Yeah. I’m posting from my phone so tonight ill be back and tell you some stories.
Around here the letter you receive in the mail says, in big letters at the top, “YOU HAVE BEEN SUMMONED TO APPEAR.”
OK, here are the stories you asked for
The murder trial, this was a bad dude, and as Richard Prior said, thank God they got prisons. Bad dude goes to the park early one AM and starts drinking Gin, a lot of gin. Goes to call his GF, she is out with another guy. He gets rip roaring drunk, and at about noon goes to see her. Not home. Leaving her place he comes across a guy who is fixing a car for a friend. Beats the guy to death with the club (the thing that goes on your steering wheel) for no particular reason that came up in court.
Two funny things about the jury. We had a college professor that could not make a decision and stick to it to save his soul. We would spend an hour analyzing the testimony of a witness and all come to agreement about their testimony. 30 minutes later he would want to go back and go over it AGAIN. So we would go back. 1 hour later lather, rinse, repeat. By the end of the second day I wanted to beat him to death with the prosecution exhibit #1 the club.
Second funny thing, our deliberations went till Friday then to be continued on Monday of Super Bowl weekend. On Monday we all brought in the left over food from our SB parties. We had to bribe the Sheriffs at the metal detectors to let in a cake cutting knife so we could eat cake that day.
The drunk trial was a man born in Korea but grew up in Virgina and went to school there, and graduated High School there. He had refused a blood/breath/urine test and was charged with that as well as under the influence. His defense was he didn’t understand what the officers told him. He took the stand and had an interpreter in court and answered all questions in Korean. His testimony spanned two days. On the morning of the second day, the city attorney asked him if he had spoken with his attorney after court the day before without the interpreter present. (Defense attorney was a white guy that does not speak Korean)
The defense attorney objected claiming privilege. The city attorney replied that he didn’t want to know what was discussed, just if the discussion had taken place. Judge allowed the question, and when he answered yes, his whole defense went up in smoke. OOPS.
The product liability trial I was excused from was a slip and fall case in a supermarket. We were seated and sworn in. The attorneys for the plaintiff then read their opening statement to lay out the basic facts of their case. They claimed that their client slipped and fell due to a negligent cardboard fruit display.
Anyway that ended the day. That night I woke up at 2 AM wondering how can a cardboard display be negligent? Negligence is a human trait, not a trait of cardboard. I thought about this for about 45 minutes before I sat down to write a letter to the judge, expressing my concerns. I asked that either the lawyer change the wording of his statement, or that I be excused as I could not attribute a human trait to a cardboard display.
I was excused.
Tomorrow I’ll come back and tell you the story of the legal malpractice trail that was the most awesome trial ever.