1. This took place in Charlotte, North Carolina.
A lawyer purchased a box of very rare and expensive cigars then insured them against, among other things… “FIRE”..!!
Within a month… having smoked his entire stockpile of these great cigars… the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company.
In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were… “lost in a series of small fires’.
The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason, that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion.
The lawyer sued… and… WON…!!!
Delivering the ruling… the judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous… but he stated nevertheless, that the lawyer held a policy from the company, in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure them against fire, without defining what is considered to be acceptable explanation of the term ‘fire’…(as in the act of actually smoking the cigar) and was obligated to pay the claim.
Rather than endure lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling… and paid $15,000 to the lawyer for his loss of the cigars that were… “lost in a series of small fires’.
NOW FOR THE BEST PART…
After the lawyer cashed the check… the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of ARSON…!!!
With evidence of his own insurance claim… and testimony from the case being used against him… the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine…!!!
This true story won First Place in the “Criminal Lawyers Award” contest in the following year.
ONLY IN AMERICA…!!!
2.An older, tired-looking dog wandered into my yard.I could tell from his collar and well-fed belly that he had a home and was well taken care of.He calmly came over to me, I gave him a few pats on his head. He then followed me into my house, slowly walked down the hall, curled up in the corner and fell asleep.
An hour later, he went to the door, and I let him out.The next day he was back, greeted me in my yard, walked inside and resumed his spot in the hall and again slept for about an hour.This continued off and on for several weeks.Curious, I pinned a note to his collar: ‘I would like to find out who the owner of this wonderful sweet dog is and ask if you are aware that almost every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap.’
The next day he arrived for his nap, with a different note pinned to his collar: ’He lives in a home, with my non stop chatting and nagging wife, he’s trying to catch up on his sleep.Can I come with him tomorrow ? Thanks
MURDER, SUICIDE OR HOMICIDE?
At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, AAFS President, Dr. Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story:
On March 23, 1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. Mr. Opus had jumped from the top of a ten story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to that effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window which killed him instantly.
Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety net had been installed just below at the eighth floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned. “Ordinarily,” Dr. Mills continued, “A person who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide.” That Mr. Opus was shot on the way to a certain death, but probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.
The room on the ninth floor whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously and he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Mr. Opus. When one intends to kill subject “A” but kills subject “B” in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject “B.”
When confronted with the murder charge the old man and his wife were both adamant. They both said they thought the shotgun was unloaded. The old man said it was his long standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her. Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident; that is, if the gun had been accidentally loaded.
The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple’s son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son’s financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. Since the loader of the gun was aware of this, he was guilty of the murder even though he didn’t actually pull the trigger. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.
Now comes the exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother’s murder. This led him to jump off the ten story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window. The son had actually murdered himself so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.
(A true story from Associated Press, reported by Kurt Westervelt)
Comment by T.R.Ramaswami — October 10, 2011 @ 9:15 PM