Jackie Robinson received this note on May 22, 1951, before a double-header in Cincinnati:
WE HAVE ALREADY
GOT RID
OF SEVERAL
LIKE YOU
ONE WAS FOUND IN RIVER
JUST RECENTLY
ROBINSON
WE ARE GOING
TO KILL YOU
IF YOU ATTEMPT
TO ENTER A
BALL GAME AT
CROSLEY FIELD
It was signed THE TRAVELERS.
Robinson hit a home run in the first game.
In 1980, Morris Davie was accused of setting forest fires and brought to the headquarters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to take a lie detector test. He was left alone in a room, where a hidden camera recorded him dropping to his knees and saying, “Oh God, let me get away with it just this once.”
At trial, his lawyer objected to this evidence, arguing that it violated a Canadian law that prohibited the interception of private communications “made under circumstances in which it is reasonable for the originator thereof to expect that it will not be intercepted by any person other than the person intended by the originator thereof to receive it.”
Is God a person? The trial judge thought so — he held the videotape inadmissible and Davie was acquitted. The British Columbia Court of Appeal disagreed, however, deciding that a private communication requires an “intended human recipient.”
“In my opinion,” wrote Justice J.A. Hutcheon, “the word ‘person’ is used in the statutes of Canada to describe someone to whom rights are granted and upon whom obligations are placed. There is no earthly authority which can grant rights or impose duties upon God. I can find no reason to think that the Parliament of Canada has attempted to do so in the enactment of sections of the Criminal Code dealing with the protection of privacy.” He ordered a new trial.
“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.'” — Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell
(Thanks, Hugh.)
A constitution can contain a clause that provides for its amendment. But can this clause be used to amend itself?
Article V of the U.S. Constitution requires that an amendment be ratified by three-fourths of the states. Could they change this requirement to 90 percent? Or declare that the president can amend the constitution at his whim? Or abolish amendments altogether?
“If legal rules that authorize change can be used to change themselves, then we have paradox and contradiction; but if they cannot be used to change themselves (and if there is no higher rule that could authorize their change), then we have immutable rules,” writes Earlham College philosopher Peter Suber. “Paradox and immutability should create an uncomfortable dilemma for jurists and citizens in western legal systems. It appears that we must give up either a central element of legal rationality or a central element of democratic theory.”
In 1987, eighth grader Gavin McDonald failed to win first place in a Ventura County, Calif., spelling bee.
So he sued.
A rival at another school had spelled horsy H-O-R-S-E-Y, and in the ensuing confusion the officials there had agreed to allow two students to advance to the county finals. McDonald alleged that this was unfair.
Justice Arthur Gilbert of the California Court of Appeal asked, “When should an attorney say ‘no’ to a client? Answer: When asked to file a lawsuit like this one.”
He dismissed the suit. “Our decision at least keeps plaintiff’s bucket of water from being added to the tidal wave of litigation that has engulfed our courts.”
Epitaph of the eminent barrister Sir John Strange:
Here lies an honest lawyer,–
that is Strange.
From Epitaphiana: or, The Curiosities of Churchyard Literature, 1873.
Unlikely names of actual court cases, compiled by Rodney Jones and Gerald Uelmen in Supreme Folly (1990):
In 1979, Time magazine reported that Zachary Zzzra had been nudged out of last place in San Francisco’s telephone directory by Zelda Zzzwramp. He added another Z to his name but was then overtaken by Vladimir Zzzzzzabakov.
So he changed his name to Zzzzzzzzzra.
Zzzzzzzzzra was really Bill Holland, a 59-year-old painting contractor who told potential customers to look him up in the back of the book. The gimmick worked, he said, but his phone bill often exceeded $400. “People making illegal calls from phone booths look up the last name in the book and charge them to me,” he said. “I don’t pay a damn one of them.”
In 1985, 61-year-old Oreste Lodi came up with a novel way to raid his own trust fund: He sued himself. In a suit filed in the Shasta County (Calif.) Superior Court, Lodi named himself as defendant, failed to answer the complaint, then asked that a default judgment be entered against himself.
When a judge threw out the case, he appealed to the Third Appellate District, filing briefs on both sides. Unfortunately, the appeals court called Lodi’s case “a slam-dunk frivolous complaint.”
“This result cannot be unfair to Mr. Lodi,” it noted. “Although it is true that, as plaintiff and appellant, he loses, it is equally true that, as defendant and respondent, he wins! It is hard to imagine a more evenhanded application of justice.”
Jones had been greatly depressed; he declared himself a murderer, and would not be comforted. Suddenly he asked me a question. ‘Are not the parents the cause of the birth of their children?’ said he. ‘I suppose so,’ said I. ‘Are not all men mortal?’ ‘That also may be admitted.’ ‘Then are not the parents the cause of the death of their children, since they know that they are mortal? And am I not a murderer?’ I was, I own, puzzled. At last I thought of something soothing. I pointed out to Jones that to cause the death of another was not necessarily murder. It might be manslaughter or justifiable homicide. ‘Of which of these then am I guilty?’ he queried. I could not say because I had never seen the Jones family, but I hear Jones has become a great bore in the asylum by his unceasing appeals to every one to tell him whether he has committed murder, manslaughter, or justifiable homicide!
— F.C.S. Schiller, quoted in Ralph L. Woods, How to Torture Your Mind, 1969