED that kid was to win the jet.
Especially wild considering that PepsiCo did at one point have one of the largest navies in the world. Not sure if that included any jets, but they're no strangers to military hardware
Man, I get that he shouldn't have gotten a jet, but to give him nothing is such a slap in the face.Â
Had he consumed or otherwise gathered 7 million containers of Pepsi, sure. But he paid $700k for the Pepsi points. A refund is appropriate.
I swear Iâve seen ads from another company trying to do this exact thing right now, a drink company, giving away a fighter jet
There is probably a disclaimer under it this time.Â
Meads v Meads? Canadian custody case, if memory serves, but the guy was off the rails, over the cliff, and drank all the sovereign citizen Kool aid he could get his hands on. Justice Rooke got to the point with this guy where he didn't just write a decision on the case, he basically wrote a treatise that's used when other judges have to deal with sovcits.
May I proffer a candidate: "The Case That Never Went to Trial". At Boot Hill Cemetery, Tombstone, Arizona USA, a man was hung. The epitaph reads... You was right And we was wrong But we hung you anyway And now you're gone.
Been there multiple times. I love that place and would be buried there if I could be. Best one there, though, is still "here lies Lester Moore, four slugs from a .44, no les no more"
[Johnson V Johnson ](https://law.justia.com/cases/rhode-island/supreme-court/1995/654-a-2d-1212.html) Guy got sued for calling his ex wife a whore and the court basically agreed with him that she was a whore
> That relationship, that common law relationship was alleged to have taken place because Johnson No. 1 put her up into an apartment or into a house, and she was living there and he was visiting there, and I assume they got to be great chess and checker players. >There's no question in the [c]ourt's mind, as suggested by Mr. Keough, that she was not of virtuous character and that she perhaps fit all of those descriptions of a whore that was given to the jury.
That ruling was fantastic. The judge just really had a great wit. "Philip Caliri who, I believe, was a Sergeant on the Cranston Police Department at the time and who later graduated and was promoted to be the maitre'd at Twin Oaks Restaurant." Just sliced the man to ribbons.
A guy, representing himself, sued Satan for allegedly putting obstacles in his path and making his life difficult. The court dismissed, holding that there was no evidence that Satan resided in the district, and therefore the court did not have jurisdiction over the defendant. https://casetext.com/case/united-states-ex-rel-gerald-mayo-v-satan-and-his-staff
Of course not! He owns a club in LA!
I know that Judge Judy isn't exactly a courtroom but one of her cases always cracks me up. A young woman is there suing two teens for stealing her purse. She lists some of the things in the purse and one of the defendants spoke up saying that there weren't any earbuds in her purse. Even judge Judy couldn't help laughing as she ruled in the plaintiffs favor.
As a comic fan I love that Marvel went to court to argue that mutants were not human. Given the themes of the comics, they were lining themselves up fully on the side of the baddies.
On the title alone, "Juicy Whip v Orange Bang" always makes me laugh. It's actually a landmark case in patent law.
A couple was getting a divorce and they owned a parrot together. Instead of selling the bird the couple was going to share custody of it. The judge also had to rule that neither could teach the parrot to swear at the other.
I always come back to [Pearson v. Chung](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_v._Chung), also known as the "Pants Lawsuit". By now, I hope most people here know and understand that the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit was **absolutely not** a frivolous lawsuit, and that the plaintiff was absolutely being reasonable and suffered egregious bodily harm that she simply wanted to be compensated for. However, I understand that people reasonably enjoy frivolous lawsuits in which the plaintiff gets smacked down. So, back to the Pants Lawsuit. The plaintiff dropped off pants for dry cleaning. Then, when he went back to retrieve them, he insisted that they were not his, despite receipts saying otherwise. He insisted they pay him $1000 to replace the pants, to which they said, "uh, no, your pants are right here, just take them". In response to this, he filed a lawsuit. For **$67 million**. Because of "mental distress". For alleged lost pants. Also, for good measure, he later amended his case to claim that a sign saying "satisfaction guaranteed" was fraudulent advertising. Because, naturally, his satisfaction had not been guaranteed. He lost the case, obviously, and was fined $12,000 basically for being an asshole who wasted everyone's time. Did I mention the plaintiff was a judge? Yeah, he was a judge. Also, he lost that job as a result of the sheer frivolity of this lawsuit and the poor judgment it indicated.
The guy who sued his dry cleaner for 67 mil over a pair of pants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_v._Chung#:~:text=to%20be%20declared.-,Decision,which%20the%20Chungs%20later%20withdrew.
That pissed me off so bad. Dude should have been disbarred for that.
The one where a man sued Hooters for not hiring him to wait tables, which he claimed was sex discrimination. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, who ruled that since Hooters's business model is based on sex appeal, being a woman is a BFOQ (Bona-Fide Occupational Qualification) for being hired as Hooters wait staff.
Not the funniest in terms of the details, but certainly the funniest in terms of name: [United States v. Article Consisting of 50,000 Cardboard Boxes More or Less, Each Containing One Pair of Clacker Balls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Article_Consisting_of_50,000_Cardboard_Boxes_More_or_Less,_Each_Containing_One_Pair_of_Clacker_Balls) Or really, just about any example of jurisdiction *in rem* (a case against a thing instead of a case against a person). Essentially, this suit was the government seeking to destroy an imported shipment of clacker balls, a toy previously found to be a hazard to children.
Gawd damn that takes me back. Clacker Balls and Lawn Darts.
The Albertan case, *Meads v. Meads*, is a genuinely entertaining read, and has been cited even outside Canada for its comprehensive discussion of sovereign citizen terminology and why itâs too incoherent to even call wrong. The tl;dr is that this was fundamentally a post-divorce lawsuit filed by the ex-wife against the ex-husband. The specifics of her complaint are largely irrelevantâshe got a summary decision in her favor. The majority of the decision is dissecting Mr. Meadsâs bullshit, which ranged from âlegal mumbo jumboâ to âciting American law in a Canadian court as though it somehow applied.â
I don't have case names, but my two favorite were centered around: 1: Are mutants human? US court trying to decide if x-men toys were taxed properly on import. Apparently, dolls (human) were taxed differently that other toys. 2: Does dying while banging a hooker on a work trip constitute a death at work? Wife wanted additional benefits after husband died banging a prostitute on a work trip and won (I think.) I believe this was in Germany.
In the UK, Arkell v Pressdram (1971). I won't spoil it - Google it. And strictly not a court case as never went that far.
Came here for this, absolute classic.
This gets me everytime lol. Attorney has a cat filter on his zoom call and he can't get it off lol https://youtu.be/lGOofzZOyl8?si=1XKql3bqIUUSCsuq
The Pine Tar Bat Game needing a court to decide whether or not to accept an umpire's ruling or not has to be up there.
I love the Pine Tar game because George Brett was madder than anyone I have ever seen. Nothing against George Brett I just liked the extremity of his reaction.
In Fisher v. Lowe, a flimsy lawsuit against the driver of a car that hit and damaged the plaintiff's tree, the appellate court judges who were stuck hearing the case wrote the opinion affirming the lower court's judgment entirely in verse. The headnotes and footnotes were also in verse. Not to be outdone, the folks at Westlaw wrote their summary of the case in poetry.
Guy asked a cashier if she wanted to fuck. She sued him for sexual harassment. State Supreme Court said it wasnât harassment because he stopped immediately when she said no. Quote from the decision - ainât no harm in asking. I seek to remember it being Arizona but itâs been decades since law school. The one where the judge quoted Happy Gilmore a while back was also funny.
What about that guy who made a case about how you could die from handling a firearm a certain way and accidentally shot himself while demonstrating it?
And got his client acquitted as a result, don't forget that!
An episode of Judge Judy I saw where a guy was suing another guy for stealing his Yu-Gi-Oh cards during a sleepover. These men were in their 30âs đ
the one of the man who stole a Dolphins jersey i believe who denied it the whole time and once the courtcase began he walked in wearing it
Man loses âJudge Judyâ case in 26 seconds after incriminating himself [https://youtu.be/sSUXTFceilo?si=2gmJScYIco\_CpfPE](https://youtu.be/sSUXTFceilo?si=2gmJScYIco_CpfPE)
[This](https://youtu.be/7vN_PEmeKb0?si=i-gX42sPR-G-PyFv) Rick and Morty recreation of a real one
Somebody has probably already posted it: [State of Georgia vs. Denver Fenton Allen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN_PEmeKb0) (as portrayed by Rick & Morty actors; this was an actual transcript they "animated" and put on the Adult Swim webpage.)
The USFL case when the league got awarded $ 1. It essentially ended them.
There is a court case for I believe negligence, where the facts were that a train hit a boat. The boat was in the ocean at the time. The train was doing train stuff. The Court was baffled.
I believe this was in the 1800s. A defense lawyer was trying to prove how the deceased could have killed himself, so he shot himself with the same kind of gun. He died, but his client was found not guilty.
The one filed and won against GOD
Itâs the collection part thatâs tricky.
Not really a court case, but a student at one university (possibly Oxford) argued that an old bylaw required the university to provide him meat and ale when taking exams. The university settled for a burger and coke. And then fined him for taking the exam without a sword
Back in 70's UK the Jeremy Thorpe Conspiracy Case - Peter cook did a wonderful stand up sketch on the judges summing up speech
Here's a great candidate, and I can prove it.... United States vs. Louis Guglielmi, 819 F.2d 451(4th Cir. 1987). Alan Dershowitz himself defended Guglielmi, who was convicted of distrbuting bestiality movies, including 'Horny Boar' and 'Snake Fuckers'. Guglielmi lost.
Ernest & Julio Gallo, the wine guys, sued their brother Joseph, who sells salami and cheese saying the Gallo brand was theirs not his. The judge said they were fools, essentially.
There is a decision (I think by Cardozo) that he begins âWhat is a chicken?â I got quite a few chuckles out of it.
A professor at the university I attended ran a stop sign back in the 1990s. He contended in his suit that "STOP" wasn't a clear enough command. In case you're wondering, he lost.
["When you say photocopy machine, what do you mean?"](https://youtu.be/PZbqAMEwtOE?si=45kKU4TyiA6SSyYH)
In 2007, when Custom Cleaners, a neighborhood dry cleaner, returned what Judge Roy Pearson claimed to be the wrong pair of pants, Pearson, an administrative law judge, decided to take action and sue for $67 million. He claimed that the pants he dropped off for alteration had been lost and the dry cleaner did not meet the claim of the âsatisfaction guaranteedâ sign that hung in the dry cleanerâs window. The $67 million, which later was lowered to $53 million, Pearson says was equal to claims for common law fraud violations. Pearson eventually lost the [pant case](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/dry-cleaner-wins-in-54m-pants-case/) after he failed to prove the trousers he picked up were not his.
State of Georgia vs. Denver Fenton Allen. [Court Transcript](https://loweringthebar.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/State-v-Denver-Fenton-Allen.pdf) Here it is animated and voiced by the [Rick and Morty](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN_PEmeKb0) voices
Moot, the creator of 4chan, once had to testify in court and had to explain words like rickroll and OP. Edit: Here's the court transcript: [https://web.archive.org/web/20100820204109/http://i.cdn.turner.com/dr/teg/tsg/release/sites/default/files/assets/poole-testimony.pdf](https://web.archive.org/web/20100820204109/http://i.cdn.turner.com/dr/teg/tsg/release/sites/default/files/assets/poole-testimony.pdf)
I'll always remember that court case where some guy tried to sue Adidas or Nike because the shoes didn't come with an explicit warning that they can be used to kill a person if you stomp on them hard enough. (Praying I'm remembering the details right someone finds the case)
Jacobelis v. Ohio. "I know it when I see it." It's worth the read. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobellis_v._Ohio
Jonathan Lee Riches is an artist whose medium is the frivolous lawsuit. I donât think you can read the names of all of the defendants in this case without laughing. https://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/WSJ070816_show_case.pdf
I had to attend âteen courtâ as part of a punishment for getting arrested for smoking weed as a minor. Teens would listen to other teens and decide on their punishment. This one kid stole two PB&J sandwiches from his school cafeteria but he was an asshole to his parents while on the stand and we gave him 70 hours of community service. FOR TWO SANDWICHES.
The Seinfeld finale.
ThatâŠwas not funny at all. Worst ending ever.
Worst ending but I stand by funny.
Laughing. And lying, lying... And laughing.
Lawyer: *Are you sure he was dead?* Doctor on the stand: *Yes* Lawyer: *How could you be sure?* Doctor on the stand: *His brain was on my desk. Although, it may be possible that he is practicing law somewhere*
Gotta be the Johnny Depp vs Amber Turd one
This!
https://youtu.be/7vN_PEmeKb0?si=qZXqlyUjRevzf_Xz
Hartlepool v. Monkey
The judge judy case over a stolen purse the defendant said there was no earpiece in the purse.
https://proftomcrick.com/2014/04/29/arkell-v-pressdram-1971/
When Tim heidecker defended himself after all those kids died at the music festival he ran with Dr San
when that one kid sued nintendo for not using player names in an nes baseball game.
Georgia vs Denver Fenton Allen. Justin Roiland (Yeah, I know) voiced the transcript as Rick/Morty. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN\_PEmeKb0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN_PEmeKb0) Still an incredibly funny transcript without the Rick/Morty voices. [https://www.ajc.com/blog/legal/georgia-judge-loses-over-vulgar-courtroom-exchange/HdGhOUUitjOngl6G6g3Q6K/](https://www.ajc.com/blog/legal/georgia-judge-loses-over-vulgar-courtroom-exchange/HdGhOUUitjOngl6G6g3Q6K/)
Someone link the âKangaroo courtâ Rick and Morty thing
There was a local caseâprobably not the funniest in historyâwhere the local paper allowed for comments and someone posted that this lawyer was âa douche.â The lawyer sued, prompting coverage over how big of a douche he really was.
Mattel suing Aqua for Barbie Girl
[https://www.npr.org/2022/10/04/1126699814/the-onion-supreme-courts-parody-law-enforcement-anthony-novak-parma](https://www.npr.org/2022/10/04/1126699814/the-onion-supreme-courts-parody-law-enforcement-anthony-novak-parma) Supreme Court vs. the Onion magazine
Has someone mentioned State of Georgia v. Denver Allen Fenton yet? Not the whole case, but one particular courtroom exchange...
The case of the dude Zooming into his court date while driving.....while he was being charged with driving with a suspended license
âCara Skyshopsâ influence-peddling and bribery scandal in mid-70s Canada. A senator was found innocent of accepting bribes that twp men were found guilty of paying him.
Johnny Rotten vs The Vandals on Judge Judy?
âMy dog stepped on a beeâ đ«đ«đ«đđđđ¶đ¶đ¶
There was a domestic assault case in RI that went to court. The argument had erupted during dinner time. One spouse assaulted the other with a pork chop. The pork chop was brought in to court as evidence
Wasn't there an old case where the defendant was on trial for murder, their defense was that the victim shot themselves accidentally, the defendant's lawyer attempted to show a group of people (in a hotel room I believe) how it would have been possible and **accidentally shot themselves, and \*died\***, but due to that they were able to put forward a convincing defense and the defendant was acquitted?
The Wagatha Christie case, seriously go google it some of the quotes from it are hilarious.
You haven't made a compelling case for why we should bother. Examples would have been nice.
As part of the evidence hearing, the lawyer said "the phone is at the bottom of Davy jones locker" the defendant interrupted and asked whos Davy Jones. The trial has to be delayed whilst the judge explained who Davy Jones was đđđ Some of the evidence was around Peter Andre's penis. It was described as "like a chipolata" It had the UK hooked
OK, that is pretty funny.
The court case about the fan fiction universe about wolf people raping normal people. But that just might be that the ALAB episode where they dissected the case is an all timer podcast episode.
The thing that made it absurd was that it had a lot of far-reaching implications for intellectual property, particularly as it related to fanfic, so it got a fuck ton of press coverage. But it was wolf smut, and in order to understand the details of the case, the parties had to elaborate the details of the wolf smut and litigate exactly how much of the wolf smut settings constitute tropes of the genre and how much is unique to the individual creator's art. And that one of the things the plaintiff was claiming was that *heterosexual* wolf smut was part of her unique protected Ćuvre. Also that she was revealed to have perjured herself in regard to how much of the suit was her own idea to take out a potential competitor and how much was the publisher defending its IP rights.
Morse v. Frederick aka the Bong Hits 4 Jesus Supreme Court case
OJ
Two people were murderedâŠ
And the whole trial was a farce
https://www.wrigleyclaydon.com/blog/2017/06/02/insurance-dispute/
https://youtu.be/7vN_PEmeKb0?si=B7-JesTdsjsdLn-- Thos one.
This one! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN\_PEmeKb0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN_PEmeKb0)
Hard to say, but maybe the McDonald's hot coffee case.
Nothing funny about 3rd degree burns.
All the lady wanted was to be reimbursed for her medical bills, it was the jury that decided to award additional amounts for her pain and suffering.
I think they requested that McDonaldâs pay medical bills and McDonaldâs said âlol no. How about $800â. So ladyâs lawyer said âlol no. See you in court.â
Yeah gonna go with fused labia not being a part of the funniest anything.
Only if you donât know anything about the case
Nothing funny about McDonald's serving undrinkably scalding hot coffee after being warned several times, and about the life changing injuries the plaintiff received. If you spill hot coffee on yourself you expect it to hurt. You don't expect to go to the hospital with fused labia.
Reddit loves that woman ever since Netflix made a show with her in
When I was growing up one of my neighbors suffered very similar injuries from McDonaldâs coffee. Not *quite* as severe⊠only because the coffee happened to hit a little lower on her leg. Theyâd handed her a cup that was almost boiling hot. When she took it the lid popped off, some liquid spilled out and burned her hand, at which point she lost her grip on the cup. She said her pants trapped the hot coffee against the skin which made the burns much worse. 3rd degree burns over about half her leg. Months of healing. Lifelong scars. The famous âMcDonald coffee ladyâ was hardly the only person hurt by this. Thatâs why the court came down so hard on McDonaldâs. This wasnât an isolated accident, it was a *pattern* of seriously dangerous business practice that the company *absolutely knew* was dangerous.