OBITER

Trial by Oil

The leaders of a village in the Indian state of Rajasthan ordered 150 men to dip their hands into boiling oil to prove their innocence after food was stolen from a local school. After 10 days spent trying to identify those responsible, the council, or panchayat, of Ranpur village, 340 km south of state capital Jaipur, issued the ‘medieval diktat’. The 150 men from Ranpur and two neighbouring hamlets were told to pick a copper ring from a cauldron of boiling oil. The council elders then announced that the 50 who refused the order must be behind the crime. Many, who agreed out of fear of being ostracised had they refused, are now nursing their burns. Some are now testifying against the elders, who have since been arrested.

Motion to Compel Lunch

An Arizona judge’s order proves that a lawyer can sometimes have his relief and eat it too. The lawyer invited his adversary to lunch to discuss discovery and other matters pending in their Superior Court case. When the opposing lawyer turned him down, he turned to the court for relief, in the form of a ‘Motion to Compel Acceptance of Lunch Invitation’. In a four-page order dated 19 July 2006, Judge Pendleton Gaines granted the motion, concluding: ‘The Court has rarely seen a motion with more merit.’

Judge Gaines wrote that he ‘searched in vain’ for precedent to support the motion, but, finding none, concluded that it was within his inherent powers. Still, he found support for his ruling elsewhere in the literature:

The writers support the concept. Conversation has been called ‘the socialising instrument par excellence’ (Jose Ortega y Gasset, Invertebrate Spain) and ‘one of the greatest pleasures in life’ (Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence). John Dryden referred to ‘Sweet discourse, the banquet of the mind’ (The Flower and the Leaf).

The judge directed that during their lunch, counsel were to confer about their outstanding discovery disputes and jointly report back to the court within a week. His Honour also suggested in a footnote that serious conversation only occur after counsel had eaten, observing that the temperaments of the court’s children always improved after a meal!

eBaby Bid

Jack Neal briefly became the proud owner of a pink convertible car after he managed to buy it for £9,000 pounds (S$26,500) on the Internet despite being only three years old. Jack’s mother told the BBC that she had left her password for the eBay auction site in her computer, and Jack who is a whiz on the PC used the ‘Buy It Now’ option to complete the purchase. The seller of the second-hand car, a dealer from Worcestershire, central England, was amused by the bid and agreed not to force the sale through.