As any of you who are in law school yourself, or have friends currently on their quest for the JD, should be aware: it’s finals season. Which pretty much means I’ve been sleeping with a hornbook under my pillow, mumbling restatements as I toss and turn, then awakening in a cold sweat after nightmares where I failed every single class.
Once awake, I study until it’s bedtime again, and I can repeat the above sequence.
So this week’s blog is a smattering of quotes from some of the more entertaining court cases I’ve been reviewing. If you have any desire to learn more about any of these fabulous people, I encourage you to check them out on Google Scholar and enjoy some light reading.
Robinson v. Pioche, Bayerque & Co
“A drunken man is as much entitled to a safe street, as a sober one, and much more in need of it.”
Amen brother.
Varlack v. SWC Caribbean, Inc. (Quote found in Singletary v Pennsylvania Department of Corrections)
“[T]he plaintiff had filed a complaint against an “unknown employee” of a branch of the Orange Julius restaurant chain, alleging that this employee had hit him with a two-by-four in a fight, which caused him to fall through a plate glass window, injuring his arm so severely that it had to be amputated.”
Further proof that malls are dangerous. And it’s not just because of the 2×4 plank fights and subsequent amputations. Oh no, it’s much more. Escalators. Zombies. Menstruation.
Somebody needs to debunk the American myth of the “Mall Oasis” before things get out of hand. Mark my words; this is not the last time our justice system will have to deal with a suburban shopping mall atrocity. Sure, it’s only Orange Julius now, but soon it’s going to be American Eagle, Sears, even Wal-Mart. Before you know it, the whole world will be different.
Please, my fellow future lawyers, isn’t it time for a change?
Kremen v Cohen
“Cohen is obviously the guilty party here, and the one who in all fairness should pay for his theft. But he’s skipped the country, and his money is stashed in some offshore bank account. Unless Kremen’s luck with his bounty hunters improves, Cohen is out of the picture.”
Step One: Get Dog, The Bounty Hunter, on the phone.
Step Two: Fill him in on the background. Cohen didn’t hop the country after stealing something lame like diamonds or LiLo’s petticoats. No, he had stolen “sex.com” (as in the domain name) used it to create “a lucrative porn empire.”
Step Three: Investigate sex.com (all in the name of blog research, of course). Disappointingly, it is no longer a lucrative porn empire but it does have a creepy live chat on the homepage, so investigate warily.
Breunig v. American Family Insurance Co
“Ms. Veith told him she was driving on a road when she believed that God was taking ahold of the steering wheel and was directing her car. She saw the truck coming and stepped on the gas in order to become airborne because she knew she could fly because Batman does it. To her surprise she was not airborne before striking the truck, but after the impact she was flying.”
Best. Defense. Ever.
Andrews v. United Airlines
“As harried travelers try to avoid the agonizing ritual of checked baggage, they hand-carry more and larger items- computers, musical instruments, an occasional deceased relative.”
Things you can’t carry onto an airplane, no matter how agonizing the ritual becomes: meat cleavers, cricket bats, cattle prods, tear gas and the entire genre of martial arts weapons.
The deceased relative appears to have a green light.
Vassallo v. Baxter Healthcare Corp.
“Plaintiff claimed that defendants “were liable to her for damages because silicone breast implants…that had been implanted in her were negligently designed, accompanied by negligent product warnings, and breached implied warranty of merchantability with the consequence that she was injured. The plaintiff Vincent Vassallo [her husband] claimed a loss of consortium.”
This lady wasn’t dead. Her fake boobs just sprung a leak. But it wasn’t the fact that she decided to sue that was so ridiculous—after all she was sold a faulty product.
But notice that her husband is also suing.
Only in America.
O’Shea v. Riverway Towing Co (1982)
“If a man who had never worked in his life graduated from law school, began working at a law firm at an annual salary of $35,000, and was killed the second day on the job, his lack of a past wage history would be irrelevant to computing his lost future wages.”
Oh, how things have changed since 1982.
