Legal Humour Corner

High profile criminal lawyer Edward Greenspan is about to start a complex trial defending former Livent chief Garth Drabinsky on fraud related charges. As well he is also representing former Mexican, now Canadian, prisoner Brenda Martin, in her endeavours to secure parole.  And not long ago he was in Chicago for several months fighting to prove the innocence of Conrad Black. The question is, does Eddie Greenspan ever handle low profile and more minor cases?  Well here is the latest.  Edward Greenspan’s next case is about a gentleman who got a $35.00 parking ticket after his meter ran out.  Mr...

This was a good week for wrongly accused Robert Baltovich whom the Crown let go after the man spent eight years in prison, getting convicted without the help of Dr. Charles Smith. But is was a bad week for Brenda Martin. The Mexican justice system found her guilty of fraud related charges and gave her five years. Guinness clocked her trial at 3 minutes and 58 seconds. And who said there is no such thing as a four-minute trial? I think Martin probably had a legal aid lawyer and the lawyer’s money pipeline to the legal aid plan dried up....

For me this was the week that was. The case of my career knocked on my office the other day. A client bought two ferrets from a local pet shop for about $800. The weasel like creatures came with a 15 day guarantee. Needless to say, both ferrets died within a couple of days. Honourable client returned the dead ferrets to the pet shop and the manager, actually the "small pet specialty manager", collected the deceased ferrets and told my client he would be in touch. A few days later he sent my client a letter claiming that he had...

Have you noticed that people are taking less and less responsibility for their actions?  They screw up and instead of admitting same they find somebody or something else to blame their actions on, somebody other than themselves.  The following examples were in the news recently.Let's start with the public inquiry of pathologist Dr. Charles Smith, whose faulty post mortems  sent a number of accused innocent people to penitentiary for the alleged murder of children between 1991 and 2001.  Lawyers for Dr Smith did admit he had something to do with the wrongful convictions but went on to point their legal...

Todd Bertuzzi is certainly going down with his skates on. In March of 2004 the former Vancouver forward attacked, without provocation, Colorado Avalanche’s Steve Moore from behind, smashing his face to the ice and throwing in a few solid punches for good measure.Moore suffered some fractured vertebrae ending his hockey playing career. He is suing Bertuzzi for $38 million dollars. But Bertuzzi has now launched Third Party proceedings against his former coach, Marc Crawford, saying Crawford should pay any damages that the court may award against him as it was his coach’s fault for “failing to exercise control over and...

Unfortunately Canadian Citizen Brenda Martin has been languishing in a Mexican jail for over two years now without being charged. She was a chef in Mexico for some investor who supposedly pulled off a fraud. This I suppose is a good enough reason for the Mexican authorities to arrest her and keep her in this state of limbo. There are suggestions we are reading about in the newspapers that the justice system works a bit different in that country than it does in Canada and that had she had proper legal advice and followed the proper legal protocol, she would...

Lloyd’s of London has underwritten yet another interesting insurance policy. It has insured the nose of Ilja Gort, the producer of Tulipe Wines, a French winery, for almost $8 million. Ilja claims his nose can distinguish millions of different scents and should his sense of smell go, his career is over. As most of us who have bought insurance know, insurance companies aren’t stupid. They do not underwrite a policy without carefully researching the insured. Usually there is that questionnaire they make you fill out in order to assess their potential risk. I wonder what some of the questions in...

This was not a bad week for Heather Mills, Paul McCartney’s ex. A judge in the family division in London awarded her 24.3 million pounds or about $48.6 million for her troubles of living as husband and wife for four years with the former Beatle. This works out to over $12 million per year of marriage. In fact it works out to about $1,400 per hour. This is even more than Maple Leaf superstar Mats Sundin earns. And Mills doesn’t even speak Swedish.But here is the real scoop. This decision will not bode well for the lawyers. I thing it...

This past week was not a good week for London, England accountant Alexander Martin-Sklan. He sued Marks & Spencer for 300,000 pounds after slipping on a grape. The judge dismissed his action saying that although there was crushed grape stuff on the plaintiff’s shoe, he was not persuaded that the grape caused the slip and fall. His Honour made this profound legal comment: "In my judgment this was one of those accidents that could happen to anyone."Now isn’t this judge worth being nominated for the Lord Denning prize in judicial analysis. After all, it is a known fact that grape...

Southwest Airlines has been cited by the FAA as having missed crucial inspections on many of its aircraft.  It seems about 70 of its planes missed routine rudder control inspection. As well the airline has failed to make fuselage cracks inspections on 46 of its planes.  In short the airline could be an accident waiting to happen.The good news is that the airline has been kick ass about monitoring what it considers inappropriate dress by some of its passengers.  There was a story not long ago where a Hooters girl boarded a flight, wearing a short skirt and tight halter...