Just the other day, the partners were passing the time with one of our favorite lunchtime activities: playing devil’s advocate for some of Hollywood’s most dramatic legal cases.
Doing so made us realize just how absurd 2016 has been thus far, and we started ranking our favorite courtroom appearances by celebrities from the past year.
In America, the land of the free, we have more than one TV show dedicated solely to people shouting at each other over paternity tests.
Contrast this with the atrocity that is the most recent book-to-film adaptation of a Helen Fielding story, wherein two rich and dashing gentlemen wait nine whole months to find out who is the father of the frumpy protagonist’s child.
We may not be math teachers, but by our arithmetic, combining the ages of Brad and Angelina’s interracial flock of seagulls totals 64. And if these two stars were trying to settle custody over one sexagenarian, that would be...like...way easier than their current situation.
“...my participation in activities and/or use of such equipment may result in injury or illness including, but not limited to, injury, disease, fractures, partial and/or total paralysis, death.”
Sign me up for some of that!
Deriding the ridiculous language of liability waivers is a dinner table favorite, but are these forms really the get-out-of-jail-free card that we think they are? We’d love to don our powdered wigs and shout at you in Latin about the intricacies of legal liability, but we’ve promised Hollywood mockery here so Hollywood mockery is what you're gonna get.
One of the first things a university torts professor will tell his or her students is “never hand out legal advice willy nilly.” Because as it turns out, if you’re crazy enough to finish a JD and survive the bar exam -- other people are liable to follow advice you didn’t even realize you’d given.