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Monday Morning Quick Hits
The Monday morning after a holiday week is always the worst, ain’t it? Well, here are some blurbs to maybe pick your spirits up a little.
Some dude had applied to be on the first season of “The Apprentice” and managed to make it to the final round of selections. By that time, however, producer Mark Burnett had learned of some problems this guy had in the past, including having filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and that his mother and brother sued the local board of health after their family breakfast restaurant was closed down. So according to this guy, Burnett was not impressed by his background and allegedly defamed him, slandered him and libeled him during the final interview process, all in front of the casting crew. Which, of course, has led to a lawsuit against The Donald and Burnett. Not really sure how this guy was damaged by anything that may have been said during these interviews, but the best part of the lawsuit is this - the guy says that he thinks “his litigious history may have scared off Burnett.” He said this in his filed pleading against Burnett. Come on!
And here’s an even more ridiculous defamation lawsuit. There’s this guy who thinks he totally looks like Michael Jordan. And apparently others do too, and they talk about him and point at him. Not happy with this unwarranted recognition, he has sued Michael Jordan and Nike for defamation. Jordan has allegedly caused him serious emotional injury, and Nike has too because it’s promoted Jordan, making him more recognizable than he otherwise might be. And to make it even more ridiculous, this dude is suing for over $800 million, a number he arrived at in a most interesting way: “Well, you figure with my age and you multiply that times seven and ah, then I turn around and ah I figure that’s what it all boils down to.” …if I ever go back to practicing trial law again, I’m totally hiring this guy as my damages expert.
And finally, let’s turn from lawsuits to the actual courtroom itself. It’s a pretty common courtroom policy that you turn your cell phone off when court is in session. The court clerk or some other court employee usually even announces this before the judge comes out from chambers. So I can understand a judge getting pissed when a cell phone is left on and goes off during a court session. Well this has apparently happened to a California federal judge one too many times, because he snapped last week. During a sentencing hearing in a tax case, a cell phone went off. The judge stormed off his bench toward the phone’s owner and told her to give him the phone. She complied, and he promptly walked over to the courtroom doors and hucked it out of the courtroom. He then ordered the court marshals to round up every other cell phone in the room. The judge is very contrite about the whole thing now, but I think it’s kinda’ awesome. I don’t necessarily want to make an appearance before a judge with such a short fuse, but the world needs judges like these, just for this kind of story. And even if the world doesn’t need these kind of things to happen, QuizLaw does, ‘cause it makes it very easy to come up with entries like this. So we here at QuizLaw thank you, Judge Shubb.
