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Post by Tara on Jun 30, 2005 15:38:44 GMT -5
You know what's funny? Today I was watching Divorce Court and the husband wanted a divorce because, "She keeps cutting the fat off of my steak."  Are these people for real? What is the most memorable or funny court case you've seen on TV. |
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Post by dianaholberg on Jun 30, 2005 20:57:14 GMT -5
Today's Judge Judy was a couple suing a woman they kicked out of their apartment for some of their stuff (a TV and surround sound system) they claimed she took when she left.
Turns out they probably stole the stuff from Sears in the first place. So they lost. AND they had to fork over the woman's security deposit.
It doesn't pay to go to court if you don't have clean hands ;D
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Post by Tara on Jun 30, 2005 22:18:04 GMT -5
True. lol
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Post by littlepea on Jul 1, 2005 9:25:27 GMT -5
i could tell you about a load of cases i've read during the last 2 years (law school, remember? of course you do, cos i never shut up about it  ) but i haven't seen them on tv. the thing i don't get about the american legal system is the whole punative damages thing - you don't get that in scotland for civil offences. criminal offenders often have to pay fines but that money goes to the government, if someone commits a civil wrong you can only recover any loss that they have caused you to incur. you can't recover that money plus another £200 because they wasted your time and pissed you off like it seems to be on judge judy ... any interesting case i've heard about will involve a lot of explanation (we're only told about the cases that actually have some kind of importance, you see, we'd never hear of the judge judy type cases). i tried typing one out but i ended up reciting a load of legal technicalities that you need to know to understand the absurdity of the decision rather than just telling the story so i'm not going to bother  i'll tell you of one technicality but i won't bore you with the reasoning: if someone steals a car and then sells it to you, the original owner can come along and take it off you (you have to try and get your money back off the thief which probably won't be easy). but if someone steals a cheque-book and then uses a forged cheque to buy a car and then sells it on to you, the original owner can't take it off you ... does that make sense to non-lawyers, i wonder? that was illustrated in the scottish case of Macleod v Kerr 1965 there was a very silly decision in a case i read not so long ago about marine insurance. basically a ship sunk in open water in perfect weather conditions. the mariners tried to claim insurance saying that the only possible explanation was that it had collided with a russian submarine which might have been in the area. the insurers didn't want to pay out as they thought the only reasonable explanation was that the ship was unseaworthy (which would mean they didn't have to pay out). so they went to court where the judge decided that since the ship was not unseaworthy it must have been hit by a submarine ... does that sound a bit silly to anyone else? that's the sort of thing that lawyers find funny, by the way  |
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Post by dianaholberg on Jul 1, 2005 12:25:26 GMT -5
does that make sense to non-lawyers, i wonder? Not really... but I'll betcha the word "entitled" is in the explanation... Very. Especially the Russian part. How'd they know the fictional submarine was Russian? Law geeks |
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Post by littlepea on Jul 1, 2005 17:31:21 GMT -5
well, "title" is in the explanation, but not "entitled" ... basically if you steal something then your title to it is void and even if you sell it on it still belongs to the original owner. but if you use fraud to take someone's property off them (which is what the stolen cheque-book was all about) then your title to the property is "voidable". it's complicated but basically you can sell it on to a 3rd party who then receives an absolutely good title so the original owner can't just take it off him. it's best explained using a diagram but i'm sure no-one's really that interested ... i could e-mail you my property law notes if you are, though |
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Post by dianaholberg on Jul 2, 2005 12:43:37 GMT -5
Haha... I'll pass, but thanks |
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Post by ophelia97 on Jul 2, 2005 22:43:15 GMT -5
I haven't seen any weird ones on tv, but I read about a woman who divorced her husband after finding out he stole his clothes from corpses.
And there was a man who wanted a divorce because his wife made fun of his weight and taught their parrot to call him "fat slob"
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Post by Tara on Jul 3, 2005 14:21:27 GMT -5
I haven't seen any weird ones on tv, but I read about a woman who divorced her husband after finding out he stole his clothes from corpses. That's disgusting! I wonder if she was one of those people who never really wanted to face the realities of her husband's beliefs and only wanted to think of the good and not take the bad. He probably didn't believe in an afterlife and/or see the point of respecting the dead. He probably didn't think corpses should "own" clothes. He probably has the same mindset as grave-robbers.  That's so mean! Maybe it's b/c he wouldn't believe how she would use a third party to belittle him like that. It's like she really wanted to hurt his feelings, but I wonder if it was for the better.  |
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Post by littlepea on Jul 18, 2005 12:24:24 GMT -5
here's something interesting and quite recent. i read in the newspaper about the Deep Impact space mission. basically they sent a rocket out into space with a camera on board to take pictures as it collided with a big comet. the mission was a success and they saw big craters on the comet and stuff, but then some russian astrologist decided to sue NASA for £150m because the collision would alter the path of the comet (even if it's only a minute difference) and would affect her horoscope and ruin her other astrological research which she'd been working on for years ... sounds a bit silly to me ... |
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Post by Tara on Jul 18, 2005 15:36:57 GMT -5
lol, that's dumb. Anyone who was truly knowledgeable about the stars and horoscopes would know that no reading is permanent.
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Post by littlepea on Jul 18, 2005 18:50:27 GMT -5
other than the fact that it's a load of nonsense anyway ...
just kidding ;D
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Post by Tara on Jul 19, 2005 8:28:02 GMT -5
 lol It would have been okay if you used the words, "I believe". |
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Post by littlepea on Jul 20, 2005 8:42:02 GMT -5
hehe, i know |
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) but i haven't seen them on tv.
