Humor November 2022
More Zaniness on Zoom
and Other Legal Weirdness
Written by John G. Browning
By now, we’ve almost gotten used to a sort of “what will happen next?” attitude when it comes to virtual legal proceedings. We’ve witnessed a lawyer having to reassure everyone that he’s “not a cat” and lawyers and even judges popping up on camera in various stages of undress. One California doctor even “appeared” for traffic court in the middle of performing surgery; thankfully (for the patient), the judge decided to reset the trial for another day.
Perhaps that doctor started something. Thanks to Miami Herald
reporter David Ovalle, we’ve since learned that one Florida resident
appeared for “Zoom court” while at a dental appointment. I know I’ve
compared extracting information from a witness on cross-examination to
“pulling teeth,” but this is ridiculous. Of course, the prize for
strangest Zoom appearance has to go to Niurka Aguero, of Miami.
According to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office, Aguero was on Zoom
awaiting her third-degree grand theft charge to be heard by the judge
when participants were treated to Aguero’s screen sharing a video of a
needle going into a man’s buttocks. The butt injection, or “derriere
overshare,” was apparently broadcast accidentally by Aguero, and it’s
not clear what her role in the procedure was. Now, I don’t want to make
Aguero the butt of any more jokes, and I’m behind her 100%. Maybe it
really was accidental, or perhaps the cheeky incident was her version of
a clever rebuttal; bottom line, she wouldn’t be the first person to
analogize a court proceeding to getting a butt injection.
But for sheer chutzpah, it’s hard to top Joshua Slaughter. On March 8,
2021, the 32-year-old Chicago man was arrested after he was caught
allegedly driving a stolen Dodge Charger. After being charged with
misdemeanor criminal trespass to a vehicle and other offenses, Slaughter
was released on a recognizance bond and ordered to appear in court via
Zoom later that month. Which Slaughter did—while allegedly behind the
wheel of another stolen vehicle, a BMW X5. While the Zoom
hearing was going on, police who had pulled up behind the stolen BMW
walked up to the car and realized Slaughter was appearing in court via
his phone. The officers had determined that the vehicle had been stolen
from a car dealership in Nashville, and prosecutors later conveyed that
information to a stunned Judge David Navarro, who asked, “Are you
telling me that when the police approached the defendant, he was in the
middle of a Zoom court hearing?” Officers seized the BMW and took
Slaughter into custody before charging him with a second count of
criminal trespass to a vehicle. Judge Navarro set bail for the new
charges at $10,000 and ordered Slaughter to appear via Zoom for the BMW
case on April 13. Hopefully, that time wasn’t from yet another allegedly
stolen car.
Of course, you don’t have to be on Zoom to have fun with the legal
system. In an April memorandum opinion and order, a Pennsylvania federal
judge was inspired by the words of singer Taylor Swift. Judge Joshua
Wolfson was presiding over the case of Crash Proof Retirement LLC v.
Paul M. Price, a lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania by a retirement planning firm against a former stockbroker
who’d written about the company in an article for TheStreet.com. The
suit alleged Lanham Act trademark violations, but Judge Wolfson found
that the article in question didn’t involve the commercial speech
governed by the act. In explaining his ruling, the judge found
inspiration in one of the pop singer’s hits:
“If freedom of speech means anything, it means you don’t have the ability to sue people because you don’t like their opinion of you. In the immortal words of Taylor Swift, although ‘the haters will hate, hate, hate . . . ,’ sometimes it is enough to ‘shake.’ Taylor Swift, Shake It Off, MXM (2014). ‘Shake it off,’ however, Crash Proof Retirement didn’t.”
That’s right, Crash Proof—Judge Wolfson had a blank space, and he wrote your name. Look what you made me do.
Finally, not all the amusement the legal system has to offer comes from
Zoom hearings or pop culture-loving judges. For example, take the two
women who allegedly tried to pass a $1 million bill (there is no such
thing) in April at—of all places—a Dollar General store in Tennessee.
Linda Johnson, 61, disavowed knowledge of the phony bill presented by
her 39-year-old companion Amanda McCormick, while McCormick told police
she’d received the counterfeit currency “in the mail from a church.”
Although the sheriff’s office classified the incident as “fraud by false
pretenses” and banned the women from returning to the store, no arrests
were made.
And while you may have heard references to dead mobsters “sleeping with
fishes,” how about swimming with them? That’s what one fugitive in
Louisiana is wanted for. It seems that the man in question was visiting
a Bass Pro Shop in Bossier City, when he suddenly decided to take a dip
in the giant aquarium in the middle of the store! After doing a lap, the
impromptu swimmer left the giant tank (fully clothed) and ran for the
exit soaking wet. The store filed a criminal complaint (the tank had to
be emptied, cleaned due to possible contamination, and refilled), but
the unknown swimmer is still at large.
And that’s not a fish tale.TBJ
JOHN G. BROWNING
is a former justice of the 5th Court of Appeals in Dallas. He is a
past chair of the State Bar of Texas Computer & Technology Section.
The author of five books and numerous articles on social media and the
law, Browning is a nationally recognized thought leader in technology
and the law.
