Weird Facts Archives - Page 2 of 3

Court Relies on Eighth-Grade Math Book to Decide Case

eighth grade math book resolves complex case — Eighth-grade math book held to be controlling authority by a federal appellate court.

You gotta love an opinion that begins:

In this appeal we are asked to determine whether “.82″ is the equivalent of “82%.” Having successfully completed grammar school, we are able to answer the question in the affirmative.

An unsuccessful bidder for an offshore oil and gas lease brought suit against the Secretary of the Interior for awarding the contract to a competitor. The plaintiff offered a royalty of “73.45689%” in its bid. A competitor offered a royalty bid of “.82165.” The Secretary construed the competitor’s bid as one for 82.165 percent, and awarded the contract to it based on it being the higher bid.

The plaintiff asserted the Secretary acted arbitrarily and capriciously in construing .82165 to be 82.165 percent. The trial court agreed and entered judgment for the plaintiff.

The U.S. Court of Appearls for the Fifth Circuit reversed, relying on as its primary source of authority an eighth-grade math book called “Growth in Arithmetic,” which the Court said asked and answered the pertinent question: “Do you know how to change a per cent to a decimal?”

— Oil & Gas Futures, Inc. of Tex. v. Andrus, 610 F.2d 287, 287–88 (5th Cir. 1980). Thanks to Frank Zotter.

Creative Statutory Interpretation Put to Test

Ohio Court of Appeals Judge Mark Painter combined humor and common sense in Gibson v. Donahue, where the plaintiff was injured being thrown from her horse, which was spooked by two Irish Setters that the defendant allowed to run free in an area restricted to equestrian use.

Talk about creative lawyering. The defendant tried to escape liability by relying on an Ohio statute intended to provide tort immunity for riding stable owners and horse show operators for injuries resulting from the inherent risks of equine activity (a statute Painter said “is noteworthy mainly for using the word ‘farrier’ ten times”).

Judge Painter observed that the case was one of first impression, “probably because no one before has been audacious enough” to try to extend the statute to a situation like this one.

Defendant did have a slim statutory leg to stand on. The statute extends immunity to “an equine activity sponsor, equine activity participant, equine professional, veterinarian, farrier, or other person.” However, Judge Painter said that for defendant’s construction to prevail, the statute would have to be read as applying to “any other person in the whole world.” Construed as defendant argued, “[a] person who negligently crashes an airplane into the crowd at an equine event would thus be immune to liability.”

By the way, a farrier is a blacksmith. Remember that if you’re a law student in Ohio. It might be on the bar exam.

— Gibson v. Donahue, 772 N.E. 2d 646, 648, 650 (Ohio Ct. App. 2002).

Snake Nailed to Door Ruins Evening for Defendant

Ohio Court of Appeals Judge Mark Painter writes some amusing opinions. He had a bit more leeway to let loose back when he was a municipal judge presented with some highly unusual fact patterns.

In State v. Kirchner, the defendant was charged with aggravated menacing and resisting arrest. It all started just because he wanted to hang out one night at home with some friends–with a five-foot dead snake nailed to his door. Read on and enjoy:

The evidence adduced presented, at the very least, a bizarre situation. Cincinnati Police Officers Randy Froehlich and Steve Means received a radio dispatch to an address … in the “Over-the-Rhine” section of Cincinnati. The reason for the dispatch was “man nailing snake to door.”

Upon the officers’ arrival … they did in fact discover a five-foot-long black snake which had been nailed through its head to the door of defendant’s apartment. Though the record is silent on the point, assumedly the snake was deceased.

Quite naturally, the officers knocked on defendant’s door, which defendant answered, and sought to question defendant concerning the snake. The officers asked if they could come in and talk with the defendant, to which he replied, “no.” The entire situation deteriorated from that point forward, resulting in the events in this court.

Quite obviously, the defendant had a right, under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, to refuse to allow the officers to enter absent a warrant or perhaps exigent circumstances, which did not exist in this case. Of course, a prudent man would have talked with the officers to resolve the situation, but the Constitution applies to both prudent and imprudent men.

Defendant testified that the snake was not his, he had not nailed it to the door, and since it was not his snake, he did not believe it to be his responsibility to remove it. Defendant believed that the caretaker of the apartment building would eventually remove the snake, which had been hanging for approximately eight hours. Defendant did not wish to converse with any police officer, because he and his friends were engaged in a social visit, involving the use of Wild Irish Rose wine.

[A struggle ensued when the defendant stepped back and put his hands on his hips. A folding knife in a sheath was on his belt. The officers interpreted his movement as “going for” the knife. They drew their weapons, disarmed and arrested the defendant.]

The question remains as to what, if any, laws the defendant had violated. It might be noted that no charges were filed against anyone in connection with the mistreatment of the snake. Under Cincinnati Municipal Code Section 701-11, “[n]o person shall … cruelly beat, mutilate … any animal …..” An “animal” is defined … as follows: “‘[a]nimal’ shall, for the purposes of Sections 720-11 and 720-13, mean and include every living dumb creature.” The above definition would obviously include a snake, though the inartful wording might imply that it would be perfectly legitimate to torture a talking parrot. Be that as it may, since the defendant denied nailing the snake to the door, the officers were evidently not able to determine the identity of the nailor, the nailee obviously being unable to testify.

We do not find that defendant’s actions … constitute the crime of aggravated menacing. Perhaps the entire matter could be classified under “aggravated foolishness,” though there is no section in the Revised Code proscribing such conduct. If there were, our jails would be a great deal more crowded than they are presently.

Judge Painter found sufficient evidence to support a conviction of the defendant for resisting arrest.

— State v. Kirchner, 483 N.E.2d 497, 498–99 (Ohio Mun. 1984).

Eleventh Circuit Details Code of Conduct for Pimps

Nothing funny about U.S. v. Pipkins, a case involving RICO convictions for several “pimps,” including convictions for using underage woman as prostitutes. But it certainly qualifies as “strange,” given the Eleventh Circuit’s elaborate explanation of the complex hierarchy and jargon of pimping and prostitution, which in this case even included instructional videos for both pimps and prostitutes. Here are some excerpts:

[E]ach pimp kept a stable of prostitutes with a well-defined pecking order. At the top of each pimp’s organization was his “bottom girl,” a trusted and experienced prostitute or female associate. Next in the pimp’s chain of command was a “wife-in-law,” a prostitute with supervisory duties similar to those of the bottom girl. A pimp’s bottom girl or wife-in-law often worked the track in his stead, running interference for and collecting money from the pimp’s other prostitutes. The bottom girl also looked after the pimp’s affairs if the pimp was out of town, incarcerated, or otherwise unavailable.

The pimps also recognized a hierarchy among their own. “Popcorn pimps,” “wanna-bes,” and “hustlers” were the least respected, newer pimps. A “guerilla pimp” (as other pimps and prostitutes considered Moore) primarily used violence and intimidation to control his prostitutes. Others were regarded as “finesse pimps,” who excelled in the psychological trickery needed to deceive juvenile females and to retain their services. Finally, “players” (apparently, in this case, Pipkins) were successful, established pimps who were well-respected within the pimp brotherhood. …

The pimping subculture in Atlanta operated under a set of rules, presented in the video called Really Really Pimpin’ in Da South. This videotape was made in Atlanta by Pipkins and Carlos Glover, a business associate. Really Really Pimpin’ in Da South featured prominent Atlanta pimps, including Pipkins, explaining the rules of the game. This video, along with its companion piece, Pimps Up Hoes Down, outlined the pimp code of conduct, and was repeatedly shown to new pimps and prostitutes alike to concisely explain what was expected of a prostitute. The origin of Pimps Up Hoes Down is unknown. In essence, these videos taught that prostitutes were required to perform sexual acts, known as “tricks” or “dates,” for money. … Despite the pimps best efforts to subjugate their prostitutes, the rules allowed a prostitute to move from one pimp to another by “choosing.” This was accomplished by the prostitute making her intentions known to the new pimp, and then presenting the new pimp with money, a practice known as “breaking bread.” The new pimp would then “serve” the former pimp by notifying him that the prostitute had entered his fold. The former pimp was bound to honor the prostitute’s decision to choose her new pimp. A prostitute who frequently moved from pimp to pimp was known as a “Choosey Susie.” And, a prostitute might “bounce” from pimp to pimp by moving among different pimps without paying for the privilege of choosing.”

The court also detailed extensive physical abuse against prostitutes as part of the “rules govern[ing] a prostitute’s conduct,” mentioned that one defendant used his prostitutes to “entertain[ ] members of a municipal police force at his home,” and noted that the pimps “operated as a price-fixing cartel” to regulate prices for prostitution services.

If you ever thought prostitution was a “victimless crime,” go read this opinion.

— United States v. Pipkins, 378 F.3d 1281, 1285–86 (11th Cir. 2004). Thanks to Paul Scott.

Sex and the Reasonable Person

lawsuit over fractured penis — Family friendly depiction of the injury.

Doe v. Moe, a May 2005 Massachusetts appellate case, gives a whole new meaning to the idea of safe sex. A guy sued his long-time girlfriend (ex-girlfriend?) for negligence when an ill-advised change in position during consensual intercourse resulted in him suffering a fractured penis. (The opinion gives details about how the accident occurred.)

In a case of first impression, the court struggled to arrive at an appropriate and workable standard of care to apply to private consensual sexual conduct. The court noted:

There are no comprehensive legal rules to regulate consensual sexual behavior, and there are not commonly accepted customs or values that determine parameters for the intensely private and widely diverse forms of such behavior.

Accordingly, the court concluded that the general negligence standard of reasonable care under the circumstances was inappropriate for consensual sex-physical injury cases.

Instead, the court said the plaintiff needed to show conduct rising to the level of “wanton or reckless.” The court opined that while the trial record might support a finding that the defendant’s conduct exposed plaintiff to a risk of harm, it did not support a finding of wanton or reckless conduct.

The case does raise an interesting legal issue. With so many different preferences and positions and idiosyncratic fantasies and fetishes, is there such a thing as a standard of “ordinary and reasonable care” for sex?

— Doe v. Moe, 827 N.E.2d 240, 245 (Mass. Ct. App. 2005). Thanks to David Keller and Professor Howard Wasserman.

Alaska Judge a Parrot Head

Changing venue because of a volcano? Sure, it sounds far-fetched, but don’t blow your stack.

It really happened in U.S. v. McDonald, a 1990 federal bribery prosecution in Alaska. Fearful that an unpredictable volcano named Mt. Redoubt would act up and disrupt the trial, Judge James M. Burns granted a motion to change venue for the trial from Fairbanks, Alaska to Tacoma, Washington.

Judge Burns noted he could find “no precedent for changing venue because of an earthquake, hurricane, tornado, flood, volcanic eruption, or other natural disaster,” but said Mt. Redoubt was “entitled to a modicum of judicial respect.”

Judge Burns might be a Jimmy Buffett fan. Usually, when you think of Buffett, you think frozen margaritas, not frozen tundra, but footnote 17 quotes the entire lyrics of the Jimmy Buffett song “Volcano,” observing that Buffett’s lyrics express feelings apropos to the circumstances of the case.

Buffett sang, “I don’t know, I don’t know where I’m a-gonna go when the volcano blow.”

Here they knew. The judge sent everyone to Tacoma.

— United States v. McDonald, 740 F. Supp. 757, 764 nn.17 & 18 (D. Alaska 1990) (Burns, J.). Thanks to Tom Gaylord.

Defamatory in England to Call Someone Ugly

Steven Berkoff — Won a defamation judgment for being called ugly.

A 1996 English libel case reminds me of the old Rodney Dangerfield joke: “My psychiatrist told me I’m going crazy. I told him, ‘Doc, if you don’t mind I’d like a second opinion.’ He said, ‘Alright, you’re ugly too.’”

In Berkoff v. Burchill, an English court of appeals held that describing a person as ugly can constitute actionable defamation. No wonder people are flocking to England to take advantage of the country’s plaintiff-friendly libel laws. It’s highly doubtful calling someone ugly would be actionable defamation under U.S. law.

(By the way, this practice, known as “libel tourism,” resulted in enactment of a 2010 U.S. law that prohibits U.S. courts from enforcing foreign defamation judgments if they were rendered under legal protections less protective of speech than U.S. standards. Berkoff’s suit, against an English newspaper, was not a case of libel tourism.)

The English case arose from a Sunday Times article in which defendant Burchill reviewed the movie The Age of Innocence. Burchill described the film director, Steven Berkoff, as “hideous-looking.”

Nine months later, Burchill once again called Berkoff’s pulchritude into question, this time in a review of the movie Frankenstein. Describing “the Creature,” Burchill said: “It’s a very new look for the Creature—no bolts in the neck or flat-tap hairdo—and I think it works; it’s a lot like Stephen Berkoff, only marginally better-looking.”

Berkoff sued for defamation. The issue was whether calling someone hideous-looking is a defamatory statement capable of injuring a person’s reputation. The appellate court answered affirmatively.

The court said a jury could “conclude that in the context the remarks about Mr. Berkoff gave the impression that he was not merely physically unattractive but actually repulsive” and that this could injure Berkoff’s ability to make a living by “lowering his standing in the estimation of the public … [by] making him an object of ridicule.”

Is truth a defense? He looks okay in this picture (photo by Getty, borrowed from The Telegraph).

— Berkoff v. Burchill, [1996] 4 All E.R. 1008 (Ct. App. 1996). Thanks to Heiner O. Mommsen.

Last Tango in Asparagus (Musmanno)

In a classic slip and fall case, plaintiff Joseph Rosenberg slipped on asparagus while dancing at a wedding reception with his sister-in-law and fellow plaintiff, Ruth Schwartz.

The issue was whether the defendant caterer had negligently spilled the asparagus on the dance floor. The trial judge had dismissed the lawsuit on theory that the offending asparagus could have been unwittingly transported onto the dance floor after becoming entrapped in the apparel of the dancers.

As with many of the judicial opinions posted on Lawhaha.com, brief excerpts don’t do this case justice. My favorite part is how the legendary Justice Michael Angelo Musmanno of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court bluntly and rather contemptuously rejected the trial judge’s theory of how the asparagus (which according to testimony formed a puddle three feet in diameter) got on the dance floor (some paragraph breaks inserted):

The trial judge, an ex-veteran congressman and thus a habitue of formal parties and accordingly an expert in proper wearing apparel at such functions, all of which he announced from the bench, allowed testimony as to the raiment worn by the banquetters.

All the men were attired in tuxedos, the pants of which were not mounted with cuffs which could transport asparagus and sauce to the dance floor, unwittingly to lubricate its polished surface. Ruling out the cuffs of the tuxedo pants as transporters of the asparagus, the judge suggested the asparagus, with its accompanying sauce, could have been conveyed to the dance floor by ‘women’s apparel, on men’s coats or sleeves, or by a guest as he table hopped.’

The Judge’s conclusions are as far-fetched as going to Holland for hollandaise sauce. There was no evidence in the case that anybody table hopped; it is absurd to assume that a man’s coat or sleeve could scoop up enough asparagus and sauce to inundate a dance floor to the extent of a three-foot circumference; and it is bizarre to conjecture that a woman’s dress without pockets and without excessive material could latch on to such a quantity of asparagus, carry it 20 feet (the distance from the tables to the dance floor) and still have enough dangling to her habiliments to cover the floor to such a depth as to fell a 185 pound gentleman with 35 years’ dancing experience who had never before been tackled or grounded while shuffling the light fantastic.

…

It can be stated as an incontrovertible legal proposition that anyone attending a dinner dance has the inalienable right to expect that, if asparagus is to be served, it will be served on the dinner table and not on the dance floor.

…

Judgment reversed with a procedendo.

Chief Justice Bell dissented:

One cannot help wondering if plaintiffs had, in the alleged 35 years of dancing, ever been to any dance, let alone a wedding banquet dance. … A dancer cannot, with legal sanction, look only into the captivating eyes of his lovely partner.

I certainly dissent.

— Schwartz v. Warwick-Philadelphia Corp., 226 A.2d 484, 485–87, 488 (Pa. 1967). Thanks to Janet Heydt.

Paranoia Will Destroy Ya

The Kinks got it right in their song, “Destroyer,” when they sang that paranoia will destroy ya.

It certainly did so for the defendant in a case where, after getting paranoid at a 1999 Phish concert in Oswega, NY, presumably while under the influence of an hallucinogenic drug, he became convinced the police were following him and that the band was sending him messages through the music. Fleeing the concert, he traveled 250 miles on foot and by hitch-hiking, convinced the police were after him the whole way. (He believed that every car with an “A” in the license number contained police officers.)

Some thirty-six hours later, he finally turned up at the police barracks in Westport, NY, where he told an investigator, “You know who I am.” When the cops didn’t know who he was or why he was there, he told them he was growing marijuana plants back at his home in Rochester, NH. He then consented to a search of the house.

When the cops in Rochester searched the house, they found marijuana plants and liquid acid. Though a New Hampshire Superior Court ultimately ruled that the evidence should be suppressed (because of insufficient proof the defendant received and waived his Miranda rights), the University of Memphis law student who sent me this opinion correctly opined that it should serve as “a gentle reminder to any students planning to reunite with Phish over the summer break.”

— State v. Augur, Case Nos. 01-S-388, 01-S-389, 2001 N.H. Super. LEXIS 17 (N.H. Super. Ct., Oct. 22, 2001). Thanks to Adam Ragan.

Saved by a Gator with a 455 Cubic-Inch Engine

drunk driving airboat — All the horsepower without the sharp teeth or drunk-driving convictions.

Things weren’t looking good for the defendant in State v. Stagno after getting pulled over by a state trooper. With a blood alcohol level of .197 and two DUI convictions in the past ten years, he almost certainly would’ve lost his driver’s license if he’d been driving his friends to the topless bar in his car.

But thanks to a drunken bet made earlier in the evening, the defendant’s mode of transportation on this wild night out was not a car at all—it was a “fifteen-foot 1985 Air Gator airboat, powered by a 455 cubic inch Buick engine.”

Because the applicable statute allowed judges to revoke driver’s licenses only when the vehicle driven required a license, the trial court had to settle for imposing a $1,000 fine, thirty days in jail, and alcohol rehabilitation counseling.

The Alaska Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s ruling, agreeing that a fifteen-foot airboat is not a motor vehicle requiring a driver’s license.

— State v. Stagno, 739 P.2d 198 (Alaska Ct. App. 1987)