Professor Gary Slapper's Weird Cases

Professor Slapper's column in The Times is always fun. Here are some recent additions with short extracts:

Assault by Handshake

Having just lost a criminal case in which she defended her husband, Kathy Brewer Rentas, an American media litigation lawyer, has been charged with assault for allegedly shaking the prosecutor's hand so vigorously that she injured the woman's shoulder.

There is a comment at the end of Professor Slapper's article concerning barristers not shaking hands with each other. I am a solicitor and was always told that I should not shake hands with a barrister (or he/she would decline to shake my hand) because I might be passing him or her a bribe. In fact, all of the many barristers I have instructed have been only too happy (indeed, eager) to shake my hand. Reflecting on this, as occasioned by Professor Slapper's article, I do wonder whether I have been deficient in the provision of bribes.

Judges at War

The hearing has involved a jaw-dropping sequence of testimony in which senior judges have accused each other of being “volatile” and “schizoid”, of lying, having hotel sex with court employees, and of threatening behaviour.

And these are the people who criticise me for forgetting to turn off my mobile telephone? Ok, it was playing Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry". Ok, it was an Employment Tribunal. Ok, no-one told me off. In fact, everyone had a quiet smile or, at most, a minor titter. I fumbled hopelessly but eventually succeeded in turning the thing off. That would appear to be the difference between here and America. Our judges stand on ceremony when it is really necessary but not when it is simply a matter of their "personal dignity."

Is this a Person?

Courts sometimes have to make difficult decisions about whether something is in a legal category. Is, for instance, a sawn-off piano leg an offensive weapon? Sometimes even human categories can be a challenge. Is a woman married if, after she and her partner have said “I do” at their wedding, she stops the ring going fully on her finger and runs out shouting that she’s changed her mind? An Australian court in 1953 said yes, and that, wait for it, Mrs Quick was married to Mr Quick.

But new ground was broken recently when the Supreme Court of Austria was asked to rule that Matthew Hiasl Pan is a person. That sounds easy enough for even an inexperienced lawyer. But the challenge was that Matthew is a chimpanzee.

World's Most Litigious Men

Omorotu Francis Ayovuare, a Nigerian-born surveyor, is apparently Britain’s most litigious man. By 2003, he had clocked up 82 race discrimination claims, and won only two of them. In the US, Billy Roy Tyler from Nebraska claims to be the “greatest writ-writer in the world”. He has sued everyone from his neighbour to the Governor. In the 1990s, he issued proceedings in 113 federal cases during one two-year period.

But both have been trumped by Taso Hadijiev, 74, and his brother Asen, 75, from Malka Arda in Bulgaria. They began suing each other in 1968 in a dispute about a land inheritance from their parents. They are still at it, and have now litigated over 200 times.

Fired For Not Smoking

The company laid off three non-smokers and said it would not be hiring any more people who don’t smoke. "Smokers have always been our best employees. Non-smokers interfere with corporate peace,” Jensen said. "They just complained all the time about smoking, and I don't like grumblers.”

Every day across the world, people are told they are no longer wanted by their employers for all sorts of reasons. They’re too old, too young, too aggressive, absent from work after serial booze binges. But being sacked for refusing to smoke is not something heavily indexed in the law reports.

Battle Of The Trial Lawyers (reminiscent of a Monty Python Sketch)

The AAJ, however, has thought twice and has issued proceedings in Minneapolis in order to force TheATLA to drop the name, arguing that the existence of the old name was confusing AAJ members and infringing a trademark. The claim also demands that AAJ is awarded any money that TheATLA collects in membership dues, and —you guessed it — treble damages and attorneys' fees. The lawyers who argue the case will no doubt be very good: a trial lawyer whose client is composed of 56,000 other trial lawyers can expect some professional feedback.

Christmas In Court

The jolliness of Christmas works in almost all venues except courts. Courts can’t do jollity. Just before Christmas in 2000, at Luton magistrates’ court, a sullen convicted man was about to be sentenced for a property crime when the courtroom suddenly rang out to the tune Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

The magistrate awkwardly opened his jacket and began fiddling with his musical novelty Santa Claus tie. The courtroom was aghast. The man in the dock stood slack-jawed. The magistrate’s tie then burst into We Wish You a Merry Christmas before stopping, at which point the defendant was jailed for four months.

See my comment on mobile telephone usage above.

The Speeding Wheelchair

In England and Wales, we issue more than 1.5 million speeding tickets each year. The offence has a long history. The first person in Britain to be fined for speeding was the pioneer of the petrol-engine car, Walter Arnold. On January 27, 1896, when there were only 20 cars in Britain, Mr Arnold was driving through Paddock Wood in Kent at 8mph — four times the 2mph limit imposed for built-up areas by the Locomotive Act 1865.

Suing Your School

No law school can keep everyone happy. Sir John Mortimer, QC, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey, complained that as a student he found the law syllabus “enormously dull” and “spent as little time at it as possible”. But to actually sue your law school is entirely another matter. In 1965, a student brought a claim against the University of London alleging negligence against the law examiners, but was unable to persuade the Court of Appeal that he deserved better marks. The student represented himself but got the law wrong in arguing his case.

Justice By Coin Toss

Judicial coin flipping, though, isn’t unprecedented in America. “Is your client a gambling man?” Judge Alan Friess asked the lawyer of Jeffrey Jones at Manhattan Criminal Court in 1982. Jones had pleaded guilty to theft but had objected to a proposed 30-day jail sentence, saying 20 days would be fairer. The judge then asked a District Attorney for a 25 cent coin and ordered the defendant to flip it and call. Jones called tails, won, and got his 20 days.

20 Weird Cases In Brief

The Blurb:

"A meticulous collector of amusing and curious anecdotes from the world of law, Professor Gary Slapper's Case Notes column has long been a staple of The Times' Law section. His collection of legal oddities is on display in a new column, Weird Cases. As a taster, we asked him to select 20 of his favourite bizarre disputes, prosecutions and lawsuits from the archive."

Samples:

2. In 2005, a Brazilian woman sued her partner for failing to give her orgasms. The 31-year old woman from Jundiai asserted in her case that her 38-year old partner routinely ended sexual intercourse after he reached an orgasm. After a promising start the action ended in something of an anticlimax for the claimant when her case was rejected.

6. In 2005, Marina Bai, a Russian astrologer, sued NASA for £165 million for “disrupting the balance of the universe”. She claimed that the space agency’s Deep Impact space probe, which was due to hit a comet later that year to harvest material from the explosion, was a “terrorist act”. A Moscow court accepted Russian jurisdiction to hear the claim but it was eventually rejected.

8. In 2006, a young man from Jiaxing, near Shanghai, found himself in legal trouble after failing to take advice before putting his soul up for sale on an online auction site. The posting was eventually removed by the auctioneer and the seller was told that the advert would be reinstated only if he could produce written permission to sell his soul from “a higher authority”.

You will note that I did not get below 8 before I ran out of my self-imposed denying ordinance that I would only disclose 3 of 20. I also excluded no. 1 so you really must visit the above link.