Strange Judicial Opinions Archives - Page 4 of 16

Goldfish Qualify as “Animal Companions”

In People v. Garcia, the defendant appealed his conviction on multiple charges arising from a domestic assault episode that included stomping on some poor kids’ pet goldfish.

Judge James Catterson’s opinion explored the intriguing legal question of whether goldfish qualify as “animal companions” under statutes imposing enhanced felony penalties for abusing such companions.

The opinion started with an interesting history of animal domestication:

The earliest known domestic animal appears to be the dog, a companion to mankind as early as 15,000 B.C. Goats, sheep, pigs and cows followed in domestication in the next ten thousand years. Horses, however, did not succumb to the lure of mankind’s presence until 4000 B.C. The domestication of fish is believed to have begun much later, in China during the Tang Dynasty, around 620 A.D. The common goldfish (Carassius Auratus), a member of the carp family that was first domesticated in China, is now the most commonly kept aquarium fish. The goldfish’s leap from domesticated fish to family pet and companion may have happened as early as 1368 during the Ming Dynasty. The goldfish’s popularity in the West began as the first public aquarium opened in London in 1853. Keeping goldfish as companions and pets in the United States has been popular since that time.

The criminal statute at issue defined “companion animal” as any dog or cat or “other domesticated animal normally maintained in or near the household of the owner or person who cares for such other domesticated animal.” The defendant argued that goldfish don’t qualify.

Here’s a healthy excerpt of Judge Catterson’s terse, well-reasoned analysis of the issue:

The defendant contends that a fish is not a companion animal because it is not domesticated and because there is no reciprocity or mutuality of feeling between a fish and its owner, such as there is between a dog or a cat and its owner.

[The defendant cites to Am. Jur. 2d, which] defines “domesticated animals” as those that “no longer possess the disposition or inclination to escape,” and claims that “if dropped in a pond and offered the opportunity to swim away, a goldfish will do so without any hesitation and not look back”. He maintains that the statute’s reference to “any other” domesticated animal limits “companion animals” to those that are similar to dogs or cats, that is, those with a degree of sentience sufficiently elevated to enable them to enter into a relationship of mutual affection with a human being. Furthermore, “[b]eloved household pets (fish) may be, but ‘companion animals’ in the same vein as dogs or cats they are not”.

The defendant’s contention that all household pets are equal but some are more equal than others is manifestly not derived from the statute. The Legislature simply did not require a reciprocity of affection in the definition of “companion animal.” To the contrary, the statutory language is consistent with the People’s contention that “domesticated” is commonly understood to mean “to adapt (an animal or plant) to life in intimate association with and to the advantage of humans”. Thus, a goldfish such as the one herein is a domesticated rather than a wild animal within the common meaning of the term. Moreover, the goldfish was, as the statute requires, “normally maintained in or near the household of the owner or person who cares for [them].” Indeed, acknowledging that the goldfish is one of the most common household pets, defense counsel stipulated at trial that there are “millions of fish owners throughout the country”.

The defendant’s argument that goldfish are not domesticated animals because given the opportunity they would leave home is without merit. While this trait arguably distinguishes fish from dogs and, probably to a lesser extent cats, it fails to take into account that many other animals commonly considered pets, such as hermit crabs, gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs and rabbits, would depart for less confining venues and greener pastures if given the opportunity. Loyalty, if that is what it is, is merely another characteristic urged by defendant-but not included by the Legislature-as a defining feature of a companion animal.

Moreover, [the statute] provides that “[n]othing contained in this section shall be construed to prohibit or interfere in any way with anyone lawfully engaged in hunting, trapping, or fishing ….” (emphasis added). This provision would be superfluous if a fish could not be considered a companion animal.

— People v. Garcia, 29 A.D.3d 255, 257, 260–61 (N.Y. App. Div. 2006). Thanks to Dan Green.

The “Emergency Doctrine” According to Shakespeare

by Andrew McClurg

William Shakespeare — Judge Carlin LOVED this guy.

A unanimous Strange Judicial Opinions Hall of Fame opinion is Cordas v. Peerless Transportation Co., penned in 1941 by Judge Carlin (no relation to George) of the New York City Court.

The defendant was a chauffeur and the victim of an armed car-jacking by a fleeing robber who threatened to blow the chauffeur’s brains out. In fright, the chauffeur slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the vehicle, which kept moving and hit the plaintiff pedestrian and her children (fortunately, injuries were slight).

The case stands for the unremarkable principle that under the basic negligence standard of reasonable care “under the circumstances,” people aren’t expected to exercise as much care in emergency situations as in non-emergencies where they have time to weigh and deliberate. It also stands as a literary masterpiece of judicial opinion writing.

Full appreciation of this classic can come only with a full reading, but here’s how it starts:

This case presents the ordinary man–that problem child of the law–in a most bizarre setting. As a lowly chauffeur in defendant’s employ he became in a trice the protagonist in a breath-bating drama with a denouement almost tragic. It appears that a man, whose identity it would be indelicate to divulge, was feloniously relieved of his portable goods by two nondescript highwaymen in an alley near 26th Street and Third Avenue, Manhattan; they induced him to relinquish his possessions by a strong argument ad hominem couched in the convincing cant of the criminal and pressed at the point of a most persuasive pistol.

Carlin apparently was a learned Shakespeare fan. In excusing the chauffeur from liability for jumping out of the moving vehicle, Carlin said:

If the philosophic Horatio and the martial companions of his watch were ‘distilled almost to jelly with the act of fear’ when they beheld ‘in the dead vast and middle of night’ the disembodied spirit of Hamlet’s father stalk majestically by ‘with a countenance more in sorrow than in anger,’ was not the chauffeur, though unacquainted with the example of these eminent men-at-arms more amply justified in his fearsome reactions when he was more palpably confronted by a thing of flesh and blood bearing in its hand an engine of destruction which depended for its lethal purpose upon the quiver of a hair.

Translation: It’s not negligent to react in fright when a carjacker has a gun pointed at your head.

— Cordas v. Peerless Transp. Co., 27 N.Y.S.2d 198, 199, 201 (City Court of N.Y. 1941). Thanks to all the folks who sent in this classic.

Good News: Kentucky Judge Won’t Be Jumping Naked into Bucket

by Andrew McClurg

Kentucky Judge Martin J. Sheehan was happier than a pig in … on second thought, we won’t try to imitate his unusual judicial writing style here. But he was darn happy that a case settled. How happy? Let’s hear it from him:

And such news of an amicable settlement having made this Court happier than a tick on a fat dog because it is otherwise busier than a one legged cat in a sand box and, quite frankly, would have rather jumped naked off of a twelve foot step ladder into a five gallon bucket of porcupines than have presided over a two week trial of the herein dispute, a trial which, no doubt, would have made the jury more confused than a hungry baby in a topless bar and made the parties and their attorneys madder than mosquitoes in a mannequin factor [the jury trial is cancelled].

Glad you’re pleased, Judge!

— Kisel v. Schwartz & Maines & Ruby Co., Case No. 09-CI-00165, Kenton Circuit Ct., Ky, Jul. 19, 2011. Thanks to Mary Mulherin, Andrei Bogos and others.

Missouri Court Writes in a Down-home Southern Style

by Andrew McClurg

barn — Home of the Missouri Court of Appeals?

Ol’ Frank Zotter happened upon this little ol’ case and we reckon we’re mighty glad he did.

In State v. Knowles, the Missouri Court of Appeals, a good ol’ bunch of guys and gals from over in them parts, took up an appeal where the trial judge had tossed out a criminal information for receiving stolen property. Well, shucks, we’ll just let the court tell y’all about it:

Old Dave Baird, the prosecuting attorney up in Nodaway Count, thought he had a case against Les Knowles for receiving stolen property, to-wit, a chain saw, so he up and files on Les.

Now Les was a bit impecunious, so the judge appointed him a lawyer, old Dan Radke, the public defender from down around St. Joe. Now, Dan, he looks at that old information and decides to pick a nit or two, so he tells the judge that the information old Dave filed against Les is no good …. Dan says Dave charged that Les “kept” the stolen chain saw and that’s not against the law. You don’t commit that crime by “keeping” the chain saw, says Dan; the law says you commit the crime of “receiving” if you “retain” the saw, and that’s not what Dave charged Les with, and the judge should throw Dave out of court. And that’s exactly what the judge did.

But old Dave was not having any of that. No, sir! …

Bystanders could plainly see the fire in old Dave’s eyes. He was not backing down. Sure. Dave could simply refile and start over with a new information by changing only one word. Strike “kept”; insert “retained.” But that is not the point. Dave knows he is right.

And so he is.

So we’ll just send the case back to Judge Kennish and tell the boys to get on with the prosecution.

— State v. Knowles, 739 S.W.2d 753, 754 (Mo. Ct. App. 1987). Thanks to Frank Zotter.

Alabama No Longer Sweet Home to Wiretapping Spouses

by Andrew McClurg

ear — Spouses now have to resort to old-fashioned eavesdropping in Alabama.

Think of all the reasons people choose to live in different locales: job opportunities, climate, family ties, economic conditions, the ability to wiretap one’s spouse …

That last one might not have come readily to mind, but a U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals judge thinks it could play into some couples’ relocation decisions. Read on:

An Alabama woman sued her former husband under the federal wiretapping act for taping her phone conversations made from within the marital home. The trial court granted summary judgment to the husband on the basis of a 1974 Fifth Circuit case, Simpson v. Simpson, which held that spouses can secretly tape each other’s conversations because of an implied interspousal wiretapping exception to the federal statute.

The Eleventh Circuit initially affirmed the summary judgment, relying on Simpson, but on rehearing en banc, reversed, overruling Simpson and the implied exception. It also ruled that the decision applied retroactively.

In dissent, Chief Judge Edmonson questioned whether it was fair to make the decision retroactive since some privacy-invading spouses might have relied on the exception in choosing to live within the Eleventh Circuit (which encompasses Alabama, Florida and Georgia). Edmonson wrote:

I am not trying to be facetious; but before today, some spouses might have chosen to live in the Eleventh Circuit because they could wiretap their own telephone without being liable under federal law. Even if we think it unlikely that someone would live in our Circuit to avoid liability under federal law for wiretapping their spouse, it is our job to ensure that someone cannot be punished retroactively for doing so, as the act was clearly lawful.

In his concurring opinion, Judge Carnes addressed the Chief Judge’s concern satirically:

I suppose, then, a conversation between a couple sitting around their breakfast table in, oh say, Colorado (the Tenth Circuit having rejected Simpson years ago) might have gone something like this:

Jim: Honey, I’ve been thinking, we ought to move to Alabama.

Liz: But Sweetheart, I thought you liked living in Colorado.

Jim: I do, Sugar, but there’s a problem.

Liz: What’s troubling you, Sweetie?

Jim: Well, Punkin’, Colorado is in the Tenth Circuit, and its federal appeals court has held that if I wiretap your private conversations without your knowledge and consent, I may have to pay you damages if you find out and sue me in federal court. But if we move to Alabama, which is in the Eleventh Circuit, its Simpson decision will allow me to invade your privacy electronically without having to worry about your having a civil claim against me in federal court.

Liz: But Honeybun, doesn’t Alabama’s criminal eavesdropping statute make it a crime to covertly record conversations without the consent of at least one of the parties to the conversation?

Jim: It does, Snookums, but all I’m worried about is the potential civil cause of action in federal court, not having to serve time in the state slammer.

Liz: You’ll look so good in jailhouse stripes, my Love. When do we move?

— Glazner v. Glazner, 347 F.3d 1212, 1228 n.13, 1223 (11th Cir. 2003) (Edmonson, C.J., dissenting, and Carnes, J., concurring). Thanks to Lisa Lin.

World’s Pithiest Description of Stare Decisis

by Andrew McClurg

David Cheifetz, Lawhaha’s friend from the north, sent in this Canadian court opinion about the judicial pecking order. David wrote:

Here is the pithiest and funniest summary of “stare decisis” ever written. Judge Cardozo’s explanation in “The Nature of the Judicial Process” may be the best justification and explanation, but it doesn’t hold a candle to what you’re about to read for wit and succinctness. The below summary comes from a decision by a Master of the Queens Bench of Alberta, Canada. A Master is a judge in all but name whose role is deciding preliminary motions in civil matters. The Master involved, Master Funduk, is noted for his witty judgments. The Queens Bench is the trial division of Alberta’s highest court. In the Canadian system, the highest court of any province is always the province’s Court of Appeal, even if the highest provincial trial court is called the Superior or the Supreme Court of the province. Here’s how Master Funduk summed up his role (some paragraph breaks inserted):

Any legal system which has a judicial appeals process inherently creates a pecking order for the judiciary regarding where judicial decisions stand on the legal ladder.

I am bound by decisions of Queen’s Bench judges, by decisions of the Alberta Court of Appeal and by decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Very simply, Masters in Chambers of a superior trial court occupy the bottom rung of the superior courts’ judicial ladder. I do not overrule decisions of a judge of this Court.

The judicial pecking order does not permit little peckers to overrule big peckers. It is the other way around.

— South Side Woodwork (1979) Ltd. v. R.C. Contracting Ltd., [1989] A.J. No. 111, 95 A.R. 161 at 166–67 (Alta. Q.B.). Thanks to David Cheifetz.

French Fries Ruled to be “Fresh Vegetables”

by Andrew McClurg

Great news for the diet-conscious. Frozen batter-dipped french fries are a “fresh vegetable” under the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act, according to U.S. District Judge Richard Schell, Beaumont, Texas. And so are cheeseburgers!

Kidding about the cheeseburgers, but it’s true about the french fries. Although the court did not explicitly rule that french fries are fresh vegetables, that’s the legal effect of the opinion.

The ruling applies only to commerce, not nutrition, regulations, which focus on assuring buyers of agricultural commodities that they are getting what they paid for.

— Fleming Companies, Inc. v. U.S. Dep’t of Agriculture, 322 F.Supp.2d 744 (E.D. Tex. 2004). Thanks to Melanie Ware.

Is this a Judicial Opinion or a Cookbook?

by Andrew McClurg

A lawsuit brought by a woman who got a fishbone lodged in her throat while eating a bowl of fish chowder at a Boston restaurant moved the Massachusetts Supreme Court to write an opinion devoted more to the joys of New England fish recipes than actual law.

The legal dispute is an old one: To what extent is food containing a harmful ingredient a defective product when the substance is a natural one as opposed to a foreign one?

Most modern courts apply a reasonableness test that looks at whether the substance was one a consumer would reasonably expect to find in a prepared dish, but the Massachusetts Supreme Court in this 1964 case adopted the older approach that there is no liability for harm-causing natural substances (i.e., bones as opposed to pieces of glass) in food.

Reading the opinion, it wasn’t hard to predict the defendant was going to win in the end. The court reminisced fondly about the history of fish dishes, recounted several recipes for the same, and included statements such as “we consider that the joys of life in New England include the ready availability of fresh fish chowder.”

The court went so far as to note that “[a] namesake of the plaintiff, Daniel Webster, had a recipe for fish chowder which has survived into a number of modern cookbooks and in which the removal of fish bones is not mentioned at all.”

The court concluded:

[W]e consider a dish which for many long years, if well made, has been made generally as outlined above. It is not too much to say that a person sitting down in New England to consume a good New England fish chowder embarks on a gustatory adventure which may entail the removal of some fish bones from his bowl as he proceeds. We are not inclined to tamper with age old recipes by any amendment reflecting the plaintiff’s view of the effect of the Uniform Commercial Code upon them.

This is a must-read opinion for all products liability lawyers and anyone looking for a good fish-chowder recipe.

— Webster v. Blue Ship Tea Room, Inc., 198 N.E.2d 309, 312 (Mass. 1964). Thanks to Daniel Green.

Justice Roberts’ Gritty Detective Drama

by Andrew McClurg

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts let loose his inner-Raymond Chandler.

It’s not often that members of the world’s most powerful judicial tribunal have fun with their opinion-writing, but now, following in the great tradition of hard-boiled crime writers like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Ross MacDonald comes … U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts? Yup.

In Pennsylvania v. Dunlap, a mundane drug case, Justice Roberts, dissenting from a denial of cert review, explored his inner Joe Friday. Here’s how his dissent started out:

North Philly, May 4, 2001. Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working the morning shift. Undercover surveillance. The neighborhood? Tough as a three dollar steak. Devlin knew. Five years on the beat, nine months with the Strike Force. He’d made fifteen, twenty drug busts in the neighborhood.

Devlin spotted him: a lone man on the corner. Another approached. Quick exchange of words. Cash handed over; small objects handed back. Each man then quickly on his own way. Devlin knew the guy wasn’t buying bus tokens. He radioed a description and Officer Stein picked up the buyer. Sure enough: three bags of crack in the guy’s pocket. Head downtown and book him. Just another day at the office.

Roberts proceeded, in a much more traditional fashion, to disagree with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision that the officer lacked probable cause to arrest the defendant.

Because it’s the only case we know of where a U.S. Supreme Court justice, a conservative one at that, had fun in an opinion, this opinion joins the Strange Judicial Opinions Hall of Fame.

— Pennsylvania v. Dunlap, 129 S. Ct. 448, 448 (2008). Thanks to Joel Dipippa.

The Case that Turned on the Meaning of a Three-Letter French Word

by Andrew McClurg

You know a judicial document is going to be a great read when it is captioned:

Order Denying MAAF’s Motion to Preclude the French Phrase ”Quel Jeu Doit-on Jouer Vis-à-vis des Autorités de Californie?” From Being Translated as “What Game Must We Play With the California Authorities?”

This opinion from U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz (C.D. Cal.) stemmed from the judge’s frustration in overseeing a series of over-litigated lawsuits arising from the collapse of a California insurance company. The motion giving rise to the order, after all, was the twentieth motion in limine the judge had addressed in recent days.

Judge Matz seemed irritated that “some of the French litigants caught up in these complicated cases are still coping with the ‘mystifying’ peculiarities of American courts. They appear to assume, for example, that no judge is capable of using common sense (and perhaps some pre-existing familiarity with French) to understand a straightforward French phrase.”

The motion turned on the meaning of the French word “jeu” in a document addressed to one of the French defendants. The document posed a question: “Quel jeu doit-on jouer vis-à-vis des autorités de Californie?” The California Insurance Commissioner’s expert asserted the question translates to: “What game must we play with the California authorities?” The defendant’s expert claimed it means: “What approach must we take with the California authorities?”

Judge Matz accused the defendant’s expert of playing games with the court (paragraph breaks inserted):

If M. Simonet [composer of the document] was not speaking about a “game,” surely Ms. Zarelli [defendant’s expert translator] is playing one. The problems with her declaration are abundant. First, she relies only on a French-to-French dictionary. Wouldn’t the fairest, most reliable way to ascertain the correct English meaning of “jeu,” as M. Simonet used it, be to consult a French to English dictionary?

That’s what the Commissioner’s expert translator does: she points to Harrap’s Shorter Dictionnaire. . . . And what does that more reliable source reveal? Zut alors! Of the many definitions and examples of how “jouer” and “jeu” are translated, almost all are perfectly consistent with how “jeu” was translated in the document that MAAF seeks to keep out: as a “game,” and often with a connotation of “trickery.” Harrap’s even translates “jouer le jeu” as “to play the game.” It translates other examples of the use of “jeu” into such familiar, straightforward English words andphrases as “all this fooling around;” “what’s your game?;” “to play into one’shands . . ..”

Moreover, as the Commissioner’s language expert points out, the definition that Ms. Zarelli happened to choose — “manière d! agir” — includes, if one bothers to take the complete entry into account, which Ms. Zarelli did not do — “manège” and “stratagème.” The connotations of those terms are hardly helpful to MAAF; they mean “ploy” or “trick.” In short, both the literal meaning and the context in which M. Simonet asked his not-so-rhetorical question “Quel jeu doit- on jouer vis-à-vis des autorités de Californie?” is entirely consistent with “What game must we play with the California authorities?”

Judge Matz must have been enjoying himself by this point because he added a closing footnote comparing the bravery and last name of the plaintiff’s lawyer—one “Ney”—to “Ney, the Duc d’Elchingen and Prince de la Moskova,” an army commander who Napoleon once called “the bravest of the brave.”

What did the lawyer do that was so brave? He had the nerve (“considerable fortitude,” as Matz put it) to file what the judge considered to be a ridiculous motion.

— Garamendi v. Altus Fin. S.A., Case No. CV-99-2829 (CWx) (C.D. Cal, Feb. 10, 2005). Thanks to Michael Barclay