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Show I THE READER'S COURTROOM- , Drawback to Idling By Will Bernard, LL.B. May You Get into Trouble By Doing Nothing At All? Two coeds went swimming at a lake resort, but soon lost sight of each other in the water. When one of the girls was unable to locate her companion, she became alarmed and reported her fears to the proprietor of the beach. He replied: re-plied: "She is probably on the shore look around for her!" The A woman was driving along a narrow side street when she came to a main thoroughfare. She noticed no-ticed a car coming, but since it was still some distance away she started across. Just then, the oncoming car suddenly speeded up! There was a crash, and the man driving the other car was hurt. Later he sued the woman for damages, insisting that he had the right-of-way. However, the court exonerated the woman from all blame. The judge said the man should have proceeded with caution. May a Convicted Killer Get a New Trial On a Mere Technicality? A young man was arrested on a charge of murdering his sweetheart. The trial lasted for several days, finally drawing to an end late Saturday afternoon. Anxious to wind up the case, the judge immediately im-mediately began giving his instructions in-structions to the jury. He talked, and talked, and talked until 10 minutes after midnight! Now it CVV man made no effort to help find the missing girl. That evening, her body was recovered from the bottom bot-tom of the lake. The victim's family fam-ily later filed a damage suit against the proprietor. In his defense, de-fense, he argued that a person can't be held liable just for "doing "do-ing nothing at all." However, the court disagreed and made him pay damages to the bereaved family. The judge said there are times' when a person has no right to stand by and do nothing and this was one of those times! A woman was speeding past an amber signal when a taxi hit the side of her car. Her auto swung out of control and crashed into the porch of a house. Miraculously, no one was hurt but the owner of the house sued both the woman and the taxi driver for damages. The cabbie admitted his guilt, but the woman plead innocent. However, How-ever, the court decided she was just as responsible as the cab driver and had to pay part of the cost. If she hadn't been speeding, her car wouldn't have rolled so far. so happened that the local law prohibited pro-hibited any court sessions on Sunday. Sun-day. When the jury brought in a "guilty" verdict, the convicted youth filed an appeal on the basis of this 10-minute overlap into Sunday Sun-day morning. And the court very reluctantly granted him a brand new trial. The judge said it was just as wrong to break the rules by 10 minutes as by 10 hours! |