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The Coal Game

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Who stayed up all night tracking a source in its original Latin
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And writin' bad!

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Lol! The facts are even more batshit crazy than that, actually: Plaintiff's lawyer called the defendant (without disclosing his identity) to extend a "special invitation" to defendant to attend a "banquet" for a high school football team in the county, on which defendant's son had once played. (The football banquet was real, the "special invitation" was entirely spurious.) Defendant showed up at the school and was promptly served.

Something that makes Tickle v. Barton even wilder, in my opinion, is that from a theoretical standpoint there's no real reason the service wouldn't be valid! Obviously plaintiff's attorney did some shady and unethical stuff, but Barton did enter the county voluntarily and was served while he was there, so the county court should have obtained jurisdiction. The case was really decided based solely on policy grounds; the Court (reasonably!) wanted to disincentivize this sort of trickery.

Tickle is fun because it's one of those truly bonkers cases that's also a real landmark that every American law student reads in first year civil procedure. It's like the good old hairy hand case (Hawkins v. McGee) in contracts or the dropped-firecrackers-causing-clock-to-fall case (Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad) in torts.

(And thanks for reminding me – in a roundabout way – of Hawkins and Palsgraf! Those are definitely going on the list.)

SA: Realizing I should give more details on Hawkins and Palsgraf:

In Hawkins, plaintiff had badly burned his hand. Defendant, a doctor, imprudently promised to 100% restore plaintiff's hand using a skin grafting procedure with skin from plaintiff's chest. Instead of a healthy hand, the procedure resulted in a hand that not only was still damaged from the burn but also grew thick, dark hair. The court held that plaintiff was entitled to damages equal to the difference in value between a whole hand and a burnt, hairy hand (good luck putting a monetary value on that!), but was not entitled to damages for the pain and suffering inherent in undergoing the operation, since he would have suffered that even if the operation were successful.

In Palsgraf, a man was getting into a crowded railroad car. A railroad employee standing on the platform, trying to be helpful, pushed the man in from behind. The push caused the man to drop a package he was carrying, which happened to contain firecrackers. The firecrackers went off, and the shock caused a scale (not a clock, sorry! I had a brain fart in the previous comment) standing on the platform to fall over and hit the plaintiff, who was sitting on a bench nearby. Plaintiff sued the railroad. (Firecracker guy was too broke to be worth suing.) The court held that the events were too unpredictable, and the chain of causation too attenuated, for the railroad to be liable for plaintiff's injuries.

CYRT. Wow! All three of those are bonkers!

Also, I've since had an idea. What about the mcdonalds coffee thing? I mean, the real story, where it was crazy hot and she was actually sitting in a stationary car and she didn't want tons of money, just medical covered. But then McDonalds waged a propaganda war to make her seem like a crazy proto-Karen. Could your fantasy lawyer be dealing with some fantasy chain (Newt-Mart or something) that did a similar propaganda thing?

Oooooooh that is a really good idea! Time to look through canon to see if that would work...thank you!

(Also, lmao at Newt-Mart!)

Regarding the bonkers-ness, a lot of classic cases you read as a 1L have absolutely crazy fact pattern – I believe professors (and casebook authors) deliberately choose those so they're easier for students to remember. I mean, you're never going to forget "plaintiff is entitled to the difference in value between a whole hand and a burnt, hairy hand"!

Woo! Glad I could help!

That makes sense; our teachers always liked to use crazy examples of when Things Went Wrong so that we'd remember them and hopefully not make less crazy mistakes. :D

I sincerely hope that your judge is named something like Judge Studied Foot.

If you don't need to have funny cases, other standard law school cases are Marbury v. Madison, Pierson v. Post and International Shoe Co v. Washington.

My personal favorite: Jacobellis v. Ohio. Who doesn't love Stewart saying "I know it when I see it" about pornography?

Oh, if a judge shows up it's definitely going to be something like that. Or something like "Pichard Rosner."

Lol, giving me flashbacks to 1L! And that quote from Jacobellis is pretty funny.

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