This thread is for posting any interesting, unusual, or entertaining court cases from any level of the judicaial system - municipal court all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
My initial entry falls squarely into the two latter criteria - an entertaining U.S. Supreme Court case from 1986. The court declined to grant certiorari(they voted to NOT hear the case) for
Clark vs. Florida.
Bret Clark was a law student who was cited for speeding on a freeway in Florida. He contested the ticket and lost, and then appealed.
You can read the court's analysis for more details. The case is completely hilarious - I was laughing while reading every word!
FindLaw | Cases and Codes
Some highlights from the above opinion - LOL!
Quote:
The merits of this appeal are utterly frivolous, as were most of appellant's persistent efforts in the courts of Florida ...
The State emphasized that appellant's motion for recall of mandate
"demonstrates a startling ignorance of the law, and, more importantly, an unwillingness to expend even minimal effort [475 U.S. 1134 , 1136] to research facts or law before taking the time of this counsel and this honorable court. . . . [T]he correspondence and pleadings in this cause . . . amply demonstrate petitioner's misconception that his law training entitles him to file whatever he wants whenever he wants without the slightest regard for the law or judicial resources ." ...
Not one to suffer defeat lightly, appellant untimely moved the Court of Appeal to review its order granting the nominal $100 fee award. For the first time, as appellant acknowledges, see Juris. Statement 2, he claimed that the award of sanctions was in retaliation for certain correspondence he had sent to the Court of Appeal complaining about the " denial" of appellate review of his conviction, in violation of his First Amendment right to petition for redress of grievances. He contended that the fee statute was therefore "repugnant to the Constitution and laws of the United States ...
Appellant now claims that he "is the victim of a state court system which, confronted by a critical and recalcitrant defendant, decided to punish him for attempting to assert his right to a day in court on an appeal from a conviction in a presumably routine traffic case." ...
This curious sequence suggests the dangers of a system of legal education that trains students in technique without instilling a sense of professional responsibility and ethics-a bit like giving a small boy a loaded pistol without instruction as to when and how it is to be used. Had he thus conducted himself after finishing law school and before being admitted to practice the State would plainly have been entitled to conclude that he was unfit to be a member of the Bar ...
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Yes, you too can take a simple speeding ticket all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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