That’s exactly the type of reason I wouldn’t list - because I have both the relatives who would disinherit someone over something trivial, change their mind the next day and forget to change the will and the ones who would challenge the will because the deceased was the type to do that.
The version I heard was “Dead men don’t sue. His relatives might, but they won’t get as much as he would.”
The version I heard was darker - regarding medical malpractice: a dead child costs less than an injured one (though in that case, the person wasn’t advising the doctor on what to do - he was telling the doctor that as bad as the lawsuit he was facing might be, it was less bad than it could have been).
Which leads to the urban legend “The reason why airlines tell you to do the crash position is so your head instantly hits the seat in front of you during a crash instantly killing you, because it’s cheaper to kill the passengers than pay for their injuries”
Forgetting the fact a crash where the majority of passengers are able to take crash positions and potentially survive would pay out far less than a scenario where the pilots somehow survive but all the passengers are either dead or have crippling neck injuries.
How about “poor man’s copyright”? “If you mail a copy of a manuscript to yourself, you can prove it’s your original work.”
Nope. Never worked and easy for a lawyer to discredit.
They told me it was not to prove authorship, but the postmark was evidence that you wrote it before the plagiarist published his version.
I did this once. It went like this: I put my document into a large manila envelope and sealed. Took it to the Post Office. Addressed to myself (same address as the return address).
Clerk noticed this immediately and asked me if it was for a copyright. He weighed it, put the right first-class postage on. Then he hand-stamped it about five times – first over the postage stamps as usual, but then on the back side several times straddling the edge of the flap.
It would not have been possible, I don’t think, to tamper with that without it being obvious.
Then he “delivered” the mail by simply handing it back to me over the counter.
If you’re high on coke, drinking will bring you down enough for you to drive…
If you are too drunk to drive, eating dried squid will fool the breath test.
In the “fuck around and find out” category:
You can say anything to an officer, up to and including profanity-filled verbal abuse, as long as you include the clause “in my opinion, sir/ma’am”
Freedom of something something amendments da da daa
Or, if you’re driving drunk, keep an unopened bottle of liquor in the car. If you get pulled over, jump out of the car, open the bottle, and quickly drink as much as you can in sight of the cop. That will invalidate the breathalyzer & blood tests, since he’ll have to testify he saw you drink alcohol after he pulled you over.
When driving a load of illegal drugs, wear headphones. Though, to be honest, that’s not why the guy got pulled over. It was on toll road with lots of state troopers patrolling. In the left lane. In a truck.
It’d probably be better if you offered it to the officer.
Anyway, I always heard this one as, if you are in an accident while drunk, walk to the nearest bar (around here, there’s pretty much one every few hundred feet), and get drunk there, claiming that you needed to calm your nerves after the accident.
There’s always Hunter S. Thompson’s advice about what to do if a cop tries to pull you over for speeding:
Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop. Your normal speeder will panic and immediately pull over to the side when he sees the big red light behind him . . . and then we will start apologizing, begging for mercy.
This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the cop-heart. The thing to do—when you’re running along about a hundred or so and you suddenly find a red-flashing CHP-tracker on your trail—what you want to do then is accelerate. Never pull over with the first siren-howl. Mash it down and make the bastard chase you at speeds up to 120 all the way to the next exit. He will follow. But he won’t know what to make of your blinker-signal that says you’re about to turn right.
This is to let him know you’re looking for a proper place to pull off and talk . . . keep signaling and hope for an off-ramp, one of those uphill side-loops with a sign saying “Max Speed 25” . . . and the trick, at this point, is to suddenly leave the freeway and take him into the chute at no less than a hundred miles an hour.
He will lock his brakes about the same time you lock yours, but it will take him a moment to realize that he’s about to make a 180-degree turn at this speed . . . but you will be ready for it, braced for the Gs and the fast heel-toe work, and with any luck at all you will have come to a complete stop off the road at the top of the turn and be standing beside your automobile by the time he catches up.
He will not be reasonable at first . . . but no matter. Let him calm down. He will want the first word. Let him have it. His brain will be in a turmoil: he may begin jabbering, or even pull his gun. Let him unwind; keep smiling. The idea is to show him that you were always in total control of yourself and your vehicle—while he lost control of everything.
It’d be simple enough to not actually seal the envelope (or seal it loosely), have it stamped, and then put anything you want in it whenever you want. All you’d have to do is line up the flap with the PO hand stamps. It wouldn’t prove a thing.
Same theory applies if you ever shoot your spouse. Just turn the gun around and shoot yourself as well.
I think this strategy (to prevent either spouse from getting arrested) will be successful, at least of both spouses are dead.
Will probably depend on the state, but then again even the most generous form of wrongful death action (allowing for a calculation of damages based on the, uh, “estate’s” probable lifetime earnings and additional damages for things like loss of life’s enjoyment) may fall short of the expected costs of a lifetime of care for a seriously injured and permanently disabled child. When a car gets totaled, the car gets junked and you pay for a new (or equivalent used, I suppose) car. For some very good reasons we tend not to do that with kids. At least not directly, anyway.
But reaching way, way back (into the 19th century) it used to be that there was no such thing as a wrongful death action. Under common law, it was practically guaranteed that a death was cheaper than even a very minor injury, absent criminal sanction.
Guy comes home unexpectedly and finds his neighbor in bed with his wife. Enraged, he gets a pistol out of the closet and shoots the neighbor dead. When he turns the gun toward himself the wife exclaims, “No! Don’t!”
“Shut up – you’re next!”
True story (from the UK not the US): decades ago, a relative was in the police, fairly high up in traffic enforcement (albeit in a small local force). He was quite a bit older than me, enough that he would from time to time dispense some wisdom on me. I remember him telling me that the law had been changed so that the hipflask defense (as I think he termed it) was no longer viable. You could now be asked how much you had drunk to calm your nerves, then breathalized, tested, whatever, and an allowance made to take account of the extra alcohol. I thought, but didn’t say (he had seniority, remember) Well, you could always lie about the amount. But anyway.
Having subsequently worked in the pharma industry, I very much doubt that “taking account of the extra alcohol” is feasible (in a legal setting), even absent lying.
Aside: in my pharma days, several times I had roles in which I had to deal with medical inquiries. You would be surprised how often you get a call from a lawyer whose client “Was one one of your drugs” and “Could it possibly affect alcohol metabolism?”
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