Editorial

Front Page - Friday, October 29, 2010

I swear ...

Classic courtroom comments

Vic Fleming

Here is some courtroom dialogue that has appeared in one or more earlier works of mine. As you can tell, however, it is timeless. Not only that, it might make you laugh.
A poetic exchange by a lawyer and a witness:
Q. Who else?
A. A man named Clyde Dodd.
Q. Dodd?
A. Yeah. He’s dead.
Q. Dead?
A. Very dead.
Mr. C.: He died? Dodd?
A. Clyde died.
And then there is this very candid dialogue:
Q. Were you wearing your seat belt at the time of the accident?
A. No, but I had my girdle on.
Not to mention this one:
Q. The claimant says that he worked a minimum of two hours per day overtime. Is that true?
A. Deep down inside, it is true. But he’ll never get any witnesses to prove it.
I should have identified the immediately preceding one as being from a labor court in Brazil.
The next one is from the good old U.S. of A.:
Q. Sally, what did you do to try and prevent this accident?
A. I closed my eyes and screamed as loud as I could.
This next one is from a hearing wherein the witness had been fired for using profanity on the job.
Q. Tell the judge about the incident the led to your discharge.
A. Well, your honor, my colleague was soldering some wires up close to the ceiling. I was holding the ladder. He was not paying attention to the hot solder that fell. And I complained more than once. At a given point in time, on purpose, he let fall onto my shoulder a red hot piece of metal.
Judge: At that very moment what did you say?
A. I said, “Look here, dear colleague, at the hole you just made in my shirt.
Vic Fleming is a district court judge in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he also teaches at the William H. Bowen School of Law. Contact him at vicfleming@att.net.

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