Years later, Charles M. Sevilla, a lawyer in private practice in San Diego, amassed a collection of actual humor from America’s courtrooms and compiled it all into a book with the same title: Disorder in the Court. Later on, he followed this up with a second collection titled Disorderly Conduct.
Among other places, his two works are available at Amazon, the online book retailer, which describes them together as “misstatements from the courtroom - legalese marred by malapropisms, slips of the tongue, eccentric interpretations”, etc… all “gleefully quoted” in his two compilations.
Readers are encouraged to “Sit back and enjoy a collection of verbatim exchanges from the halls of justice, where defendants and plaintiffs, lawyers and witnesses, juries and judges, collide to produce memorably insane comedy.”
I found an excerpt from his material posted online at http://mistupid.com/people/page064.htm, and thought I would post a few of them here today for your enjoyment. Remember, these things were actually stated and recorded by court reporters.
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Q: What is your date of birth?
A: July 15th.
Q: What year?
A: Every year.
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Q: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
A: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
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Q: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
A: Yes.
Q: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
A: I forget.
Q: You forget? Can you give us an example of something that you've forgotten?
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Q: How old is your son, the one living with you?
A: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
Q: How long has he lived with you?
A: Forty-five years.
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Q: What was the first thing your husband said to you when he woke up that morning?
A: He said, "Where am I, Cathy."
Q: And why did that upset you?
A: My name is Susan.
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Q: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo or the occult?
A: We both do.
Q: Voodoo?
A: We do.
Q: You do?
A: Yes, voodoo.
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Q: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
A: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
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Q: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
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Q: Were you present when your picture was taken?
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Q: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
A: Yes.
Q: And what were you doing at the time?
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Q: She had three children, right?
A: Yes.
Q: How many were boys?
Q: None.
A: Were there any girls?
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Q: How was your first marriage terminated?
A: By death.
Q: And by whose death was it terminated?
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Q: Can you describe the individual?
A: He was about medium height and had a beard.
Q: Was this a male or a female?
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Q: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
A: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
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Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.
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Q: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
A: Oral.
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Q: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
A: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
Q: And Mr. Dennington was dead at the time?
A: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy.
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Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.
About all I can say, at this point, is "OBJECTION!" On what grounds? That this material is obviously "Incompetent, Irrelevant, and Immaterial"! Forgive us, Perry Mason!