The U.S. government came out with a new law recently. Previously, the feds might have described it like this: “Pursuant to regulations promulgated hereunder and commencing in accordance with the statute signed herein by President Barack Obama, the federal government shall be precluded from writing the pompous gobbledygook heretofore evidenced, to the extent practicable.”

Confusing enough? Now, under the Plain Writing Act, the U.S. government has to adopt a new approach in writing documents produced for the public—speaking in plain English.

Last fall, President Barack Obama signed the Act. By July, each federal agency must have a senior official charged with overseeing plain writing and must describe on its website the efforts it is making toward writing in clear, easy-to-understand English.

The law will be in full effect this October, when all new or substantially revised documents produced by the government for the public must be written in plain English (don’t worry, bureaucrats proficient in government double-speak: you will still be allowed to speak in your nonsensical tongue when writing internally).

Cass Sunstein, a member of the Obama administration and prominent legal scholar, says “It is important to emphasize that agencies should communicate with the public in a way that is clear, simple, meaningful and jargon-free.”

The benefits of improving government writing are obvious, according to Sunstein.

Poorly written directives, he says, discourage people from applying for benefits they’re entitled to, make the rules hard to follow, and ultimately waste money and resources because of time spent explaining things to confused citizens and fixing avoidable mistakes.

Annetta Cheek, the chairwoman of the Center for Plain Language and a writer of federal regulations during the Clinton administration, helped author the new government guidelines for plain writing.

As she points out, federal employees have a tendency to write with their bosses and government lawyers in mind rather than the public.

“Most of what the government writes has too much stuff,” she says.

The average person just wants to know ‘what are you doing for me or to me?’”

Government writing will never be confused with great literature; as Cheek’s guidelines for federal writers acknowledge, “People do not curl up in front of a fire with a nice federal regulation to have a relaxing read.” However, Cheek says, the government can certainly do a better job communicating requirements, how to obtain benefits, health and safety tips, and other helpful information.

What will these changes mean for you? For starters, you won’t see statements like this:

“Timely preparation, including structural and non-structural mitigation measures to avoid the impacts of severe weather, can avert heavy personal, business and government expenditures. Experts agree that the following measures can be effective in dealing with the challenges of severe winter weather.”

Instead, you’ll probably see something like this: “Severe winter weather can be extremely dangerous. Consider these safety tips to protect your property and yourself.”

Nor will you find the Pentagon brownie recipe that droned on for 26 pages about “regulations promulgated hereunder,” “flow rates of thermoplastics by extrusion plastomer,” and ingredients that “shall be examined organoleptically” (which means “look at, smell, touch or taste”—I had to look that one up myself).

Readers won’t see such no-nos as “promulgated,” “thereunder,” “commencing,” “heretofore,” “evidenced,” “in accordance with,” and “practicable.” And instead of “It is requested,” a simple “please” will do now.

Governments in countries like Great Britain, South Africa, Portugal and Sweden got on the clear writing bandwagon long ago. But can we really legislate clarity and good grammar here in America?

After all, the Plain Writing Act exempts government regulations themselves, and it doesn’t have any enforcement language—if you don’t understand what you’re reading after October, you’re not going to be able to sue the government.

Still, there’s a lot to be said for ridding government documents of words, phrases, and usage that lawyers and bureaucrats love and which ordinary people find utterly incomprehensible.

In previous “Legally Speaking” columns, I’ve written about some rather creative defenses that defendants and their lawyers have concocted—with varying degrees of success.

From the accused tax evader who pleaded “fear of filing” syndrome to the IRS, to the murder defendant who blamed it all on “caffeine intoxication,” I thought I’d heard it all; that is, until now.

It seems that the defenses or excuses people will come up with in an attempt to avoid guilt are limited only by their imagination. Here are a few new ones.

The “God Told Me To” Defense

Earlier this year, Levon Sarkisyan was arrested for breaking and entering a Farmington, Conn., home. He allegedly caused more than $10,000 in property damage, and even showered and dressed in clothes belonging to one of the residents.

Facing charges of burglary and criminal mischief, Sarkisyan claims that a “light from above” appeared, and God told him to commit the burglary. Hopefully, God told him to get a good lawyer, too.

“The Boogeyman Did It” Defense

On June 12, police in Naples, Fla., arrived at the scene of a motorcycle accident in the middle of the afternoon. There they found a “highly aggressive and combative” James Scarborough trapped underneath his motorcycle on the side of the road.

Noting his bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, and “strong odor of alcohol,” police charged him with driving under the influence. Scarborough’s explanation for the crash?

According to police officers, Scarborough claimed “the Boogeyman did it.” Scarborough has been charged with DUI, driving without a license, obstructing police, and refusing a sobriety test. Perhaps he will call the Boogeyman as an expert witness?

The “I Am Not of This Spiritual Plane and Your Laws Do Not Apply To Me” Defense

In Victoria, Australia, policeman Andrew Logan pulled over Eilish De’ Avalon for talking on her cellphone while driving one fine February day in 2010. Little did he know that, seconds later, he’d be hanging on for dear life.

When he asked to see her driver’s license, Ms. De’ Avalon—a self-styled “pagan priestess”—said she didn’t need one, since she was from another world and earthly laws did not apply to her.

She abruptly sped off, as Logan clung to the car. The policeman was dragged for about 200 yards before he managed to grab her car keys as she slowed down to turn a corner.

De’ Avalon was taken to an earthly jail before being brought before an earthly judge, one Judge Geoff Chettle. The proclaimed witch not only had injured a police officer (Logan suffered arm and shoulder injuries), but she also had several prior convictions for dangerous driving.

Judge Chettle sentenced her to two months in jail, revoked her driver’s license for a year, and imposed a stiff fine. As she was being led away, De’ Avalon told the judge “I decline your offer.”

Judge Chettle explained that it was “non-negotiable.” Next time, Ms. De’ Avalon, stick with a broomstick; you’ll probably get better mileage anyway.

The “I Can’t Leave My House for Trial” Defense

Sixty-two-year-old Colin Watson of Middlesborough, England, is an agoraphobic (a person with a crippling fear of public places). He hasn’t left his house in at least six years, and because of his condition (along with a heart ailment and circulatory problems), Watson receives regular benefits under England’s welfare system. In fact, he’s received the equivalent of nearly $200,000 in just six years, according to published reports.

With few outside expenses, prosecutors say, Watson found a use for his spare cash—he allegedly ran an illegal loan sharking operation out of his house. But when authorities brought criminal charges against him, they ran into a problem: how do you bring a man to trial when psychiatrists say he can’t leave the house?

While the judge was skeptical, he called for a professional report into Watson’s inability to leave the house and stand trial, and the court even explored the possible use of a video link at the defendant’s house in order to conduct a trial.

Ultimately, it was decided that a trial could not occur because of Watson’s agoraphobia, and the court had no choice but to find Watson formally not guilty on all charges. Agoraphobics 1, justice system 0.

The “I was Sleepwalking” Defense

The recent trial of a man in Calgary, Canada, for the brutal assault and beating of an escort featured an interesting defense: parasomnia, a mental disorder in which a person commits involuntary acts while sleeping.

Sleepwalking is a subcategory of this disorder, according to mental health professionals, as is “restless leg syndrome” and “night terrors.”

The defendant allegedly hit the victim with a baseball bat, choked her until she passed out, and attempted to sexually assault her; when she escaped, he pursued her. According to his defense lawyers, all of this was done while the defendant was asleep.

He claimed to have no memory of the attack, and the judge found the expert testimony backing this up quite credible.

While the defendant wasn’t acquitted outright (he’ll have to undergo psychiatric assessment and treatment), the judge ruled that he wasn’t capable of forming the necessary intent to commit a crime.

In fact, this is not the first use of a “sleepwalking defense” in the courts. It’s been employed at least seven times since 1846, and has led to acquittals in three of those cases.

A theory like that gives new meaning to the term “the defense rests.”

Lawyers file motion all the time, seeking to bring what they consider to be important, vital information to the attention of the judge.

If your opponent is stonewalling you on the discovery of much-needed documents, file a motion to compel. If, on the other hand, your opponent is harassing your client with irrelevant and invasive requests of his own, file a motion for protective order.

You don’t believe there is a shred of fact or law supporting the case against your client? Then file a motion for summary judgment, asking the judge to dismiss the case.

Sometimes, however, the motions filed by lawyers are somewhat more nitpicky, trivial, or even downright frivolous. I once had an opposing counsel file a motion because I was sending him correspondence and pleadings via regular mail and not certified mail.

He didn’t deny that he was getting the mail—he just didn’t like the fact that he wasn’t signing a green card proving he had received it.

That lawyer might have picked up his problems with priorities from the attorney for 62-year-old Michael Crawford of Cumberland County, Penn. Crawford was facing charges of theft by deception and witness intimidation earlier this year.

During a break in his trial, he saw a police officer share his can of Altoids with a juror, who proceeded to share them with other jurors before returning the tin. Crawford’s attorney made a motion for mistrial, arguing that by sharing breath mints with the jury, the state had somehow biased jury members in its favor.

After spending 15 minutes debating the finer points of breath mint etiquette, Judge J. Wesley Osler denied the motion for mistrial. And I’m sure he did it with minty-fresh breath.

Meanwhile, in Missouri, Springfield lawyer Richard Crites took exception with his opposing counsel’s grammatical skills—or lack thereof. Crites is defending a probation officer sued civilly for allegedly harassing and humiliating a former teacher convicted of statutory rape in 2009.

Crites’ client is one of two defendants but, because of opposing counsel Anissa Bluebaum’s use of apostrophes and “long-winded” allegations, Crites can’t tell which allegations are directed toward his client. Crites filed a motion seeking clarification, calling Bluebaum’s petition “the worst example of pleading that the defendant’s attorney has ever witnessed or read.”

He went on to say “Defendant does not know whether plaintiff is just not familiar with the use of possessives or whether plaintiff was referring to merely one of the two defendants. Is this merely the poor usage of the English language by plaintiff’s attorney? We have no earthly idea which is the case.”

There’s no word from Ms. Bluebaum in response—she might be out buying a book on grammar and style.

Of course, there are many things during trial that can get under an attorney’s skin, one of which is skin itself—or revealing too much of it. Chicago lawyer Thomas Gooch was defending a small claims lawsuit against a car dealership, and he took exception with what he claimed was an unfair tactic on the part of his opposing counsel, Dmitry Feofanov.

Gooch filed a motion in limine objecting to the presence of Feofanov’s “large breasted” companion sitting next to him at counsel’s table in court. Gooch claimed that “there is no evidence whatsoever that this woman has any legal training whatsoever,” and that her “sole purpose” is “to draw the attention of the jury away from the relevant proceedings before this court.”

He asked that Cook County Circuit Judge Anita Rivkin-Carothers order the buxom woman to sit in the gallery with other spectators. Gooch said that his motion was purely because of his objection to “somebody I don’t think is a qualified paralegal sitting at the counsel table . . . dressed in such a fashion as to call attention to herself,” noting that “Personally, I like large breasts.”

Unfortunately for Gooch, the dispute took a twist when plaintiff’s counsel Feofanov responded that his well-endowed (and considerably younger) paralegal Daniella Atencia was also his wife.

With the judge admonishing both sides for exchanging pretrial motions that were nothing more than “personal attacks sprinkled with anecdotal commentaries,” Gooch announced plans to withdraw his motion. And with that, for the moment, this tempest in a D-cup is over.

Insensitivity to women may be a trend here. In a 2010 Florida case, one of the attorneys took exception with another lawyer’s wife and her apparent failure to arrange giving birth around her husband’s deposition schedule. Attorney Joe Klock filed a Plaintiff’s Emergency Motion for Protective Order over some depositions that were supposed to be taken on July 13, 2010, including the deposition of one witness who was supposed to be deposed by attorney Juan Carlos Antorcha.

Unfortunately, the motion noted, prior to the deposition “Mr. Antorcha’s wife went into labor and subsequently delivered her baby.” Klock’s motion noted that he “had specifically asked Mrs. Antorcha . . . to arrange the delivery for Friday evening July 16, after 6:00 p.m., but Ms. Carolina Antorcha, with whom counsel was unable to converse, apparently was unwilling to accommodate the request.”

The nerve of that baby—selfishly insisting on coming into the world in the midst of a well-thought out and painstakingly scheduled set of depositions! I haven’t seen any ruling on Mr. Klock’s (presumably) tongue-in-cheek motion, so I assume that everyone worked things out, the creation of new life notwithstanding.

Finally, we come to one of the greatest motions I’ve seen in a long time, a motion for summary judgment that ranks as a truly awesome “in your face.” In 2010, Dallas Maverick’s majority owner Mark Cuban was sued by Ross Perot Jr.’s Hillwood Investment Properties III Ltd., owner of a 5 percent stake in the NBA franchise.

Among other accusations, the lawsuit claimed that Cuban was “careless and reckless” in his business and personnel decisions regarding the team, allegedly resulting in loss of “substantial investment value” for Hillwood.

Hillwood/Perot Jr. even insisted that the Mavericks were “insolvent and/or in imminent danger of insolvency,” and they wanted the court to remove control of the team from Cuban and put it in the hands of a court-appointed receiver.

My friend and colleague Tom Melsheimer is Mark Cuban’s lawyer. He must have truly enjoyed drafting the response he filed against Hillwood and Perot Jr. shortly after the World Champion Dallas Mavericks defeated the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals on June 12.

The response pointed out that, far from being mismanaged, the Mavericks “have become one of the league’s most successful teams and are now NBA champions.”

As evidence, Tom—clearly a believer in the concept that a picture is worth a thousand words—incorporated a photo in the brief of the Dallas Mavericks proudly hoisting the NBA championship trophy aloft in one of many victory celebrations that took place.

Based on this clear evidence that the Mavericks were anything but “mismanaged,” the defendants asked the court to grant summary judgment in their favor and throw the case out.

You just have to love a “How do you like me now?” motion like that—go Mavs!

On Sept. 8, Chad Allen Uptergrove will turn 36 years old. But unlike most of us, he will not celebrate that birthday surrounded by family and friends.

Instead, he will observe it in Amarillo at the William P. Clements Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, in a cell that is roughly 8 feet deep and 5 feet wide.

For nearly 20 years, since he was just 16 years old, Uptergrove has been incarcerated in the Texas state prison system for a crime that many feel he didn’t commit.

Uptergrove’s case, and those of dozens of other juveniles who were tried and convicted as adults, illustrates the human flotsam left behind by the changing judicial and legislative tides of how Texas, and indeed the nation, punishes its youngest offenders.

Even more pointedly, his experience exposes the flaws in a criminal system that is meant to assure a level playing field for all, but which all too often places retribution over rehabilitation and which sacrifices justice on the altar of high conviction rates and stiff sentencing.

By all accounts, in early 1992 the 16-year-old Uptergrove was a good kid who had fallen in with the wrong crowd in sleepy Bonham, Texas. His father, Ricky Uptergrove, had been largely absent from his life since Chad was 5. His mother, Pamela Sweet Richardson, was a hardworking county employee who would eventually be elected Chief Assessor Collector for Fannin County.

Terri Caffee, one of Chad’s high school teachers, remembers him as quiet, respectful, and “a typical teenage boy” who was a decent student, doing “what was asked of him” while not always working up to his potential.

Lois Horton, a loan officer and manager of the local credit union, recalls the good kid who “always had a big smile” and was considerate. Both individuals, along with some 70 other members of the small Fannin County community, would later write letters to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles asking that Chad’s life sentence be commuted.

Perhaps it was being a quiet kid who did what was asked of him that first brought Chad Uptergrove under the influence of Terrence “Terry” Dewayne Abbott and Abbott’s circle of friends. Terry was bad news—a 19-year-old who already had two felonies under his belt.

And on that fateful night of Feb. 18, 1992, Terry Abbott and two other youths entered Jimmy Brannon’s music store intending to rob it. According to the trial transcript, neither Abbott nor either of his companions were armed, but when Brannon produced a gun, Abbott seized the weapon and shot Brannon dead.

In a written statement later given to police (and read into evidence at his trial), Chad Uptergrove denied being present when the murder of Jimmy Brannon occurred, and said that he only learned of the shooting sometime later.

When he did, though, Uptergrove contacted the then-sheriff of Fannin County, Talmage Moore, and identified Terry Abbott as the shooter and told Moore where the murder weapon could be found.

Moore would later state that “without [Uptergrove's] assistance, I feel strongly that the case would not have been solved.”

But doing what many would consider to be the right thing proved to be Chad’s undoing: he found himself facing capital murder charges side by side with Terry Abbott. Abbott, no stranger to the system, quickly cut a deal that threw his 16-year-old friend under the bus, identifying Chad as being present during the crime and serving as the state’s main witness against Uptergrove as the government leveled capital murder charges against both teenagers.

Initially, it seemed inconceivable that a 16-year-old kid with no previous felony record, and who had voluntarily led police to both the shooter and the murder weapon could face charges as serious as the 19-year-old killer. Timing, however, was not on Chad Uptergrove’s side.

Dan Meehan, the District Attorney for Fannin County from 1981 to 1993, considered placing Chad in the Capital Offender Program for juveniles; this nationally-recognized program through the Texas Youth Commission has been wildly successful, boasting a 95 percent success rate of keeping its juveniles from being re-arrested for violent offenses within three years of their release.

Unfortunately, Chad was ineligible because he had already turned 17 before he could be placed there.

Meehan also anticipated that a plea bargain arrangement could be worked out; he had visited extensively with members of the victim’s family, and they were on board with a suggested 15 year sentence for Uptergrove, a term Meehan later characterized as “appropriate for [Uptergrove's] part in this crime.”

But in 1993, Meehan’s days as Fannin County District Attorney were numbered; he would leave office on Jan. 1, 1994. The case was prosecuted by the man who would succeed Meehan, James Moss.

While Moss’ perspective on the case is sadly lost (he died in a 2002 farm accident), many Fannin County residents feel to this day that the political pressures at election time explain why no plea was offered.

No candidate for the district attorney’s office wants to appear soft on crime to voters, and the result was no deal for Chad Uptergrove.

As Bryan Wix of Bonham later put it, “Many of us locally felt that political reasons . . . affected the case unfavorably. Chad should have remained in the juvenile system.”

Chad Uptergrove went on trial in June 1993. Now 17, he was represented by John Skotnik, a lawyer who had been licensed for less than eight years and who was trying his first capital murder case.

Although it was standard for a capital murder defendant to have the benefit of two lawyers, Skotnik’s request for additional counsel at county expense was denied by the trial court judge.

With the actual murderer, Terry Abbott, placing Chad at the scene, the jury found Uptergrove guilty of capital murder on June 24, 1993. He was sentenced to life in prison—the same punishment given to Abbott.

But before examining the issue of where Chad Uptergrove and so many youths just like him fit within the changing landscape of Texas’ treatment of juveniles in the adult criminal justice system, a troubling question remains: did the jury convict an innocent young man?

Uptergrove’s first appeal, centered around a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, was quickly disposed of by the Texarkana Court of Appeals in 1994 and his conviction was upheld. Years after the trial and appeal, though, disturbing facts began to emerge.

In early October 2003, Chad’s mother was approached in the Bonham Wal-mart by Sue Speed Van Hooser. After asking how Chad was doing, Van Hooser asked the mother why she had never been called to testify at trial.

The question shook Pamela Sweet Richardson; nowhere had there been any indication of Ms. Van Hooser as a witness—neither the police nor the prosecution had ever breathed a word of her.

Then Ms. Van Hooser began sharing what had happened, details she had provided to the police soon after the murder and which would eventually form the basis of sworn testimony in Chad’s next appeal.

According to Van Hooser, she was contacted by the Bonham Police Department during their investigation, because a rental receipt from the shop next to the crime scene showed she was in the area during the timeframe when the murder occurred.

She dutifully went to the Bonham police, and told an Officer Laverne that she had seen three suspicious-looking men leaving the music store, and that none of them fit Chad Uptergrove’s description.

Officer Laverne even argued with her about the number of suspects, insisting to Van Hooser that only two young men were involved. The woman insisted that police had her name and statement, even if they had never called her to testify.

Under a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case, Brady v. Maryland, it is a violation of a defendant’s constitutional rights for the prosecution not to turn over such exculpatory evidence. A long line of Texas cases reaffirms this duty on the part of the state, and specifically refers to material witnesses who would be favorable to the defense, like Ms. Van Hooser.

Law enforcement witnesses like Officer Laverne and Detective Mike Bennett (the Bonham Police Department’s detective in charge of the case) said that it was possible they had talked to her and acknowledged that the three men Van Hooser saw were leaving the music shop at the time that Jimmy Brannon had been killed; they further admitted that no one had ever advised the defense of this favorable account.

Bolstered by this revelation, in 2007 Uptergrove’s appellate lawyers asked the highest criminal court in Texas, the Court of Criminal Appeals, for a writ of habeas corpus based on his actual innocence.

The Court of Criminal Appeals didn’t rule right away; instead, it directed the trial court in Fannin County to hear the new evidence and issue findings of fact as to whether—in light of such new testimony—a jury would acquit Uptergrove, and whether the newly-discovered evidence could put the whole case “in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the verdict.”

The hearing took place as ordered, and Sue Speed Van Hooser testified unchallenged, as did Uptergrove’s original lawyer, John Skotnik, who said the prosecution had never disclosed this evidence that could have freed his client. One of the jurors from the original trial, Joann Ridge, even testified that the Van Hooser testimony would have made a difference to her as a member of the jury.

But it was all in vain. The trial judge’s “findings of fact” were essentially that the new evidence was of questionable value, could have been discovered earlier, and wouldn’t have led to a different verdict anyway.

Hesitant to substitute its collective judgment for that of the judge who had (theoretically, at least) considered all of the evidence old and new, the Court of Criminal Appeals declined to grant Chad Uptergrove the relief he sought. Now 32 years old, he had lived exactly half his life in the Texas prison system. For him, its doors would remain shut.

In the next installment, we’ll look at how Chad Uptergrove and others convicted as juveniles and sentenced to life in prison have found themselves caught in a legal limbo as judicial and legislative outlooks on juvenile offenders have changed.

The first installment of this series examined the case of Chad Uptergrove, tried as an adult and convicted of capital murder for a crime committed when he was only 16 — a crime perpetrated by an older friend.

Despite having no prior felonies, leading police to the assailant and the murder weapon, and despite questionable evidence that he was even present for the robbery gone bad, Chad was sentenced to the same prison term as the actual killer — life.

It was a punishment that hit many in the Fannin County community of Bonham with “shock and disbelief,” as local resident Sid Andrew says.

“To see a teenager with no prior felonies sent to prison for life is unrealistic.” Rick Hazelip, owner of a Bonham detail shop, observes. “With Chad, I see a 16-year-old kid sentenced to a life sentence as an adult and for a crime he only stood witness to. Where is justice?”

Many Fannin County residents, including the county sheriff, former district attorney, and even relatives of the murder victim Jimmy Brannon, wrote the Texas Board of Pardons & Paroles seeking to have Chad Uptergrove’s sentence commuted, but to no avail.

In many ways, Texas’ treatment of juveniles convicted of capital crimes has followed the ebb and flow of national debate on the subject. After Texas and most states had preserved the distinction between juvenile and adult offenders for nearly a century, rising crime rates in the 1980s and 1990s and heightened media focus on so-called “juvenile super-predators” led many states to pass laws allowing more children to be tried in adult criminal courts, and providing judges with more sentencing options to respond to serious and violent youth crime.

The boy next door could very well be the monster next door, lawmakers reasoned, and in 1996 Texas legislators lowered the minimum age for certification as an adult to 14 years of age for certain crimes. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court held that it was permissible to execute offenders who were at least 16 at the time of their crimes

In 2005, however, the Court did an about face. In Roper v. Simmons, a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that executing those who committed murder as juveniles was a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, concluded that “The reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character. From a moral standpoint, it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed.”

By 2010, in Graham v. Florida, the Supreme Court extended its reasoning to non-homicide offenses, ruling that life without parole sentences for juveniles convicted of crimes such as rape or armed robbery were also unconstitutional.

Part of the reason for the evolving attitude toward juvenile crime is a growing body of research on brain development in adolescents. Such research has provided scientific confirmation of what parents have known all along: teens don’t make decisions like adults and they are more susceptible to peer pressure.

While teenagers have the intellectual capacity to understand the long-term consequences of their actions, the still-developing areas in their frontal lobes that govern impulse control mean that they won’t be as likely or able as an adult to consider those consequences before acting.

Another reason for the softening stance on juvenile crime may have been the realization by many educators, psychologists, corrections officials, lawmakers, and others that life and life without parole sentences take away the second chance from which many youths would benefit.

One of the most compelling amicus briefs filed with the Supreme Court in Graham v. Florida came from a group of former juvenile offenders who turned their lives around. The group included award-winning actor Charles S. Dutton (who at age 17 stabbed someone to death in a street fight) and former U.S. Senator Alan K. Simpson. As a teenager, Simpson had assaulted a police officer and committed arson on federal property; he candidly characterized his younger self as “a monster.”

Texas’ position on punishing juvenile offenders has changed to an extent over recent years. Prior to 2005, juveniles convicted of capital murder could receive the death penalty or a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 40 years. In 2005, the Texas Legislature changed that law, letting jurors decide between execution or life without parole for capital murder.

Reacting to the Roper v. Simmons decision, in 2005 Texas commuted the sentences of 28 death row inmates who had been juveniles when they committed their crimes. By the 2009 Legislative Session, lawmakers changed their minds again, passing Senate Bill 839 and eliminating sentences of life without parole for juveniles who had been tried as adults and convicted of capital murder.

However, the change in the law left approximately 20 inmates who had been convicted of capital murder as juvenile offenders between 2005 and the 2009 passage of Senate Bill 839 in a state of limbo.

Chris Meadoux, a Hurricane Katrina evacuee who killed two people in 2007 when he was 16, was one of these. Had the crime been committed by a juvenile after Sept. 1, 2009, he would have had a shot at parole after serving 40 years behind bars.

State Sen. Juan Hinojosa of McAllen, author of S.B. 839, says he intended for the law to be retroactive. But in considering Chris Meadoux’s case in November 2010, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld his sentence of life without any chance at parole.

Writing for a 7–2 court, Judge Charles Holcomb said “Given the enormity of the crimes committed by juvenile capital offenders, the Legislature could reasonably conclude that such offenders are incorrigible and that the only prudent course of action is to separate them from society forever.”

In dissent, Judge Lawrence Meyers argued for ordering new punishment hearings for Meadoux and the 19 other teens sentenced to remain in jail until they died, calling it “ridiculous to say that a juvenile who was not even eligible for the death penalty” should receive a harsher, no-parole sentence.

In the 2011 Legislative Session, Sen. Hinojosa filed S.B. 973, intended to give retroactive effect to the 2009 law, but the measure failed to make it out of committee.

One of the 20 juvenile offenders saw his hopes brighten somewhat when the Galveston Court of Appeals set aside his conviction in 2010. Litrey Demond Turner was facing life without parole for his alleged role in the 2006 murder of a convenience store clerk.

Turner was 15 at the time; his 19-year-old friend Andrew Brown III shot the clerk, but pleaded guilty and received a sentence of 40 years. The appeals court ordered a new trial for Turner on grounds unrelated to his juvenile status, a trial Turner still awaits. The 19 others convicted as juveniles before the change in the law remain in prison.

According to the Campaign for Youth Justice, an estimated 200,000 youth are tried, sentenced or incarcerated as adults each year in the United States. Forty-five states give juvenile court judges the discretion to transfer a case to adult criminal courts; 15 states require juvenile court judges to transfer a case to an adult court in the case of certain offenses and factors such as an offender’s prior record. Fifteen states give prosecutors the latitude to try a juvenile defendant as an adult.

While most states have policies mandating that juveniles certified as adults be housed in juvenile facilities rather than in adult prisons (some until at least age 18, and others until age 21), Texas is not among them. In Texas, juveniles transferred to adult criminal courts await trial in adult county jails, most of which have no option but to house them in isolation for their own safety.

A 2009 investigation by the Houston Press found that the certified juveniles aged 14 to 16 years in the Harris County jail spent 23 hours a day in lock-up for months on end, an isolated state that can result in rampant depression, anxiety and paranoia. According to one national study by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, youth confined in adult jails and prisons are 36 times more likely to commit suicide then their peers held in juvenile facilities.

Besides the dangers to their mental health, juveniles housed in adult correctional facilities also face greater physical risks. Nationally, they are 50 percent more likely to be subject to physical assault with a weapon by other inmates.

The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission concluded in 2009 that “[m]ore than any other group of incarcerated persons, youth incarcerated with adults are probably at the highest risk for sexual abuse.”

And, it’s not simply the juveniles themselves who suffer, but the community at large. A task force of the Centers for Disease Control reviewed all available scientific research and concluded that transferring youthful offenders to the adult system not only has no deterrent value, but actually increases the offenders’ rate of violence and recidivism. One national study found that transferred juveniles who spent at least a year in an adult prison had a 100 percent greater risk of violent recidivism.

But are those minors who are certified as adults, convicted, and sentenced to adult prisons in Texas really the “worst of the worst,” so different in their criminality from their counterparts in juvenile facilities so as to warrant such greater risks to their physical and mental health?

A March 2011 study by Michele Deitch of the LBJ School of Public Affairs points out some eye-opening statistics. Her report, entitled “Juveniles in the Adult Criminal Justice System in Texas,” dispels many assumptions about the violence and persistent criminal behavior of youthful offenders who are doing “adult time for adult crime.”

Twenty-nine percent of all certified juveniles are, like Chad Uptergrove, first-time offenders. Seventy-two percent don’t have a prior history of violent crime, and 89 percent have never even been committed to the Texas Youth Commission, suggesting that few of them have a serious history of delinquency of any kind.

Forty-four percent of those transferred to an adult criminal court had either no previous involvement with the local juvenile justice system or only one prior referral. In other words, in nearly half of these cases, the justice system rushed to a judgment that nothing else works for these juveniles, when in fact the truth is that nothing was tried.

This “writing off” of youth offenders by banishing them to the adult system happens with disturbing frequency. In 2010 alone, there were 229 certifications to adult criminal courts, as opposed to only 109 juveniles given determinate sentences — a mechanism by which a minor can be committed to the Texas Youth Commission until he or she becomes an adult (thereby enabling him or her to benefit from educational and rehabilitative programs), before being transferred to the adult prison system.

Despite this disparity in sentencing, there was very little difference between the two groups in the offenses committed or the criminal histories. And under Texas law, the option of certifying a youth offender isn’t limited to the worst crimes; many non-violent felonies can qualify a juvenile for transfer to an adult court. Determinate sentencing, on the other hand, is an option reserved for only the 30 most serious offenses.

If the evolution of the law regarding the treatment of juveniles in the adult criminal system has taught us anything, it is that children are different. The fact that they are less able than adults to control their behavior has to be weighed when punishing them, while the fact that they have a better shot at being rehabilitated should be considered when incarcerating them.

The teenager who commits even the most serious crime, homicide, is still changing and developing; there is no way of predicting what kind of adult he or she will become in ten or fifteen years. Those juveniles convicted before the change in the law and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole will not rejoin society in anything but a coffin.

In the case of Chad Uptergrove, a child capable of redemption was sent to be imprisoned alongside adults after his 1993 conviction. One has to wonder what kind of man will return to society after at least 40 years in the penitentiary?

The final movie in the Harry Potter saga, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2,” has set box office records worldwide, just as the series of J.K. Rowling books which inspired the films have shattered sales records themselves and secured a permanent place in the hearts of children and adults alike.

Add in all of the merchandise tied to the tales of the boy wizard and his friends at Hogwarts, factor in the wildly popular theme park attraction at Florida’s Universal Studios, and you can understand how J.K. Rowling went from welfare mother to billionaire.

But with commercial success come the lawsuits, faster than you can say “Litigatorum Malefactorum,” and even the most powerful spells and wands aren’t enough to spare those behind the Harry Potter empire from something potentially darker and more powerful than Voldemort—muggles with lawyers.

One of the current lawsuits is over the wizardly-looking font used on tons of bags, T-shirts and other souvenirs crowding the shelves of gift shops at the “Wizarding World of Harry Potter” attraction in Orlando. A company called P22 that creates typefaces “inspired by Art, History, and sometimes Science” has sued NBC Universal for $1.5 million in damages, claiming that the studio misappropriated its “Cezanne” font and is using it on all kind of Harry Potter memorabilia. Maybe they can settle this over a couple of pints of Butterbeer.

Another legal challenge came with the adaptation of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” In the book, there is a dance held for the young wizards at Hogwarts, and the entertainment at this dance is furnished by a band called the Weird Sisters. Since in real life there is a Canadian folk band called the Wyrd Sisters, Warner Brothers decided to err on the side of caution and offer the group $50,000 for the rights to use the name.

However, the band refused, and even took the film studio to court, demanding $40 million and trying to get an injunction against the film’s release. Even though the case was dismissed and the judge denied the injunction, the filmmakers wrote the Weird Sisters out of the movie version.

That’s a shame, because the Wyrd Sisters weren’t exactly plowing original ground themselves; the term “Wyrd Sisters” appears in William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” referring to the three hags or witches toiling over their cauldron in the beginning of the play (Shakespeare himself borrowed the concept of the three crones foretelling Macbeth’s future from the three Fates or Norns of Greek and Norse mythology, respectively).

Other lawsuits have been the more typical allegations by other authors claiming to have been the real creators of Harry Potter. In 1999, U.S. writer Nancy Stouffer alleged that J.K. Rowling had infringed her copyright, pointing to a series of activity booklets for children that she had written, including “Larry Potter and His Best Friend Lilly” and “The Legend of Rah and the Muggles.”

However, Rowling and her publisher beat Stouffer to the courthouse, and won a declaratory judgment that no infringement had occurred. Among other setbacks for Stouffer, the court found that she had submitted fraudulent documents and testimony (including changing pages years later to retroactively add the word “muggle”). It dismissed Stouffer’s case, ordered her to pay $50,000 for a pattern of “intentional bad faith conduct,” and also directed her to pay part of the plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees.

In June 2009, the estate of the late children’s book author Adrian Jacobs sued J.K. Rowling and her publishers for copyright infringement. The lawsuit claims that “substantial parts” of Jacobs’ book The Adventures of Willy the Wizard: Livid Land showed up in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Rowling denied the allegations, pointing out that she had never seen, read or even heard of Jacobs’ book until the lawsuit was filed. In January of this year, the American legal proceeding against Rowling and her publisher (Scholastic) was dismissed, with the judge finding that there were insufficient similarities between the two works to constitute plagiarism. The UK version of the lawsuit is still going on, however.

Naturally, with a franchise as valuable as the Harry Potter series, its owners have frequently resorted to legal action of their own to protect their interests—not from the evil Voldemort or the nefarious Malfoy clan, but from would-be infringers and other assorted evildoers.

The latter category has included everyone from a security guard at a book distribution center (who allegedly stole pages from “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” and threatened to sell them to the media if he wasn’t paid off), to retailers who have sold copies of the books before their release date, to the organizers of a Hindu religious festival in India that allegedly featured a giant Hogwarts replica.

Some of the would-be Harry Potter imitators against whom Rowling and company have sought injunctions are almost laughable. For example, in 2002, an unauthorized book called “Harry Potter and Bao Zoulong” began appearing for sale in the People’s Republic of China.

The fake book not only wasn’t written by Rowling, it actually consisted primarily of the text of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” with most names changed to those of characters from the Harry Potter universe. The Bashu Publishing House later paid a fine and published an apology for printing the novel.

Rowling’s concerns are not unfounded; in 2007, it was estimated that approximately 15 million pirated Harry Potter novels were circulating in China alone. The author and her publisher have taken action against an Indian publisher to stop the publication of “Harry Potter in Calcutta,” against a Russian publisher for its tales of a female apprentice wizard in “Tanya Grotter and the Magical Double Bass,” and even against the Indian studio behind the Bollywood film “Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors.”

In the movies, of course, you can take on such evil forces with a trusty wand, a spell or two, and some sage advice from the wise Dumbledore. In the real world, though, you need help from those who have truly mastered the “dark arts”—the lawyers.

In both civil and criminal trials, the legal system depends on expert witnesses to assist the judge and the jury in understanding and ruling reasonably on what may be complex technical or scientific issues. In courtrooms across the country, expert witnesses offer opinions on virtually any subject.

As a result, with experts on both sides often offering opinions that are directly at odds with each other, it’s hardly unusual for cases to come down to a “battle of the experts” in which the jury decides which expert is more credible or reliable.

The pressure to convince jurors has led to at least some expert testimony that has little basis in scientific fact—what author Peter Huber coined “junk science” in his influential 1991 book “Galileo’s Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom.”

In an effort to guard against junk science making it into the courtroom, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded in the 1993 case of

“I’m afraid this dreadful nonsense is the law.”
Justice Strauss in Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events (Volume One: The Bad Beginning)”

Keen insight is not the sole province of adult literature, as the above quote from the first of the popular Lemony Snicket series of children’s books demonstrates. The very same book contains another observation that rings true as well: “. . . But one type of book that practically no one likes to read is a book about the law. Books about the law are notorious for being very long, very dull, and very difficult to read.”

As the author or contributing author to four law-related books, and as someone who’s read more law books than I care to remember, I’m inclined to agree with this observation.

Part of the problem is the title. Just recently, I came across a few rather unfortunately-named law books. One of these is “How to Become an Unsuccessful Lawyer,” by Andrew White. Hey, Andrew, do you think offering tips on how to become a successful lawyer would attract more readers? Or maybe you figured everyone was tired of those books that promise that they’ll help you succeed, and you decided to corner the market on downward mobility instead?

Another such book is Dirk van Zyl Smit’s “Taking Life Imprisonment Seriously.” Is there anyone who doesn’t take this subject seriously, including those convicted and sentenced to life? Put away those seltzer bottles and whoopee cushions, folks—it’s time to take life imprisonment seriously, for a change.

Or how about Gerard Forlin’s Butterworth’s “Corporate Manslaughter Service?” No, it’s not some thrilling spy novel about industrial hitmen. The looseleaf binder from the legal publisher Butterworth’s refers to “corporate manslaughter,” the legal term of art used in the United Kingdom for what we would refer to as wrongful death cases involving corporations as defendants.

Maybe what law books need more are colorful turns of phrase to break up the monotony of otherwise dry legal proceedings. If so, perhaps we should turn to the likes of the Honorable Martin J. Sheehan, judge of the Kenton Circuit Court in Covington, Ky. Judge Meehan is known for illustrating key points in his judicial opinions with quotes from figures ranging from St. Thomas More and William Shakespeare to singer/songwriter Tom Waites, Pink Floyd and John Wayne. But it will be hard to top his recent order acknowledging the settlement that had been reached in what was no doubt a complex, hotly-disputed case:

“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 sandbox 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 factory.”

Judge Sheehan went on to advise the clerk to engage the services of a structural engineer “to ascertain if the return of this file to the clerk’s office will exceed the maximum structural load of the floors of said office.”

Perhaps law books need to include some of the more interesting, hard-to-believe-they-filed-it cases of which the legal system has so much to offer. I’ll be happy to supply a few, like the two men in Springfield, Ga., who were so high on methamphetamines recently that they called 911, hallucinating that intruders were breaking into their home. Effingham County sheriff’s deputies arrived and, after determining that no intruders were to be found, arrested the pair on charges of manufacturing and possessing methamphetamines.

Another might be the recent product liability/wrongful death lawsuit filed in Wisconsin by the daughter of a man killed while crossing the street in his motorized wheelchair. She’s suing the driver of the car that struck him, which makes sense. But Candess Higgerson is also suing Invacare Corp. (manufacturer of the power wheelchair) and its retailer, the Scooter Store Ltd. Higgerson claims that the wheelchair was somehow defective because it didn’t come equipped with “flags or other devices to make it visible to motorists.” Seriously? It’s a wheelchair, for crying out loud, not a car. What else do you want on it—airbags?

Another lawsuit that might liven up a law book is that of a government employee in New South Wales, Australia, who was injured while staying at a hotel during a work-related trip for her employer, and is now taking her workers compensation claim to court.

What makes this matter unusual? The injuries occurred while she was having sex at the hotel, and a light fixture detached from the wall above the bed, hitting her in the face and leaving her with injuries to her nose, mouth, and a tooth “as well as a consequent psychiatric injury” (I’m sure it killed the mood, too). Her lawyer argues that the injuries were caused “during the course of her employment” and that they happened during an ordinary life activity like showering or eating.

The employer and the Australian workplace safety body ComCare disagree, however, saying that such sexual activity was not part of her work nor “an ordinary incident of an overnight stay like showering, sleeping, or eating.” The workers compensation claim has been rejected by one tribunal already, and appealed to Federal Court.

What can we take away from this case, other than a whole new meaning for the term “rough sex?” If having sex during business trips was so “ordinary” that an employer should expect to be responsible for any injuries that occurred (like slipping in the shower, or chipping your tooth during a business lunch), more people would be eager to take business trips.

“Got my first chemistry set when I was 7, blew off my eyebrows, we never saw the cat again. Been into it ever since.”
-Stanley Goodspeed (Nicholas Cage), “The Rock”

The “chemical super-freak” and FBI agent portrayed by Nicolas Cage in the action movie “The Rock” would have been sorely disappointed had he come of age in the last decade. The options for budding young scientists are sadly limited, and lawyers and liability concerns are to blame.

Search for a chemistry kit at your local toy store or mass retailer, and you might find something like Elenco Electronics’ Chemistry 60 chemistry set, which bills itself as providing “60 fun activities with no chemicals.”

Yes, that’s right—a chemistry set that features goggles, safety glasses, vials, test tubes, and other lab implements, but no actual chemicals. Kids are expected to provide those on their own, straight from the kitchen cupboard.

But fear not; lawyers found an element of danger in the kit nonetheless. The manufacturer’s warning on the box cautions parents about the small magnets that come with the kit, scarily proclaiming “swallowed magnets can stick together across intestines causing serious infections and death.”

It’s enough to make me nostalgic for the days of my youth, when chemistry sets for kids were widely available. Generations of children whetted their appetites for discovery and science with kits from Gilbert, Skil Craft, Handy Andy, and of course Porter Chemcraft.

The Porter Chemcraft “lab in a box” contained enough bottles, beakers, and test tubes to conduct more than 800 experiments. At the zenith of its popularity during the 1950s and ’60s, the company was the biggest user of test tubes in the United States.

Chemcraft sold over a million of its chemistry sets before going out of business in the 1980s, a victim of an overlawyered society rife with heightened fears of liability.

Don Herbert, the host of the “Mr. Wizard” TV show of the ’50s and ’60s and who starred in the science filmstrips that my classmates and I were still watching in the ’70s, marketed a popular chemistry set for kids as well. When a company approached him a few years ago about offering an updated version of the kit, they found out it would be a daunting task since “more than half the chemicals were illegal to sell to children because they’re considered dangerous.”

By the time the “Mr. Wizard Science Set” entered the market, it came with balloons, Super Balls, clay and just five chemicals (one of which was laundry starch). As the head of Mr. Wizard Studios would later glumly admit, “It wasn’t really something you could use to teach kids about chemistry.”

Yes, unfortunately, lawyers and the fear of lawsuits are largely to blame for the absence of chemistry sets on the shelves. One of the few companies that still makes actual chemistry sets, Thames and Kosmos, puts out a top-of-the-line model retailing for $200 with test tubes, beakers, and over two dozen chemical compounds. Yet even this kit makes it clear that you’ll need a veritable shopping list of other chemicals in order to carry out many of the experiments.

Ted McGuire, the company’s president, says “A lot of retailers are scared to carry a real chemistry set now because of liability concerns. The stuff under your kitchen sink is far more dangerous than the things in our kits, but put the word ‘chemistry’ on something and people become terrified.”

Fear of lawsuits isn’t the only reason why chemistry sets are largely a thing of the past. It’s a different world in which we live, a legal and regulatory landscape forever changed by a homegrown terrorist who blew up a federal building in Oklahoma, jihadists who converted jetliners into flying bombs on 9/11, and the menace of drugs like crystal meth spreading even into the once-bucolic surroundings of rural America.

In the years since 9/11, government agencies ranging from the Defense Department and the FBI to the Consumer Product Safety Commission have been tracking even small purchases of potentially deadly chemicals.

Acting on fears that terrorists could shoot down airliners with model rockets, a provision in the 2002 Homeland Security Act mandates background checks and licensing requirements for model rocket hobbyists.

More than 30 states have passed laws restricting sales of certain chemicals and lab equipment to help combat the proliferation of meth labs.

In Texas, for example, it is illegal to purchase basic labware like an Erlenmeyer flask or a three-necked beaker without registering with the Department of Public Safety and swearing that they won’t be used for drug production. Look at the list of chemicals that many police departments have on their “forbidden list” for use in meth production, and you’ll find many that are no further away than your home’s medicine cabinet, like iodine, hydrogen peroxide or isopropyl alcohol.

In an irony lost on many, the average Mr. Coffee machine that is a fixture of many Texas legislators’ offices has three violations of the law built into it: a Pyrex beaker, a heating element and a filter funnel.

Years ago, before our society became paralyzed with fear over lawsuits, the threat of terrorists behind every door, and the proliferation of meth labs, chemistry sets were not just an avenue for childhood discovery but the catalyst for brilliant careers in science and medicine.

Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, fondly recalls the days of experimenting with a chemistry set and turning a family shed into a well-stocked lab — long before he became the father of the semiconductor industry.

David Packard, of Hewlett-Packard fame, tinkered with new recipes for gunpowder when he was a child, while Internet pioneer Vint Cerf was blowing up thermite volcanoes and launching backyard rockets at age 10.

Nobel laureate and Cornell University scholar Ronald Hoffman voices a familiar lament.

“There’s no question that stinks and bangs and crystals and colors are what drew kids—particularly boys—to science,” he says. “Now the potential for stinks and bangs has been legislated out.”

We are paying a price for our fears. Driven by liability concerns, many schools don’t have chemistry labs anymore, and many other schools limit their chemistry-education to liability-proof teacher demonstrations. The Journal of Chemical Education calls restrictions on students getting hands-on experience “a problem that has been building for 10 or 15 years, driven by liability and safety concerns.”

According to the National Science Board, 30 years ago the U.S. ranked third in the world in the number of science and engineering degrees awarded in the 18 to 24 age group; now the U.S. is 17th.

Bill Nye, the “Science Guy” who hosted a popular series for children on PBS for years, says “People who want to make meth will find ways to do it that don’t require an Erlenmeyer flask. But raising a generation of people who are technically incompetent is a recipe for disaster.”

My brothers and I grew up with a chemistry set, not to mention a telescope, microscope, and all manner of things with the potential to hurt us, but which also kindled a sense of wonder about science.

There’s a real difference between reading Internet descriptions of chemical reactions and making your own erupting volcano. Unfortunately, many children growing up now will never experience that difference, thanks to the lawyers and fear-mongers.

If you thought that last week’s roundup of the legally bizarre contained some of the strangest things to ever hit the justice system, then as the saying goes, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

The lawsuits and criminal cases just get stranger and stranger. . . .

Where’s Wile E. Coyote When You Need Him?

It’s a given that smoking crystal meth is a bad idea. It’s an even worse idea when your lighter of choice is a blowtorch. But when you decide to smoke crystal meth using a blowtorch near a container of gunpowder, then all you’re missing is Wile E. Coyote, the Roadrunner, and a detonator from the Acme Explosives Company.

Sixty-five-year-old John Blanchard—who in his mugshot bears a passing resemblance to Yosemite Sam—recently pleaded no contest in San Mateo County, Calif., to drug and weapons charges. Last October, Blanchard was arrested after he caused a fire in a storage yard. Blanchard was using a defective propane blowtorch to smoke methamphetamine, and left the blowtorch on a dryer near a container of gunpowder, causing it to explode and start a fire. He’s been sentenced to 45 days in jail, with limited access to “Looney Toons” cartoons.

Dude, Where’s My Country?

Twenty-six-year-old Illinois prison inmate Johnathan Pinney, who is currently serving a four-year sentence for aggravated battery (he bit a police officer—don’t ask), has filed a lawsuit against a long list of government employees and agencies. The convict claims that he was falsely arrested and that his civil rights were violated in myriad ways by both state and federal authorities.

But, as a cursory review of his 18-page lawsuit reveals, he’s willing to be reasonable.

All he wants are $50 billion, his own country and “recognition as a forign soverinty (sic) with diplomatic immunity,” a treaty of non-aggression between his country (Alaska will do, he says) and the U.S. and United Nations, and certified clearance to “access of all scientiffic (sic) advancements and developments made on American institutions,” including such top secret facilities as “Area 51.”

By the way, his new country should have enough arable land for 5,000 people who would provide the start for its “future population.” Pinney, it should be noted, has been a patient in a mental health facility before and, on multiple occasions, has been found mentally unfit to stand trial. Color me surprised.

Death By Chocolate—Really

“Death by Chocolate” has been the name given to a number of different, decadently rich chocolate desserts offered by various restaurants. But for most of us, the closest we’ve come to a true “death by chocolate” is watching the gluttonous child Augustus Gloop sucked up into the recirculating river of chocolate in the movie “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”

Sadly, however, at least one person has fallen victim to a real-life death by chocolate. In July, the parents of a 29-year-old candy factory worker in Pennsylvania filed a wrongful death lawsuit after their son fell into a vat of chocolate. The decedent allegedly slipped on a platform made slippery with chocolate and fell into the vat, which was “processing, mixing and melting chocolate at extremely high temperatures at the time,” according to the lawsuit.

The young man’s co-workers were purportedly unable to shut the vat down because the switch wasn’t located on the platform. The surviving parents have sued the company that owns the plant, as well as a number of defendants who were involved in manufacturing and servicing the allegedly faulty equipment.

A Lawsuit Straight from the Playground

As a child, I remember playing any number of “cops and robbers” or “cowboys and Indians” games that involved my friends and I pointing our fingers at each other and shouting “Bang, bang, you’re dead.” I never knew I could be sued for that.

In Cassotto v. Aeschilman, a Connecticut appellate court was recently asked to weigh in on the allegedly “extreme and outrageous” workplace conduct made the subject of an employment lawsuit. Among other things, the employee claimed that on one occasion, his superior had “look[ed] directly at the plaintiff and stat[ed] ‘Bang. Bang.’” Ever the voice of reason, the appellate judges said that while the employee may have found this “upsetting,” it didn’t constitute extreme and outrageous conduct.

What’s Next—the Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie-Woogie Blues?

Forty-two-year-old Roger Tullegren of Hassleholm, Sweden, has an explanation for why he “needs” to dress in black leather and skull and crossbones jewelry, attend nearly 300 concerts a year, and listen to heavy metal music at work.

According to Tullegren, several pyschologists, and now Sweden’s Employment Service, the part-time dishwasher is officially addicted to heavy metal. Tullegren now gets a special dispensation for his heavy metal lifestyle clothing, gets to listen to music at work, and even receives special income supplements such as Swedish state benefits for his “disability.”

Tullegren lost a number of jobs because of attire and absences to attend concerts as he fought for 10 years to get his heavy metal “addiction” classified by government agencies as a handicap. Now receiving government wage benefits and enjoying greater protection from being fired, Tullegren says, “Some might say that I should grow up and learn to listen to other types of music, but I can’t. Heavy metal is my lifestyle.”

The Right to Wear a Pasta Strainer on Your Head

Those hip-hop poet laureates, the Beastie Boys, taught us that you have to fight for your right to party. And now in Austria, you have the right to wear a pasta strainer on your head in your official driver’s license photo, thanks to Mr. Niko Alm.

Alm waged a three-year legal battle based on religious discrimination—he claims to be a “Pastafarian” who belongs to the “Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster” (no, I’m not making this up). After the years of legal wrangling, including submitting to a medical interview to determine if he was mentally ill, Alm finally was permitted to have his driver’s license photo taken wearing a pasta strainer on his head.

Looking to start your own country? Don’t like people going “bang, bang” at you? Want the “right” to wear a pasta strainer on your head? Then go to court—it’s not like there are more important things going on, are there?

Many of us recall the “Soup Nazi” episode of the sitcom Seinfeld, and how its titular character (based on the real-life New York restauranteur) achieved pop culture iconic status with the catchphrase “No soup for you!”

The phrase referred to how the “Soup Nazi” would dismissively refuse service to customers like Elaine who failed to abide by his strict orders of lining up for, ordering, and paying for his food, resulting in their being banned from the premises.

And we’ve all heard of professional athletes whose indiscretions like drug use or gambling have resulted in lifetime bans from their respective sports. But from time to time I’ll get a question about whether a business can legally administer a “lifetime ban” on particular customers. The short answer is, yes they can, and in fact it happens more often and for more varied reasons than you might think.

Sometimes the stated reason, like real or presumed criminal conduct like shoplifting, makes perfect sense. Even here, however, a draconian policy can catch not just smalltime criminals, but those making an understandable mistake.

Thirty-three-year-old mother Elissa Drassinower of New York City accidentally left a half gallon of milk and some beer in her 20 month-old son’s stroller while grocery shopping. A security guard approached her just outside the Fairway market.

Drassinower says she apologized, explained that she had forgotten, and that she fully intended to pay; in fact, she reasoned, why would she pay for the rest of the $50 in groceries only to steal $3.49 worth of milk?

But store security and the grocery chain itself would have none of it—she was photographed and informed that she was banned from Fairway for life. Drassinower, who wasn’t arrested, says she was embarrassed, outraged, and pleaded for days for the store to lift the ban — to no avail.

Retailers want loyalty and repeat customers, but occasionally spring into action over too much of a good thing. Californian Kim Navarra loves Abercrombie & Fitch clothing, and estimates that she spends at least $1,000 a year on the trendy wear.

But when she went online recently to spend a $200 Abercrombie & Fitch gift card, the chain refused to accept it, cancelled her order, and said it would no longer accept any new orders from her.

According to the company, they suspected Navarra of re-selling clothing she was purchasing based upon her buying patterns. The retailer has policies forbidding such re-sale, and reserves “the right to cancel all subsequent orders from such customers,” in order to protect their brand from those who might buy and then re-sell on websites or in foreign countries.

Navarra scoffs at the accusation of re-selling, and says one look at her closet will make it obvious who her favorite brand is. Subsequent discussions, and an investigation by a local news broadcaster, resulted in Navarra back in Abercrombie & Fitch’s good graces.

And one Los Angeles man who really did decide to play the online re-seller with iPads found out the hard way that Apple plays for keeps as well. After he began purchasing iPads and re-selling them internationally via an online gaming forum, the would-be entrepreneur got some strange looks from local Apple store employees when attempting his latest purchase (he never bought more than two at a time).

Apple employees informed that he had “reached his lifetime limit of iPad purchases, and wouldn’t be allowed to buy any more;” of course, no one told him what his “lifetime number” happened to be, just that he had hit it.

Don’t tell April Cuevas about too much of a good thing. The Boise, Idaho, woman has a hobby of “extreme couponing,” borne of her efforts to save money. During a recent visit to Wal-Mart, she learned that the store’s “Ad Match” policy had undergone changes, and she wanted to discuss these with a store manager—while recording it all on her iPhone.

While recording the conversation, an argument ensued and Cuevas was directed to “pay full price [for] the groceries or leave.” Cuevas later found out from police that Wal-Mart had complained about her, and had issued a ban that was chain-wide, preventing her from setting foot in any Wal-Mart ever again. Cuevas says she didn’t do anything wrong, “and I would also like to go back to Wal-Mart.”

Sometimes it’s a customer’s complaints or other actions that lead to lifetime bans. After complaining on three separate occasions about the “burnt” coffee at his local Tim Horton’s (a popular Canadian restaurant chain), Jimmy Craig of St. Andrews, New Brunswick, was served with a letter banning him from the restaurant for life under Canadian trespassing laws.

Craig professes to be “baffled,” saying “I don’t see this as a way to treat people. What happened to the customer is always right?”

Meanwhile, Deborah McCarthy of Beaverton, Ore., can never have a package delivered to her house by UPS again. McCarthy, whose ability to drive is limited because of a medical condition, says she returned an item that arrived broken, and when she received a new delivery, complained to the UPS delivery person about the box’s battered condition.

UPS now will only deliver her packages to a neighbor or make them available for pickup at a depot nearly 10 miles away, claiming she has been “threatening.” McCarthy denies threatening the carrier or its personnel, and her neighbor Dale Steuwe calls the 5 foot, 2 inch, 100 lb. McCarthy “about as dangerous as my seven-pound Chihuahua.”

Karen Young found out that Facebook was really serious about banning her for life. The social networking site notified Young via email that she had violated the site’s terms and conditions of use in multiple ways, including sending friend requests to people she didn’t know, contacting strangers, and soliciting others for business purposes.

Young went to pretty extreme lengths to try to get reinstated on Facebook. She drove 3,000 miles from Maryland to Facebook’s California headquarters to speak to someone in person (on more than one occasion), and filed a lawsuit alleging that the social network had violated her rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution (the lawsuit was tossed out earlier this year).

Of course, bizarre or even criminal conduct can get you banned for life as well. Actor/nutjob Randy Quaid was banned for life from the Actors’ Equity Association in 2008 as a result of his “oddball behavior” and alleged physical and verbal abuse of fellow performers during a 2007 theatrical production at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre.

Criminal courts have banned computer hackers and child pornography defendants from computer and Internet use all over the country.

So why can companies get away with a lifetime ban, whether justified or not?

The answer is simple, and reflected in the countless “No shirt, no shoes, no service” signs posted in businesses across America. As long as business owners aren’t discriminating against protected classes of people (such as racial minorities), their agreement to have you on their premises is a license given for a limited purpose (like shopping, or dining) and which can be revoked at any time.

That ticket you bought to the local multiplex may entitle you to see the movie, but that license can be revoked when you create a scene, use loud and abusive language, and disturb moviegoers.

Can you be banned for life? Absolutely—even if it doesn’t happen that often.

One of the intangible rewards that comes with writing a column like this is the hope that your words will have an impact on someone’s life.

I’ve seen my work cited in law reviews, legal blogs and other articles, but hearing directly from individuals about what a particular column meant to them resonates on a much more personal level.

With many media outlets sharing content online as well as in print, work that may have initially been thought of as local can cast wide-ranging ripples across the digital pond.

I’ve been contacted by readers from all across the United States, not to mention the United Kingdom, Japan and India. A few of the more recent letters I’ve received stand out, not just because of what they’ve led to but also because the source of the correspondence was not my typical reader.

For example, when writing about serious subjects like the crisis in providing legal services for the indigent or about racial injustices, I haven’t been shy about expressing my Catholic faith. While one or two readers didn’t appreciate that, the overwhelming majority of those writing to me were supportive, and some even thanked me for not hesitating to discuss the subject.

That reaction led to an unexpected invitation to address the Dallas chapter of the Christian Legal Society, where I recently spoke on the topic of how practicing one’s profession and professing one’s faith don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Another recent column, “A Father’s Lessons,” detailed the enduring influence of the principles instilled in me by my father, a small town pharmacist—principles that have guided me in my law practice. I was surprised and delighted when I learned this column was written about in the monthly publication of the American Society for Pharmacy Law, complete with a link to the entire article.

Among that magazine’s readers was an Ohio woman who coordinates and provides continuing legal education courses for pharmacists, courses which are offered and accredited through Ohio’s State Board of Pharmacy. She asked for permission to reprint my column and include it in their educational materials on professionalism; I was only too happy to grant her request. As it turns out, my father’s lessons are going to educate a much wider audience than just his son the lawyer.

Sometimes I’ve been surprised by the author of a letter. Earlier this year, I wrote a column “The Trial is Over, But Not for Everyone” about the efforts to provide psychological counseling services for jurors who have endured grisly, disturbing testimony and evidence in brutal criminal cases.

Texas is a national leader in these efforts, thanks to the tireless work of Sharon Sedgwick Custer, who witnessed firsthand the impact of such evidence on jurors during the trial of her daughter’s murderer in Austin.

After the column, I was gratified to see Sharon writing online to one media outlet applauding my column for raising public awareness of such an important subject. She was even kind enough to write a letter supporting that column’s recent nomination for a journalism award.

I was even more surprised to get a letter from Jeffrey “Dell” Westbrook, an inmate at a Texas correctional facility in Abilene. I don’t know what crime Mr. Westbrook is incarcerated for, but judging from the fact that he’s in a “Super Max” (maximum security) in administrative segregation (solitary confinement), it’s probably pretty serious. He spends a fair amount of time poring over lawbooks, and somehow came across my article “Saying It With Style,” which is all about unusual and humorous casenames.

Mr. Westbrook may have lost his freedom, but he apparently hasn’t lost his sense of humor. In a very articulate letter, he wrote to suggest several possible additional cases should I ever write a sequel to that column.

Among the real life cases he came across were Chew v. Gates, which appropriately is about the legal dispute arising from a dogbite, and Battie v. Estelle, a case involving the ordering of a psychological exam because someone who actually went “batty.”

He also pointed out the inadvertent humor in the case entitled U.S. v. Sealed Juvenile 1, saying maybe they should let that juvenile out “or drill some airholes, or he’ll suffocate. The old ‘Prince Albert in a can’ joke.”

Perhaps the most poignant letter I’ve ever received also came from prison. In my recent two-part series “Sixteen, and Life to Go,” I wrote about the issue of juveniles sentenced as adults to life in prison, and I highlighted the case of Chad Uptergrove.

Chad is 20 years into a life sentence, and still maintains his innocence for the crime that saw him cast into the Texas prison system—a teenager doing time surrounded by hardened adult criminals.

While I have cleaned up the grammar and spelling, Chad’s own words underscore the theme of the article:

“As a juvenile entering a prison system full of grown men, I was thrown into an environment that preys on weakness and people force you to fight or pay protection, and that protection can be in whatever form they desire. You are thrown into a world where every extreme of criminal activity and criminal lifestyle is practiced on a daily basis. Prison does not rehabilitate; it only makes you worse by forcing you to embrace a criminal lifestyle, for which your very survival depends upon. You’re in a world ruled by violence . . . .”

Chad goes on to explain how, when he entered the Texas penitentiary system in the early ’90s, gang violence in prison—drawn along racial lines—was at an all-time high:

“Being a young white kid, I was immediately targeted. I cannot even recall how many times I was forced into a fight for no other reason than the fact that I was white, or the fact that I was young, and new to the system—apparently those things qualified me as a target. I had no idea the role race played in prison.

In the free world, I had friends and went to school with many different types of ethnic backgrounds. But in prison, you are ridiculed or looked down upon for interacting or just conversing with [someone of] another race. I saw young white kids getting raped and even murdered. I did not want to become a victim of these attacks. As a result of the day to day violence around me, I too became violent. It was either that or die—in my mind, I had no choice.”

The years of living in such a brutal environment, the strain of seeing his appeals denied at every turn, and the rapidly dwindling hope of having his life sentence cut short have taken their toll on Chad Uptergrove.

He has tried to commit suicide on three occasions and, today, state monies that could have been spent educating and rehabilitating a teenager are instead being spent housing a 37-year-old man in the “gladiator school” that is the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and medicating him for severe depression. Without having read the two-part series, Chad confirms from experience that the issues tackled in it are very much present today:

“I would like you to know that the youthful offenders coming in to the system are still faced with all of the things I have described to you and that these struggles and obstacles are still a very real part of prison life for juveniles serving time for capital offenses. Not only does it have a significant effect on the offenders themselves, but their families and loved ones as well.”

St. Louis’ City Museum is the sort of hands-on urban wonderland that kids love to explore.

Housed in a 10-story brick building, it boasts such interactive attractions as the Monstro City, a five-story jungle gym with two actual jets for kids to climb into and on; a rooftop Ferris wheel; a “ball pit” filled with large rubber balls; underground “secret passageways;” a “Monster Slide” that drops its riders 10 stories; and the “Puking Pig,” a huge metal drum that fills up with about 150 gallons of water until the sheer weight causes it to tip over and deluge an adjacent pool.

The City Museum is part industrial playground, part theme park, and part art exhibit. Don’t look for cold, antiseptic surroundings cordoned off by velvet ropes—virtually everything can be touched and even climbed, right down to the walk-through whale and other sculptures on the grounds. The attractions appeal to today’s kids even as they offer a nod to St. Louis’ industrial heritage by recycling things like vintage assembly-line rollers into slides and other features.

The museum is the brainchild of 61-year-old founder Bob Cassilly. A sculptor by trade who made his fortune as a developer of residential and commercial properties, Cassilly bought two downtown buildings (formerly owned by a shoe company) for $525,000 in 1993.

After renovations, he opened the City Museum in 1997, making his vision of a “computer-free zone” where kids could play and experience things in a hands-on, “please touch” environment. Maximum enjoyment in a low-tech experience is the rule here, from the “secret passageways” to the “skateless park” where children run up and slide down wooden skateboard ramps that are now slides.

The concept has caught on, with attendance topping 700,000 visitors annually. This makes it one of St. Louis’ most popular attractions, outdrawing more mainstream venues like the venerable St. Louis Art Museum.

But success comes with its own price tag, and not just in terms of the skinned knees and elbows that are part and parcel of childhood. City Museum has been named in over two dozen lawsuits since 2005.

Personal injury attorney Amy Gunn, who’s represented a boy who broke his leg on a slide and a college student who lost two fingers on another exhibit, says “I think it can be a really fun place, but my worry is that it’s not regulated enough. There are a lot of lawsuits for a reason.”

Cassilly counters that “that’s life.”

“We like to be the devil’s advocate for society,” he says. “When you have millions of people do something, something’s going to happen no matter what you do.”

One such inevitability: higher insurance premiums. When the museum started in 1997, its annual insurance cost was roughly $36,000. Now, its insurance premiums are approximately $600,000 each year, amounting to one dollar out of each $12 admission.

What makes Bob Cassilly’s approach to the onslaught of lawsuits so refreshing, though, is his refusal to take it quietly. While the museum has settled several cases and lost at least one jury verdict, it defiantly fights back—and not just in the courtroom.

Cassilly believes in “naming and shaming”—a sign near the admissions entrance lists the names and phone numbers of lawyers and law firms who sued the museum, explaining that the trial lawyers and their clients are responsible for a 9 percent surcharge that was added in 2010 to the cost of each ticket.

One lawyer in particular has earned Cassilly’s ire.

Prominent St. Louis personal injury lawyer Terry Crouppen (whom Cassilly refers to as an “ambulance chaser” and “mugger”) appears at the museum, but not the way you might think; the museum has an effigy of Crouppen locked in a pillory near the ticket window (the pillory, or stocks, were used in days gone by to publicly punish and shame criminals).

Cassilly has called plaintiffs “foolish” and maintains that lawyers “are taking the fun out of life.”

Besides the public shaming, the City Museum has fought back against frivolous lawsuits in other ways. Video cameras have been installed to document accidents and to expose fraudulent claims.

As explained on the museum’s Facebook page, this is with good reason:

“Just to give you a quick glimpse into what we go through at the City Museum, a couple of years ago our rock fell 4 feet. The next day we had over 12 people call and tell us they were injured when the rock fell. To investigate these claims, we reviewed the video of the rock falling and we posted the video clearly showing that there was no one next to the rock when it fell on our website. When this was brought to several of the callers’ attention they either hung up or changed their stories.”

Bob Cassilly and his innovative, popular City Museum illustrate an unfortunate truism of American business: if you build a better mousetrap, someone will step forward and claim that it’s unreasonably dangerous.

Or, to put it another way, “if you build it, they will sue.”

Are the interactive features in this industrial playground completely safe? No—and neither is life.

Send your kid out to play with a helmet, safety pads and wrapped all over in bublewrap, and he or she is going to miss out on many of life’s character-building bumps and bruises.

Lawsuits, and perhaps even more accurately the fear of lawsuits, risk turning us into a society of excessively politically correct, risk-averse sheep.

Bob Cassilly is right—lawyers are taking the fun out of life.

Virginia Tice seems like your average, sweet little 65-year-old lady in Bonneau, S.C.—hardly the sort of person who would spark a First Amendment controversy. But that’s exactly what’s happened after she pulled her pickup truck into a gas station on July 5 and got a $445 ticket from a local policeman.

You see, Ms. Tice’s truck is decorated with a novelty item called “Bulls Balls,” a set of big, red fake testicles hanging from the truck’s trailer hitch. Like a similar product called “Truck Nutz,” they’re sold online as an expression of the truck’s (and by extension, the driver’s) machismo.

They’re not popular with everyone; state legislatures in Virginia, Maryland and Florida have proposed banning the fake testicles, and even the Dallas Morning News’ “Problem Solver” editor has fielded questions from north Texas drivers about the novelty items.

The ticket issued to Ms. Tice is for allegedly violating South Carolina’s obscene bumper sticker law, which provides that “A sticker, decal, emblem, or device is indecent when taken as a whole, it describes, in a patently offensive way, as determined by contemporary community standards, sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body.”

Bonneau’s police chief, Franco Fuda, is eager for a jury trial to determine the issue and stands by his department’s ticket-writing policies. Ms. Tice doesn’t want to pay the hefty fine (no jail time is involved), and her lawyer Scott Bischoff states “We’ll let a jury decide whether this is really criminal behavior. I don’t want to take away from the importance of free speech, but it’s really comical.”

I tend to agree. I’m no fan of big government telling someone how they can and can’t decorate their vehicle.

If there’s no safety issue involved, I could care less if you have a bumper sticker, flag or emblem professing allegiance to a school or sports team, expressing your political or religious views or depicting a cartoon character urinating on the logo of a rival car maker.

South Carolina’s law has been successfully challenged before on free speech grounds, and I expect this outcome to be no different. It takes (pardon the expression) real cojones to go up against the First Amendment; besides, the law as it is written shouldn’t even apply. It outlaws obscene depictions of human body parts, and Ms. Tice’s clearly pays homage to something belonging on a bull.

Lately, everybody seems to think their case is more important and earth-shattering than it really is. Sometimes, it’s up to judges to remind them that it’s not.

For example, in July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit handed down an opinion in an intellectual property dispute between Georgia-Pacific Consumer Products (makers of Quilted Northern toilet paper) and Kimberly-Clark Corp. (makers of the competing Cottonelle brand of toilet paper).

At issue was whether Kimberly-Clark’s brands of tissue infringed on Georgia-Pacific’s quilted design.

In his ruling, Justice Evans voiced some surprise at the extent of the legal combat over a product that is such a mundane part of life:

“We are told that during the ‘expedited’ discovery period leading up to the district court decision we are called upon to review, some 675,000 pages of documents were produced and more than a dozen witnesses were deposed. That’s quite a record considering, again, that this case is about toilet paper.”

Justice Evans went on to have some more fun with the subject matter of the lawsuit, noting that although the trial court judge had “dutifully plied her opinion,” the appellate court must “now wipe the slate clean and address Georgia-Pacific’s claim.”

Nicely done, Justice Evans—you were on a roll, and no doubt the winning paper company was flush with success. ( I’m sad to report that shortly after this opinion was published, the venerable and witty jurist passed away).

In the same month, our own Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unloaded with a “benchslap” against a would-be cheerleader, her mother and their attorneys who had taken a situation out of the movie “Mean Girls” and made a federal case out of it.

In Sanches v. Carrollton-Farmers Branch I.S.D., the justices expressed little interest with the teen soap opera taking place at Creekview High School:

“Reduced to its essentials, this is nothing more than a dispute, fueled by a disgruntled cheerleader mom, over whether her daughter should have made the squad. It is a petty squabble, masquerading as a civil rights matter, that has no place in federal court or any other court. We find no error and affirm.”

The court also had some choice words for Sanches’ attorneys, calling their brief “unprofessional,” “so poorly written that it is difficult to decipher what the attorneys mean,” and filled with typos and “miscues [that] are so egregious and obvious that an average fourth grader would have avoided most of them.” Ouch!

And then there are those lawsuits that just make no sense to me, and which give the legal profession a bad name.

For example, recently a product liability lawsuit was filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas (Texarkana Division). The parents of a Texas high school cheerleader are suing because their daughter was seriously burned while attending a campfire with some high school friends. A boy attempted to reignite the campfire by pouring gasoline.

Did they sue the boy? No. They sued Blitz U.S.A., the manufacturer of the gas can, saying that there must be a safer alternative design that could have prevented such an incident, and that Blitz should have warned about the possibility of a fire like this occurring.

Seriously? Some idiot pours gasoline on a fire, causing out of control flames, and it’s the fault of how the gasoline can was made? You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s gasoline, for crying out loud. Unless you’re appearing in a “Jackass” movie, you shouldn’t be pouring it on a fire. Why not sue singer David Bowie? After all, he once did a song called “Putting Out Fire With Gasoline;” maybe he’s to blame.

If that isn’t enough proof that the concept of personal responsibility is lost on some people, then consider this lawsuit recently filed in New York. Diane Schuler killed herself and seven other people in a wrong-way collision on the Taconic State Parkway when she crashed her minivan into an SUV occupied by three men; toxicology reports indicated that Diane Schuler was drunk and high when the accident happened. Among the occupants in her car who were killed were three of her young nieces, ages 5, 7 and 8 respectively.

So who would you expect to be sued? Shockingly enough, Diane Schuler’s husband, Daniel, decided to sue, saying the accident couldn’t have been the fault of an inebriated, stoned wife driving the wrong way—that would be too easy an explanation. Instead, he’s sued the state of New York itself, claiming that the highway was poorly designed and that it lacked proper signs (not counting all those “Wrong Way” signs, of course).

He also filed a separate lawsuit against his own brother-in-law, the grieving father of the three little girls who were killed. I’ve heard of “the best defense is a good offense,” but suing your brother-in-law after your own wife kills all three of his kids seems like a monumentally stupid, offensive idea to me.

And you wonder why the legal profession gets a bad name?

It’s no secret that in this depressed economy many lines of work have taken a beating. The legal profession is certainly one of them.

Recent law school graduates are having a tougher time than ever finding jobs in their chosen field. In June 2011 alone, the legal sector had lost 2,600 jobs. Because of this, competition for legal work is becoming more and more intense, leading many lawyers to explore even more creative ways to market themselves.

Of course, there’s “creative,” and then there’s unusual and sometimes downright tacky.

In the United Kingdom, the matrimonial lawyers at Follett Stock Solicitors have drawn the ire of local religious leaders for advertising (for a limited time only) free divorces.

The offer, made via the firm’s website, Twitter, and in a flyer, doesn’t include court costs or extras like tracking down an estranged spouse. Clergymen maintain that the free offer encourages couples to make a hasty decision about splitting; the law firm counters that it’s just good advertising and a public service for those who want to divorce but can’t afford the legal fees.

Over here in the U.S., Portland, Ore., personal injury firm Berkshire Ginsberg has nothing to hide—literally. In June, the firm sponsored the popular annual World Naked Bike Ride event, which was expected to draw as many as 20,000 au naturel cyclists.

Firm partner Mark Ginsberg is an avid cyclist, and he saw sponsorship as a way to promote his firm’s representation of the vulnerable. The tagline associated with the lawyers’ support of the ride read “When you’re naked, we’ve got you covered.”

For a lot of lawyers, hitting the books in school meant entry into a world where they wouldn’t have to do jobs like deliver pizza. Now a new company founded by non-lawyer Chris Miles promises legal help as quickly as—well, a pizza.

LawyerUp, which operates in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, offers subscribers (who pay $4.95 a month) access to a lawyer within 15 minutes of a legal emergency. LawyerUp gets paid $100 for the first call (for nonsubscribers), and the attorneys earn up to $250 for the first hour of work (they have to be agreeable to taking late night calls).

Chris Miles rationalizes the service by saying “If I want a pizza, I can get a pizza in 15 minutes. . . . Why can’t I get a lawyer?”

Connecticut Bar Association President Ralph Monaco called the company’s name “so tasteless.”

For other lawyers, it’s all about the ads themselves. Ontario trial lawyers at Sanders, Lyn & Ragonetti advertise their divorce practice with a photo of a sports car bearing the license plate “WAS HIS” (I guess they represented the wife).

Philadelphia lawyer Larry Leftkowitz seeks to associate himself with trustworthiness with an ad in which his head is Photoshopped onto Abraham Lincoln’s body. Maybe he specializes in rail-splitting, or emancipations.

Meanwhile, Tulsa trial lawyer Bryce A. Hill has his firm’s ad prominently featured on a race car for NASCAR fans everywhere. Yes, nothing says “classy” quite like having a law firm name and “TulsaTrialLawyer.com” right above the Confederate flag and a Jack Daniels logo.

Some law firms go with a musical approach. New York personal injury firm Greenstein & Milbauer opted for a rap song; some of the lyrics include “Have a neck broke/from an accident you didn’t provoke?”

The Los Angeles-based entertainment law firm of White O’Connor, on the other hand, uploaded a YouTube video with a lawyer in a suit singing a reggae song about their practice.

Other attorneys take a more personal approach. Peruse the website of the law firm of Mahoney Anderson LLC in Eden Prairie, Minn., and you find out more than you cared to know about attorney David M. Anderson. For example, Anderson boasts that before marrying a “former International Fashion Model and Miss Minnesota World,” he “dated women who went on to positions on the Federal Bench and National Anchor spots on FOX News.”

Seriously? This guy thinks who he’s dated should somehow make a prospective client want to hire him? If this isn’t enough to make you think Anderson is a colossal tool, then consider his online business card, which notes that “Tri-lingual and an accomplished Jazz Pianist and 3-time Marathon Finisher, David continues to wonder in awe at his endowment of excessive gifts and talents, when so many others have been apparently deprived of any.”

Hopefully, he meant this to be taken tongue in cheek, or else make sure there’s enough room in his conference room for you, Anderson, and Anderson’s ego.

Maybe Anderson was inspired by Baltimore, Maryland attorney Barry Glazer, whose Facebook page boasts “Every once in a while, a man emerges to lead the masses to greatness. With his cunning intelligence, impressively dyed blonde hair, and great catchphrases, Barry Glazer has become not only a law hero in Baltimore, but also an Icon throughout Maryland.”

Really?

Maybe the “great catchphrases” aspect is true; Glazer is known for his commercials, a number of which can be found on YouTube, and many of which have something to do with urine.

In one ad, he refers to himself as “Legal advocate for the injured, disabled, and urinated upon;” in another, he admonishes insurance companies to not “urinate on my leg and tell me it’s raining.” He even comments on the BP oil spill with the tagline “BP’eed on lately” and his website features a “Don’t Pee on Me” tab.

I guess there’s a reason why, when you think of “classy,” lawyer ads don’t exactly spring to mind.

Most of us spend a significant portion of our daily lives at work. And whether you’re on a busy assembly line or passing hours in a cubicle, you generally try to make the day go as quickly as possible, putting up with certain workplace trials and tribulations in exchange for a paycheck, health insurance, and a certain measure of self-worth and accomplishment.

For some workers, though, it’s become a case of one too many indignities, until they reached the point of humming right along with Johnny Paycheck’s working man’s anthem “You Can Take This Job and Shove It.”

Take Roy Lester, for example. The 61-year-old from Long Island worked part time as a lifeguard at New York’s Jones Beach State Park for four decades until 2007. He claims he was forced out of that job because of a state park regulation requiring lifeguards to take the annual 100-yard swim qualification test, wearing either brief Speedos or loose-fitting boxer or board shorts.

Lester, who prefers tight-fitting swim “jammers” that reach to the knee, refused to wear the board shorts (he says they slow him down) or the Speedos.

“I wore a Speedo when I was in my 20s,” he says. “But come on. There should be a law prohibiting anyone over the age of 50 from wearing a Speedo.”

Lester believes the Speedo regulation is a thinly-veiled way of weeding out older lifeguards (he estimates that over 80 percent of the Jones Beach lifeguards are over 40) and, in 2009, the part-time lifeguard and full-time bankruptcy lawyer filed an age discrimination lawsuit. An appeals court recently rejected New York’s attempt to dispose of the claim, and trial is expected to go forward late this year or early in 2012.

Speaking of trials, most employers recognize the importance of civic duty like jury service. A number of states, including Texas, provide an added layer of protection for employees by requiring that employers give time off for workers summoned for jury service.

And of all the employers you would expect to be sensitive to the importance of jury duty, law firms would be at the top of the list—right?

Apparently, not at a certain Detroit-area law firm. When Macomb County Circuit Court Judge Mary Chrzanowski was preparing to swear in a jury in a September 2011 murder trial, one of the jurors surprised her by asking to be excused. The female juror submitted a letter from her law firm employer indicating that if she didn’t return to work the firm would replace her.

Judge Chrzanowski considered it “unbelievable” that the firm would have “the audacity to do this.” The judge wouldn’t name the firm or detail how she handled it, but the juror was kept on the jury.

From the hot air of lawyers to, well, another form of hot air, how would you like your employer to discipline you over passing gas?

Clarksville, Tenn., paramedic Rita Cain filed a lawsuit claiming that her employer, Montgomery County Emergency Medical Services, illegally punished her for flatulence.

Cain has worked there since 1992 and rose to the rank of lieutenant. But on a March 2011 call, Cain was on the phone with a 911 operator when she passed gas. The operator heard the flatulent noise and made an internal complaint.

Within days, Cain says she was demoted and received a written warning (one step short of termination) for the flatulence episode.

Cain’s lawsuit maintains that she’s being discriminated against because of her gender, saying that male employees haven’t been disciplined the same for identical “or worse conduct.”

While it remains to be seen (or heard) how a federal judge feels about Rita Cain’s lawsuit, at least one other court has held that flatulence itself doesn’t constitute harassment.

In the 1999 case of Klein v. McGowan, a Minnesota judge held that the “expelling of flatulence, while offensive, rude, and vulgar to people of either sex, is not tantamount to actionable harassment.”

Cain is seeking at least $300,000 in damages in her lawsuit. That could buy a lot of Beano, or perhaps jackets for all of her fellow paramedics—I hear windbreakers are making a comeback.

Most employers would prefer not to have employees with drinking problems. That concern becomes even more understandable for employers like the interstate trucking company Old Dominion Freight Line Inc., which doesn’t want drivers with a history of alcoholism behind the wheel.

While this might make sense to you and me, the federal government — in the form of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — considers it to be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, since that statute recognizes alcoholism as a disability.

So the EEOC has sued Old Dominion for a policy that makes perfect sense and has probably avoided any number of catastrophic highway accidents.

Psst—EEOC—I hear that they won’t let blind people drive either. Good luck with that lawsuit!

How about insensitive employers? Cecelia Ingraham, a longtime employee of Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical Co. in New Jersey, lost her teenage daughter Tatiana in 2005 to leukemia. Ingraham’s grief was deep, and in her cubicle at work she displayed reminders of her daughter, like photos and Tatiana’s ballet slippers.

After more than a year, Ingraham says her boss ordered her to take the mementos down and stop talking about Tatiana’s death because it made co-workers “uncomfortable.”

Ingraham resigned shortly thereafter and sued her employer for discrimination and for intentional infliction of emotional distress. A trial court rejected her claims, and a New Jersey appeals court recently upheld the dismissal.

It said that while Ingraham’s boss might have been “insensitive” to the plaintiff’s “continuing bereavement,” the employer’s conduct wasn’t so “atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community” as to justify a recovery.

Whether he’s just another insensitive employer or “the boss from hell” as some of his employees have described him, William Ernst of Bettendorf, Iowa, has earned a spot in this rogue’s gallery of employers.

Ernst, the owner of a chain of convenience stores called QC Mart, sent all of his workers a memo in March 2011. The memo announced a new contest — “Guess the Next Cashier to be Fired!!!”

Employees were encouraged to write down the name of the next cashier to be fired (for a variety of sundry offenses, such as wearing a hat or talking on a cell phone), seal it in an envelope, and give it to a manager. The winner would get “$10 CASH”—only one winner per firing.

The memo went on to jovially admonish “[N]o fair picking Mike Miller (from the Rockingham Road store). He was fired at around 11:30 a.m. today for wearing a hat and talking on is cell phone. Good luck!!!!”

At least two QC Mart employees sent letters to company managers complaining about the contest, with one stating that it had “created an atmosphere or distrust, intimidation and paranoia.”

Cashier Misty Shelsky, her store manager and several other employees quit over the contest, saying Ernst had cultivated a hostile work environment.

When Shelsky filed a claim for unemployment benefits, Ernst contested the claim. Administrative Law Judge Susan Ackerman sided with the cashier and her fellow workers, calling the QC Mart work environment “intolerable and detrimental,” and castigating Ernst for suggesting that employees “turn on each other for a minimal monetary prize.”

Finally, if you’ve ever waited tables in a greasy spoon, a fast food place or even the finest restaurants, you know that there can be a seamy underbelly to the food business. But how would you like it if the restaurant where you worked was listed in the phone book under “Animal Carcass Removal?”

That’s the case for the Bar3 Bar-B-Q restaurants in Bozeman and Belgrade, Mont., and the telephone book’s printing mistake was immortalized in a Jay Leno monologue on the Tonight Show.

But for restaurant owner Hunter Lacey, it’s no laughing matter. He’s filed a lawsuit against Dex Media Inc., claiming that his brand and business reputation have suffered because of the restaurants’ listing in the “Animal Carcass Removal” section.

The mistake was in both online and printed directories, and has lived on via the Internet, forwarded emails and even customer reviews on the restaurant’s Facebook page.

Lacey’s lawsuit accuses Dex Media of not only negligence and defamation, but also of deliberately publishing the harmful listing because Lacey refused to purchase an advertisement.

Dex Media “regrets” the publication and says that an employee who altered the restaurant listing to appear under “Animal Carcass Removal” was acting outside his duties. That’s not enough for Hunter Lacey, who says his hard-won branding efforts have been “wiped out.”

From being fired for not wearing Speedos or being a grieving mother, to working in environments known for flatulence or “Animal Carcass Removal,” the workplace can be stranger than any “Dilbert” cartoon. Our legal system proves it.

Okay, first things first: this would have been an ideal subject for my column running last week, on Halloween weekend. Unfortunately, deadlines—or “un-dead lines’—come and go with frightening speed.

Besides, anything pertaining to zombies lately is hot regardless of the time of year. The AMC show “The Walking Dead” is setting ratings records (over 7 million tuned in to watch the program’s second season debut); Max Brooks’ book “World War Z” will soon be a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt, and zombie novels like Colson Whitehead’s “Zone One” are being devoured by readers faster than, well, zombies gobbling up human brains.

So why are zombies striking a popular chord nowadays? The thought-provoking Slate magazine article “First, Eat All The Lawyers” by Torie Bosch espouses the theory that the public’s fascination with zombies is a reflection of our soured economy and the economic fears of white-collar workers.

As Bosch puts it, “The zombie apocalypse is a white-collar nightmare: a world with no need for the skills we have developed. Lawyers, journalists, investment bankers—they are liabilities, not leaders, in the zombie-infested world.”

Bosch points out that, as in many post-apocalyptic scenarios, the strongest survivors in “The Walking Dead” tend to come from blue-collar backgrounds. The people handiest to have around have farming and mechanical skills, and are comfortable with guns and hunting.

As proof, she points to one of the weakest characters—Andrea, a former civil rights attorney. According to Bosch, “In the zombie apocalypse, your J.D. is worthless—which is actually not so different from the real world of recent years.”

Other writers have echoed this fear. In “World War Z,” author Max Brooks describes it this way:

“You’re a high-powered corporate attorney. You’ve spent most of your life reviewing contracts, brokering deals, talking on the phone. That’s what you’re good at, that’s what made you rich and what allowed you to hire a plumber to fix your toilet, which allowed you to keep talking on the phone. . . . That’s the way the world works. But one day it doesn’t. No one needs a contract reviewed or a deal brokered. What it does need is toilets fixed. And suddenly that peon is your teacher, maybe even your boss. For some, this was scarier than the living dead.”

And in “Zone One,” Colson Whitehead paints a similarly bleak picture of those who “had graduated with admirable GPAs, configured monthly contributions to worthy causes, judiciously apportioned their 401(k)s across diverse sectors,” and who had otherwise “been honed and trained so thoroughly by that extinguished world that they were doomed in this one.”

Yes, for Bosch and other writers, pop culture’s boom in zombies is a reflection of our uncertain economic times, where corporate layoffs and the worst legal job market in decades serve as reminders that skills we might otherwise consider meaningful (like contract negotiation) aren’t quite so vital in the grand scheme of things.

Shows like “The Walking Dead” mirror the fear that all that book learning and corporate ladder-climbing will count for nothing when you’re world is turned upside down.

Bosch identifies with “[t]he suburbanite/urbanite viewer who can’t hunt, can’t slaughter animals, can’t grow her own food, [who] is meant to shudder at her ill-preparedness while watching.”

Bosch has a valid point, but perhaps she’s shortchanging lawyers. As fans of “The Walking Dead” graphic novels (on which the TV show is based) know, weak link former attorney Andrea turns out to be an Annie Oakley-like crack shot who proves her worth to the struggling band of survivors.

And the zombie body count goes way up with the appearance of the mysterious, samurai sword-wielding Michonne, who it turns out had been a lawyer before the zombie pandemic.

For that matter, what about a world in which a zombie lawyer figures prominently? Meet Mallory Caine, Zombie-at-Law, the heroine of novelist James Scott Bell’s (writing under the nom de plume K. Bennett) new book “Pay Me in Flesh.”

Caine is smart, stylish, and very much a zombie; as Bell puts it, she’s “hungry for justice—and brains.”

Caine may be one of Los Angeles’ walking dead, but she’s a practicing attorney helping other paranormal figures like a vampire hooker with their legal problems even as Satan himself plots to turn L.A. into his own headquarters (that last part may be as close as the book comes to non-fiction).

Caine doesn’t have a soul—a byproduct of being a zombie, not a defense attorney, though some may disagree—but she’s trying to get hers back. In the meantime, however, she has to devour human flesh and brains, which is why the defense never rests—in peace.

As the tagline for Bell’s book puts it, “In L.A., practicing law can be hell. Especially if you’re dead.”

A second Mallory Caine novel, “The Year of Eating Dangerously,” is due out in early 2012.

If flesh eating zombies ever emerge from anything other than pop culture and our collective subconscious, I hope that these lurching and drooling undead who come my way will leave me alone—if for nothing else than out of professional courtesy.

People often ask me if some of the more bizarre stories I’ve shared about the criminal and civil justice systems are really true. Trust me—they are.

Besides the fact that I couldn’t ethically report on something I’ve simply made up (unlike certain New York Times and Washington Post reporters), the fact is that even in my most creative moments I couldn’t have come up with the sort of wackiness that populates our courthouses on a regular basis.

If I could, well, then I’d probably be giving lawyers-turned-writers like John Grisham and David E. Kelley a run for their money.

If you think I’m kidding, then just consider the following true incidents:

Of Course I Can Be Impartial About Myself

Derrick C. Smith of Schenectady, N.Y., got something surprising in the mail while awaiting trial for murder in September 2011 — a jury duty summons for his own trial!

It turns out that because Smith hadn’t responded to a previous juror questionnaire sent out by the county, he was “automatically qualified” and issued a summons in late August; as fate would have it, the case for which the summons happened to be was the one in which Smith is the defendant.

Commissioner of Jurors Hope Splittgerber said this has never happened before in her 28 years on the job. Even Judge Richard Giardino joked that Mr. Smith had expressed his willingness to be part of the jury pool, and that if selected he promised to be fair and impartial.

The episode provided a rare moment of levity in an otherwise sobering case, in which Smith and another man are accused of shooting Michael Deveaux Jr. after a fight at a local bar in June 2010.

Burglary Can Be Hard Work, So Why Not Nap?

A 35-year-old Wichita, Kan., man was arrested in September after falling asleep while burglaring a home.

Police Lt. Steve Kenney said that the man broke in, gathered a number of items to steal, but then apparently couldn’t resist the temptation to shower and take a nap. The homeowners returned, found the intruder in the bedroom, and called the police (who apprehended the suspect hiding in a closet).

Maybe this burglar’s favorite bedtime story growing up was “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”

Honest—To An Extreme

Michael Andes of Shelton, Conn., feels very strongly about the lack of parking enforcement in his town. So much so that in August 2011, he parked his car illegally in a handicapped space and proceeded to call police over a dozen times—to report himself!

Authorities say that Andes “yelled” at a dispatcher, and when they finally showed up, he screamed and became so “combative” that they had to subdue him with a stun gun.

Well, Michael, the cops are on the job now. Andes has been charged with disturbing the peace, interfering with an officer, and yes—he was also given a ticket for parking in a handicapped space.

A Wink and A Nod

Serial killer Anthony Sowell of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, was convicted in July 2011 in the murders of 11 Cleveland-area women. One of his attorneys sought a new trial, though, based on a wink.

The motion claimed that the jury forewoman was prejudiced against Sowell from the start of the trial, and that she was quoted in a news conference telling how Sowell had winked at her once.

Prosecutors called the motion based on little more than a wink “asinine” and “foolish,” and Judge Dick Ambrose apparently agreed. He denied the request for a new trial.

Now Sowell only has his cellmate to wink at. Good luck with that.

This Carjacker Wanted a Ride, and He Got One

Twenty-six-year-old Dionette L. Price of Kansas City, Mo., probably thought it would be a routine, run-of-the-mill carjacking when he allegedly pointed a .357 Magnum at Rayna Garrett and tried to get in her car on Highway 71 on Sept. 7.

But then Garrett tried to go around him, and Price jumped on the hood of the vehicle. So Garrett decided Price would get a ride after all—straight to the Kansas City police station, more than two miles away.

Price held on for dear life as Garrett sped to the police garage, rammed into a door and honked multiple times. Before police came out, Price fled on foot, but was arrested shortly thereafter at a nearby bus stop.

That’s right, Mr. Price; mass transit seems to be a lot safer than trying to carjack someone. Perhaps you should think about that for the next, say, seven to 10 years.

The Smell of . . . Victory?

It was certainly one of the more bizarre moments in the legal annals of Pasco, Fla., this past September. First of all, 32-year-old convicted felon Morgan Armstrong was representing himself on charges of robbing a convenience store near New Port Richey twice in October 2009.

Armstrong had already been tried earlier in 2011 in a third convenience store holdup, and had been acquitted. But, Armstrong didn’t feel his lawyer was “on his side” regarding the two robberies of the Beverages Plus store, so he elected to represent himself (big mistake: he was convicted and sentenced to 35 years. So much for the “jailhouse lawyer”).

The trial also took a strange turn during the testimony of store clerk Falguni Patel. While describing her ordeal of being robbed with a knife at her throat, Patel fainted on the witness stand.

Now, that’s not even the weird part, as dramatic as it is. What happened next is perhaps best described by the St. Petersburg Times in its coverage of the trial:

“Family member and business partner Meena Patel removed her sneaker and held it to Falguni Patel’s nose, attempting to revive her with the odor.”

Seriously? Someone faints, and you try to revive her with a smelly sneaker?

Maybe this will open up commercial sponsorship opportunities for our courts in an era of dwindling budgets—”This trial brought to you by Dr. Scholl’s Odor-Eaters.”

Is That A Snake in Your Shorts, Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

Finally, there are people who like pets, and then there are people who like pets a little too much. Put Eric Fiegel in the latter category.

The 22-year-old Phoenix, Ariz., man was caught on surveillance videotape on July 30 stealing several baby albino boa constrictors from Predator’s Reptile Center in Mesa, Ariz.

The footage shows Fiegel removing several snakes from their cage and stuffing them down his shorts before exiting the store without paying. Police apprehended Fiegel after he went to another pet store and traded some of the stolen snakes for $175 and a large reptile tank.

Apparently, this is not the only time someone’s stolen a snake this way. In July 2007 the Fox television station in St. Louis, Mo., reported the case of a man arrested for theft after getting caught by a pet store’s surveillance camera stuffing a black pine snake (valued at $250) down his pants.

So, the next time someone comments about the “baby albino boa constrictor” in his pants, it might not be a euphemism.

Years ago, I tried a case in which the elderly plaintiff, egged on by her adult daughter, turned down what I thought was a pretty generous six-figure settlement offer and insisted on proceeding to trial. When the jury came back in my client’s favor with a verdict that the plaintiff receive nothing, she looked absolutely stunned.

The adult daughter—never at a loss for words—simply started berating the despondent-looking attorney, screeching “Well, that could’ve gone better!”

It is an image that remains with me whenever I hear of moments at trial that go horribly awry for one side or the other. Here are a few of my recent favorites:

A Defense That’s All Wet

Fifty-five-year-old Marie Rusin was in federal court in New York recently, accused of scamming the Long Island Rail Road pension fund. In an earlier proceeding, she was accused of “fabricating a medical condition” in order to avoid a trip to Manhattan to meet with federal prosecutors. This time, Rusin “slumped over and did other things to make it appear she needed medical attention” in court, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin Weddle.

To really sell the supposed performance, prosecutors say, Rusin purposely peed in her pants—the evidence of which was still staining the courtroom chair as she was taken to a nearby hospital. While Rusin’s attorney denies that his client was faking a medical problem to get out of court, the incontinent defendant was released after about an hour and the hearing resumed.

She Rubbed This Lawyer the Wrong Way

It’s got to be somewhat awkward when you are a lawyer defending someone accused of illegal human trafficking, as Chicago lawyer Douglas Rathe was in August. Rathe was defending Alex “Daddy” Campbell in federal court.

Campbell was accused of exploiting immigrant women by having them work at his massage parlor and perform sexual favors for money (called “extras”) pocketed by Campbell; he allegedly kept the women under constant threat of deportation.

At trial, witness after witness testified about Campbell’s reign of terror. But the trial came to an abrupt halt when Ukrainian immigrant Liudmyla “Liuda” Ksenych told prosecutors that she recognized defense attorney Rathe as a client from the massage parlor where she worked for Campbell.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Gettleman declared a mistrial.

In the meantime, in a hearing that had to give new meaning to the words “awkward” and “uncomfortable,” Rathe testified about how he was indeed a massage client of “Liuda,” and had given her gifts and exchanged emails with her—but that there was no sex involved.

Campbell is set for a new trial in January, and with a new defense attorney—one who hasn’t frequented his massage parlors.

Some People Beat the Rap, Others Beat the Judge

Philadelphia defense attorney Joseph Stanton was defending right to life advocate Margaret McGrath in July 1997. The 60-year-old McGrath faced harassment and assault charges stemming from picketing a northeast Philadelphia abortion clinic.

During an in-chambers hearing in the midst of trial, assistant district attorney Brian Grady “got carried away” and tried to assault Judge Richard Klein. When defense attorney Stanton intervened, he got pummeled for his trouble.

Grady was held in contempt of court and fined $2,500. A mistrial was declared and another judge granted a motion to bar the retrial of Ms. McGrath, calling Grady’s acts “a signal of the breakdown of the integrity of the judicial proceeding.”

That’s too bad—I wanted to negotiate the pay-per-view rights for the rematch.

Helpful Tip—Don’t Call the Judge an “Ass Clown”

Paul Hupp filed for bankruptcy and tried to discharge $80,000 worth of student loan debt, and the legal maneuverings in his case brought the dispute all the way to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California.

But perhaps he should have invested in a lawyer instead of representing himself, because his persuasion skills could use a little work. For example, his brief is one long, rambling missive full of profanity, most of which is directed against the judges themselves.

I can’t quote most of Hupp’s choice wording in a family newspaper—suffice it to say that “slime ball” and “ass clown” are about the most printable ways he addresses the court.

And while there are many ways to respond to an argument by opposing counsel, I’m pretty sure that “Wrong, bitches” is not the preferred way taught in most law schools. Hupp’s appeal was denied—color me surprised.

Taking the Hypocritical Oath

Sixty-year-old violinist Martin Stoner wants to be judged for his abilities, not his age.

After being rejected from a competition run by the nonprofit Young Concert Artists, Stoner (who played with the New York City Ballet orchestra for 25 years) filed an age discrimination lawsuit in federal court on his own behalf.

But after his case was assigned to 88-year-old Manhattan federal Judge Robert Patterson, Stoner cried foul and filed a judicial complaint seeking a different judge because, he claims, Patterson is too old.

In his complaint, Stoner argues that Judge Patterson “could barely see unless he put his face almost on top of a document,” that he “should be removed from the bench both because of his mental and physical limitations,” and because he’s “too old to preside.”

The irony isn’t lost on anyone, including Stoner.

“I know it sounds kind of like hypocrisy,” he said.

Young Concert Artists director Susan Wadsworth said “The whole thing is pretty comical.”

Good luck appearing credible as a crusader against age discrimination, Mr. Stoner—you’re going to need it.

Maybe the Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword

Joshua Monson, a defendant up on felony drug charges in Snohomish County, Wash., is finding it hard to come by both defense lawyers and office supplies lately. That is because he keeps stabbing his attorneys with pencils and pens—to the point where Judge David Kutz has declared that Monson has forfeited his right to counsel.

In the first two incidents, Monson was accused of stabbing two different lawyers with pencils smuggled in from jail. In the third incident on Nov. 1, Monson allegedly grabbed a pen from defense attorney Jesse Cantor and stabbed him in the head during the prosecutor’s opening statement.

For the rest of his trial, Monson will not only have to represent himself, but he’ll do so strapped to a special chair—a lá Hannibal Lecter. Judge Kutz instructed the jury to ignore the pen-stabbing incident, the absence of counsel and Monson’s unique restraints.

And for goodness sake, don’t let him anywhere near an office supply store!

When All Else Fails, Blame Your Legal Education

Finally, there are those lawyers who personify the old saying about how it is better to remain silent and risk people thinking you’re ignorant than to open your mouth and confirm their suspicions.

This exchange comes from an actual trial transcript quoted in a case that went up before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

The judge and the plaintiff’s attorney, Mr. Phipps, are discussing the applicability of certain cases to the one Phipps is arguing:

Judge: What do you do about Morgan?
Phipps: I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know Morgan, Your Honor.
Judge: You don’t know Morgan?
Phipps: Nope.
Judge: You haven’t read it?
Phipps: I try not to read that many cases, Your Honor.
Judge: I must say, Morgan is a case that is directly relevant to this case. And for you representing the Plaintiff to get up here—it’s a Supreme Court case—and say you haven’t read it. Where did they teach you that?
Phipps: They didn’t teach me much, Your Honor.
Judge: At Tulane, is it?
Phipps: Loyola.
Judge: Okay. Well, I must say, that may be an all time first.
Phipps: That’s why I wore a suit today, Your Honor.
Judge: Alright. We’ve got your attitude, anyway.

Yeah, that could have gone better.

In Part 1, I shared some recent examples of the strangeness that frequently accompanies criminal and civil cases.

As the following examples illustrate, there is a lot more where that came from:

Poetic Justice

Canadian prosecutor John Ramsay decided to add some rhyming to the closing argument he delivered during an Ottawa drunk driving trial in September.

Describing the government’s case against defendant Joey Anderson, Ramsay used poetry to summarize everything from the witness testimony, the police conclusions, and even a warning about driving drunk:

“Beers at a cottage, 15 did he drink / And proceed to drive, rather than think / A marked departure from the reasonable driver / Mr. Anderson is fortunate he’s a survivor.”

It evidently worked, because Anderson was convicted and sentenced to 60 days in jail.

Ramsay garnered a fair amount of publicity for his closing argument couplets, but later apologized, saying he didn’t intend to make light of “a great public concern.”

As for me, I have no problem with Ramsay’s rhyming. And in his honor, here’s a poem of my own:

“Ramsay’s pleadings in verse / Could certainly be worse / To send felons to the slammer / Why not sue verse as a hammer?”

A Fan’s Ultimate Revenge

Any diehard Yankees fan would jump at the chance to disrupt the game plans of the hated Boston Red Sox. So it must have been a dream come true for Yankees fan and process server Tom Cabral to serve suit papers on Red Sox pitcher Erik Bedard in September.

In fact, Cabral—clad in a Yankees shirt, of course—arranged to serve Bedard with child support papers from an ex-girlfriend mere hours before Bedard was set to take the mound at Fenway Park (Cabral even posted about it on his Facebook page).

It must have worked—the Red Sox lost to the Orioles that night 7–5, and not long after had a catastrophic meltdown against Tampa Bay that kept them out of the American League playoffs.

Maybe He’s Climbing a “Stairway to Courthouse”

George F. Blackburn of Missouri really, really likes Led Zeppelin. So much, in fact, that the 64 year old recently had his name legally changed to “Led Zeppelin II,” after his favorite album by the iconic rock band.

Blackburn/Zeppelin said he’s been thinking about doing this for years, and says the group’s music “changed my life, forever, and that’s my whole reason for doing this.”

His friends are supportive, as is his ex-wife, who calls him “L.Z.” or “Zep.”

You might say Blackburn/Zeppelin has a “Whole Lotta Love” for his favorite band.

Don’t Mess With Texas—Or Our Trademarks

The Texas Department of Transportation, which owns the trademarked slogan “Don’t Mess With Texas,” has filed a restraining order to block the sale and distribution of a romance novel. The book in question, by Christie Craig, is entitled “Don’t Mess With Texas” and features a cover illustration of a shirtless hunk holding a woman wearing cowboy boots in his arms.

The trademark infringement lawsuit filed by TxDOT claims that the cherished slogan could be tarnished by the book, which contains “numerous graphic references to sexual acts, states of arousal, etc.”

I’m not sure what her lawyers would say, but I’ll bet the romance novelist herself would file a pleading that is full of “unbridled passion, with the white-hot intensity of a thousand dying suns, and rippling with steely force.”

Beat Me, Whip Me, Make Me File Motions

Most government prosecutors want lawyers who excel at punishing the other side and whipping them into submission, figuratively speaking. And Alisha Smith, who up until recently was a well-respected lawyer in the Manhattan office of the New York Attorney General’s office, was just such a lawyer.

Just three years ago, she was publicly praised by now-Gov. Andrew Cuomo for her role in winning a whopping $5 billion settlement from Bank of America and other defendants in a securities fraud case.

But in mid-September, Smith was suspended without pay pending an internal investigation, after it was discovered that the 36-year-old prosecutor was moonlighting as a dominatrix named “Alisha Spark.”

According to published reports in the New York media, the prosecutor would turn persecutor for money, getting paid to dominate, restrain, and whip willing people at S & M events, while posing for photos in fetish costumes.

The Attorney General’s office cited an official policy requiring employees to “obtain prior approval . . . before engaging in any outside pursuit . . . from which more than $1,000 will be received or is anticipated to be received.”

Looks like Alisha Smith is on the receiving end of a spanking, for a change.

Suing for Lack of Sex

“Not tonight, I have a headache” may not be an option for spouses who aren’t in the mood in France, if one woman’s lawsuit becomes a trend.

A French wife sued her husband because he wasn’t having sex with her enough. A judge in Nice agreed with her, and awarded approximately $14,000 to the wife after ruling that lack of sex was indeed a violation of the marital contract.

The judge opined that “By getting married, couples agree to sharing their life and this clearly implies they will have sex with each other.”

Only in France . . .

“A Few Good Men” Too Many

Moviegoers loved the rousing 1992 Tom Cruise / Jack Nicholson courtroom drama “A Few Good Men,” about a court martial resulting from a “Code Red” hazing gone wrong at the Guantanamo Bay naval base.

Few people know, though, that screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s inspiration for the movie (and the play that preceded it) was a real-life hazing incident and the experiences of his sister, who was a young military lawyer who defended a Marine at a similar court martial in the 1980s.

Ten Marines were originally charged in the case that the movie was based on, but only three went to trial.

So, of the military defense lawyers who were involved in the case, who was the inspiration for Tom Cruise’s dashing Lt. Kaffee character?

Well, that’s a little tougher to answer. Four lawyers have either claimed to be the basis for Lt. Kaffee, or have been described in media reports as the inspiration.

Chris Johnson, who now practices in California, says “My opinion is that the Tom Cruise character is largely based on me.”

Former Navy lawyer and U.S. Attorney in New Mexico David C. Iglesias was described by a 2007 Washington Post article as the inspiration for the “dreamy” Lt. Kaffee.

Meanwhile, Virginia lawyer and former Navy JAG officer Donald Marcari says on his law firm’s website that “his exploits . . . became the basis for the motion picture ‘A Few Good Men.’”

And Connecticut lawyer Walter C. Bansley III claimed on his website that he “was the actual military lawyer played by Tom Cruise,” an assertion that also appeared in The New York Times.

So, do you want the truth? Can you handle the truth?

Well, according to Aaron Sorkin himself, “The character of Dan Kaffee in ‘A Few Good Men’ is entirely fictional and was not inspired by any particular individual.”