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Only in America The Rest of the World is Full of Dumbasses, too!

We generally stick to domestic legal stories, but I thought I’d introduce tales of a couple of international cases just to demonstrate to our seven readers that the jury system is just as screwed in other countries as it is here in the States.

Take, for instance, a Canadian man who stole over $100 worth of razor blades at a supermarket. Employees at the supermarket discovered that he’d stolen them and, during the course of their arrest, handled him a little too roughly, i.e., he lost a tooth and now he has difficulty speaking. He’s been awarded $12,000 Canadian dollars (a.k.a. funny money) in damages. And given the price of razors today (I used to lift the occasional pack during my poorer law school days; the prices are freakin’ outrageous — I grew a beard over the winter and saved enough money to put a down payment on a house), he ought to be able to buy at least a couple new packages of razor blades, though I do understand that Canadian money is only good for games of Monopoly.

Elsewhere, in Australia, a judge has found in favor of a mentally retarded apprentice hairdresser and awarded her upwards of $500,000 after the woman lost her leg in a railroad accident. The 26-year-old woman, Leigh Ann Russell (who reads at an 8th grade level) saw a group of young men painting graffiti near the train; one of the boys then jumped up onto the ladder attached to the train.

Ms. Russell told the court the boy made it look “like he was a star athlete at it”.

“Because he made it look so easy I go, ‘I could do this too,’ ” she said, agreeing that she copied him because she wanted to look “cool.

But she realized she was in trouble as the train sped up.

She let go of the ladder and was dragged over rocks beside the track, injuring her right leg so badly it had to be amputated below the knee.

Now, if you really want to look “cool,” Ms. Russell, you ought to get yourself one of those Grindhouse legs.

Posted by Dustin on April 30, 2007 | Comments (1)