A Brickbat Batters Judicial Bench
Continuing the series on snafus in legal documents, I call to the stand attorney Jerry Abeles.
A business litigator, Abeles had a mailing to about 30 attorneys in a case he was handling. For some reason his secretary also sent a copy to the judge, which wouldn’t have been a problem, except ...
Rather than addressing it to “the Honorable” judge, she “addressed it to ‘the Horrible’ judge,” Abeles said. “I did not learn about the error until another attorney in the case was kind enough to point it out to me. The judge never mentioned anything about the mailing, and hopefully took it in good humor.”
Next witness: An attorney told Sue Kennedy about the time the legal term “res judicata” was supposed to be used in a document.
“It was rendered ‘Praise be to Carter,’ ” said Kennedy, adding, “This was a few presidential terms ago.”
Your turn to answer, secretaries: The L.A. Downtown News is holding its annual Administrative Nightmare Contest, in which employees are asked to submit their “favorite BAD BOSS stories.” In past years, the villains have included:
* A boss who made his secretary drive around and around the block while he was getting his shoes shined.
* An employer with a bladder problem who urinated into a bottle in his office.
* And a boss who persuaded his secretary to let him and his wife temporarily move in with her. Then he fled to another city, leaving behind his wife.
Now it can be told: Joyce Sand may have discovered why local government is in such sorry shape in L.A. (see accompanying).
Unclear on the concept: Dorothy Sorensen of Garden Grove found another of those “free” offers that cost you money -- in this case, evidently $59.99 to the third power, or roughly $216,000 (see accompanying).
Tense event? “I guess after the sale is over, the employees will be more tolerant of the customers,” quipped John Adams of Newbury Park about a sign he saw at a nursery (see photo).
Either that or the business was selling impatiens. (Yes, I admit it, I had to look the word up in the dictionary and, conveniently, it was right next to “impatience.”)
They could always be used as paperweights: Jerry Lewine saw a sign for a garage sale that bore a not-so-reassuring note about the TV sets (see photo). Then again, if you couldn’t fix the set, I guess it could qualify as one of the sale’s “decorative pieces.”
miscelLAny: I’ve heard of characters “singing” to the cops before, but not quite in this way. When Redondo Beach police confronted a man who had allegedly broken a display window in a doughnut shop, they said he “repeatedly sang parts of the “Mary Poppins” song ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ to officers.” The suspect, reportedly angry because he hadn’t been allowed to use the telephone in the shop, “was taken into custody for suspicion of vandalism.”
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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, 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.