“No, see, this guy was going to testify against a murder suspect on Wednesday, which is why the instructions were to not put him in the same cell as the accused murderer. See there where it says not? Right, we put that there for a reason.” According to that report, “while it is unclear who carried out the assault [on the witness], an investigation is underway,” so do stay tuned for the likely shocking results.
Speaking of things that are shocking, some brave officers in Chatsworth, Georgia, were forced to use a taser to take down an 87-year-old grandmother, who failed to drop the knife she was using to cut dandelions and then tried to hide behind her dementia and inability to speak English to justify her failure to follow orders. Whoever called 911 told the dispatcher the woman was not threatening anyone (so, why did you call 911?), and police admitted “her demeanor was calm, even when we had our guns out.” But she apparently walked toward the four officers, who could think of no way to handle the situation apart from running 50,000 volts or so through an old lady. So, that happened.
Defense attorneys should not chest-bump the DA, according to the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board, which has apparently recommended a one-year suspension for someone who did that (twice). The Legal Profession Blog reports that the chest-bumper has had anger-management problems before, and the linked document refers to a 2011 settlement conference at which he allegedly told the opposing parties he was going to “nail you down like Pontius Pilot [sic] and the nail driving five.” The case did not settle.
According to Google, two or three groups have already used some variation of that last phrase as a band name, though surprisingly none of them seem to have amounted to anything.
The headline “Spanish driver tests positive for every drug in test” seemed promising, but it turns out there were only five: alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, amphetamines, and opiates. Still, I guess that’s kind of a lot. The police seemed to admit that the results didn’t actually mean he was under the influence of any particular substance, but they fined him 2000 euros and put 12 points on his license anyway, so who knows what the hell was going on there.
The Eleventh Circuit got really angry a couple of weeks ago about a complaint that it found was neither “short,” “plain,” nor “comprehensible,” which are all things that pleadings are generally supposed to be. The amended complaint it was raging about had, it said, “swelled to twenty-three pages and 123 paragraphs,” asserting 16 causes of action, none of which stated a claim. For that reason alone, the court held, it affirmed the dismissal of the case. It also held the appeal of that ruling was frivolous and said it was considering ordering the plaintiffs’ lawyer to pay double the costs of the appeal as a sanction.
I could not agree more with the Eleventh Circuit, but I also have to say that it has apparently been a bit spoiled if it is fuming about a mere 23 pages and 123 paragraphs of only semi-incomprehensibility. Because it could be, and has been, so much worse. See, e.g., “Court: Obligation to Make Sense May Not Be Delegated” (Mar. 24, 2015) (truly incomprehensible Supreme Court brief); “Courts Frown on Lawyer ‘Gibberish’” (Sept. 23, 2011) (largely incomprehensible 52-page complaint); and “Rule 8 Invoked Against 465-Page Complaint” (July 8, 2008) (self-explanatory).
