Assorted Stupidity #52

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  • When attorneys get carried away at a press conference: "I have a client who is not only not guilty, he is truly 100% innocent," said the attorney for the man initially charged with sending ricin to federal officials. She was right both times, as it turned out.
  • According to this report, a man in Homer Glen, Illinois, sued a cat owner for over $50,000 after said cat allegedly "viciously attacked, bit and clawed" the plaintiff while he was cat-sitting. But did this one really happen? The report mentions Facebook accounts matching the plaintiff and the defendant and suggesting they are married, and this one claims they still live at the same address, but nobody seems to have been able to confirm any details. (The court's website is not helpful.) I am skeptical.
  • This one did happen, in 2003, and the demand in that case was $1.5 million. After a trial that somehow lasted a week, the plaintiff recovered zero dollars and was later required to pay the defendant's attorney's fees. Anyway, if you're looking for a cat-attack-lawsuit story, and who isn't, I'd go with this one if I were you. No need to make one up.
  • According to the ABA Journal, the judge hearing O.J. Simpson's state habeas appeal has ruled that Simpson "may have one hand free in order to take notes and sip from a water container." Will he try to put a glove on it in desperation before the week is out? Stay tuned.
  • Speaking of hands, raise one of yours if you thought you'd ever see a picture of Barack Obama next to one of Richard Nixon in an op-ed by the lawyer who defended the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case, in which the lawyer says that Obama is in the process of "succeeding where Nixon failed." Granted, that would have been a hell of a prediction, so keep your hand up if you were anywhere in the ballpark. Okay, now put it down, because you're just lying.