lol

wow, i remember reading all of these back in the early 90's.

Dead folks tell no tales.

"He cried?"

¬_¬

Even the judge has to cringe at that one. XD

Please don't tell me that these happened in RL...
God sometimes you really have to think that thinking before saying something is an ability that is slowly lost to mankind

This strikes me as an instance where the lawyer had a question and followup in their mind and asked both without actually listening to what the person on the stand actually answered. Normally when that first question is asked, "when alive" is usually implicit, though usually that's said explicitly to likely avoid answers like this. The person on the stand answered quite literally, and correctly, and the lawyer asked their followup without actually registering what was said out of force of habit and process. So the lawyer made two mistakes here; not asking the question correctly, and running on autopilot.

And a lot of times, the lawyers are asking stupid questions because they are not ALLOWED to presume an unspoken portion of an answer.

They are also not allowed to try and clarify a witness's response, "You said you were at 110th street and Vine at the time of the incident, however, those streets are parallel to each other, did you mean 110th AVENUE and vine?" "OBJECTION! Leading the witness!"

Many people forget what is a street, road, avenue, or boulevard in their city, mainly because the definitions vary from city to city, and many cities do not 'reuse' street names, so there will only be one street named Elm, or else they use the 'alternate' path designation for a street 'shoehorned' into the normal progression. A street stuck in between 110th Ave 1nd 111's ave would be named 110th Place.

you guys have funky street naming conventions. but so do we germans... :)

Part of it depends on whether it is an 'organically grown' city, or a 'planned' city.

Planned cities typically use a grid system for the streets, organic ones are typically ... anything other than grid.

germany has some planned cities. Karlsruhe for example, is planned like a ladies' fan starting from the resident baron's castle. here, streets have various names. not very far away, Mannheim, is another planned city, shaped mostly li8ke a checker board, and here, blocks are numbered and lettered, too. I'm not sure about the system, but a postal delivery surely needs to know their area.

some small villages don't have street names at all. here, the houses are numbered by age. which causes a lot of distress with everyone not familiar with the area, like rescue teams and such. they plead for them to put names on their streets every time, but tradition is more important... until someone suffers because the doctors can't find the damned house in time...

some small villages don't have street names at all. here, the houses are numbered by age. which causes a lot of distress with everyone not familiar with the area, like rescue teams and such.

That reminds me of my time in the military. US Military bases (called 'posts' in the Army, 'bases' in the Air Force and 'stations' in the Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard) give each building on the base a unique number. Numbers can be skipped as an older building is demolished, and reused (or not) if a new building is erected elsewhere on the base. There is only one rule that is NEVER violated: Building #1 is the Base Commander's Office.

makes sense, somehow. :)

there's a great book by Richard Sennett on the evolution of cities in the west "Flesh and Stone"

In some cities, the street between 12th and 14th Street may not be 13th.

Standard old superstition; same reason why a number of buildings don't have a '13th' floor.

The opposition may object to the lawyer "leading" the witness, IE: trying to provide answers to the witness within the question, or asking questions in such a way that a certain answer is unavoidable. Which is very likely the #1 cause of seemingly smart people asking stupid questions like this.

Though I think, in this instance, Roaming Shadow has the right of it: The lawyer had a long series of procedural questions lined up in his head, was prepared to rattle them off to just get them out of the way and focus on what he really needed to get out into the court, and proceeded with #2 without fully processing the reply to #1.

Remember that most of these stories are 'layperson funny': They seem odd because a layperson doesn't realize that there are particular rules and standards in play. The most common reason for a 'stupid lawyer question' is because the answer to the question needs to be formally placed on the record and cannot simply be assumed.

Also, many of the entries on lists of such questions are a tad embellished the same way 'dumb law' lists are.

Sad thing is, I know people who are this dumb.

a role-model for all the bad hollyweird crime series court scenes from the 80's... where every "private eye breaks into sealed house and is mugged then chases car and is stopped by a truck out of nowhere" follows the exact same time plan.

My, this case was intended to be very scripted.

Oh, Counsel...

"What's he gonna tell you, i'm dead?"

Seriously? *rolls eyes*

uh wait wha t

The terrier's clearly a veteran of the courts if he let himself fly on autopilot like that.

Lawyer: ("Ack! Son of a -- I was supposed to ask when she last saw him alive! Dammit, I'm going to be immortalized in comic form for this.")

Yeah, it's been said several times, but the qualifying statement 'when still alive' is the thing he completely forgot there, because, as Terastas said, he was flying on autopilot.

We all have moments of derp like that, but in this case, it came at a very steep cost to what was presumably his own witness. I were that judge, I'd be gaveling in a short recess right then so everyone could get their head screwed on straight again, least of all that poor witness.