Even Well-Dressed Defendants Are Guilty of Oral Misadventures in Court
Fashion-driven: Glendale attorney Terry Gibson saw this trial excerpt in the book “Disorder in the Court: Great Fractured Moments in Courtroom History,” by Charles Sevilla of San Diego:
Q: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
A: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
In another courtroom: Sevilla’s book also has this exchange:
Q: All your responses must be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
A: Oral.
And finally: One last piece of memorable testimony collected by Sevilla:
Q: How old is your son, the one living with you?
A: Thirty-eight or 35, I can’t remember which.
Q: How long has he lived with you?
A: Forty-five years.
Tabloid section! Yes, in still another attempt to increase my ratings, I’m including the following racy items (see accompanying):
* Vegetation with a scandalous past (submitted by Beverly Bush Smith of Lake Forest).
* Some not-so-innocent pine drawers (Maria and Barry Stone of Culver City and Pat Rutledge of Santa Monica).
In case I’ve offended any conservative readers, I also offer this innocent ad:
* Some satin that, in the words of Lisette Helper of Long Beach, would be “perfect for that prom dress.”
Stupid Driver Tricks: William Turner of Landers swears he saw a motorcyclist on the Riverside Freeway “lying back on the seat of his motorcycle, hands behind his head, steering with his feet.”
Turner continued: “I thought, ‘I’m looking at a dead man. This guy is going to die right before my eyes.’ I watched him as he slowly pulled out of sight around a bend. There was no wreck site, no red lights, nothing. I never saw him again but I’ve often wondered if he is alive today.”
Maybe the guy was a great circus performer.
Amateur astronauts: Sure, Pacific Palisades financier Dennis Tito paid $20 million to hitch a ride on a Russian space flight. But writer Tom Nagano points out that Tito is not the first novice to blast off for the heavens--not even the first from Southern California.
On July 2, 1982, Larry Walters strapped himself into a lawn chair attached to several weather balloons and lifted off from San Pedro. He stayed aloft for two hours, reached an altitude of 16,000 feet, then returned to Earth in Long Beach by shooting out the balloons with a pellet gun. He was later fined $1,500 by the Federal Aviation Administration.
I’ve written about Walters before but was only recently put in contact with Bill Case, who was general manager of the company (General Welding of Gardena) that supplied the canisters of helium for the flight.
“He was a smart guy,” said Case, now retired. “He figured out how many cubic feet of helium he’d need to lift off. But we didn’t know at the time that was what he was using the helium for. It’s one of the craziest things I’ve heard of in the business.”
Tim Watson was the truck driver who delivered the canisters to San Pedro. “I wondered why does this guy need this stuff at his house,” Watson recalled.
For a stupid balloonist trick.
miscelLAny: “The Flight of the Lawnchair Man,” a musical based in part on Walters’ flight, has landed at the Ahmanson Theatre. A helium of a show.
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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.