Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 21.pdf/215

 194

The Green Bag

couple of baskets of wine and a box or two of cigars?' "I told him that if that were to be done either he or we would have to withdraw from the case at once, and he promptly apologized and said he had meant the remark merely for a joke. "Well, we won the case in short order. For some reason the other side seemed to get rather rough treatment. I couldn't help saying to our Philadelphia lawyer, with some resentment, 'Your little plan of corrupting the court was entirely unnecessary.' "'But I did send the wine and cigars,' he said coolly. "'Not to Judge Yancey!' I exclaimed. "'Yes, but I believe I was careless enough to send it in the wrong name— I believe I sent it in our opponent's name!'" $15 AND YOU'RE A GOOD FELLOW The appended letter has been sent to us by a lawyer of Billings, Montana. The names are suppressed, but we may explain that it was written to the Judge of the District Court by the mother of minor children, for whom a guardian had recently been appointed. The Mister referred to, whose name has been left blank, is of course the guar dian :— Helena, Mont., Feb. 27, 1909. Mr. Dear Sir:— I have to have fifteen dollars I had to pay a doctor bill for and get shoes for the family and some goods for the spring and summer, and if you can write and tell Mr. to send it to me I will think you are a good fellow. I will soon be home and then you can come down and put the garden in. If you will allow me it tell Mr. send it at once. I called the doctor and said has heart trouble and ought to be in a lower climate. This will be all for this time. P. S. I would like to go to Seattle.

CASES ON JOKES (NOTE.—The sittings of the Supreme Court of Joke-idioture are scheduled for the last week of each month at Greenbagville, and if the inter est of the legal profession is sufficient to pro mote litigation in this Court, as we hope it will be, we shall take pleasure in permitting the publication of official reports of our decisions. PER CURIAM.) BALDERDASH v. JOSHMENOT Supreme Court of Joke-idioture April Term, 1909 In establishing the validity of a legal joke the burden of proof is on the perpe trator, and the record must set forth all material facts necessary to support an alle gation of humor. Where an attempt was made to have a certain writing adjudicated humorous by the Court, and the record did not include all material facts but the humor would have had to be proved by extrinsic evi dence, held that a decision that a joke is null and void cannot be reversed for error. One John Balderdash, who is an attorneyat-law of Syracuse, N. Y., and a reader of a frivolous publication known as the Green Bag, is the appellant in this action and plaintiff in the court below. Balderdash requested the editor of that publication, James Joshmenot, to insert in it a nondescript collocation of words purporting, according to the opinion expressed by the fabricator, to be a legal joke, and the editor having refused, brought a bill in ac/i-witty in the Court of Corre spondence School naming Joshmenot as de fendant and asking for a writ of specific per formance. The defendant offered in evidence a contract between the plaintiff and himself, in which the defendant bound himself to furnish the plaintiff a course of instruction in legal jokes in the Greenbag Correspondence School of Humor. The Court, per Mr. Jus tice Joshmenot (who was, it appears, the same gentleman as the defendant), ruled that as the act of which plaintiff complained was done by the defendant in pursuance of the contract, equity could not be invoked to en force a breach of contract unless the contract deserved to be broken, and the Court ex pressed the opinion that it plainly did not deserve to be, as the plaintiff was unques tionably in sore need of the defendant'sinstruction with regard to the essentials of a legal joke.