Laughing At The Law

The Times of London has a rather amusing little article up that will make you laugh. It is about some utterly bizarre court cases that have popped up all over the world. Professor Gary Slapper has been writing a column for the Times for some time called Case Notes. He is moving on to a new column, Weird Cases. To promote the new column, the Times asked Slapper to pull together his top 20 personal favorite odd cases from years off collecting these. There are some true classics here.

6. In 2005, Marina Bai, a Russian astrologer, sued NASA for £165 million for “disrupting the balance of the universe”. She claimed that the space agency’s Deep Impact space probe, which was due to hit a comet later that year to harvest material from the explosion, was a “terrorist act”. A Moscow court accepted Russian jurisdiction to hear the claim but it was eventually rejected.

7. In 2007, a court in India was asked to decide whether a vibrating condom is a contraceptive or a sex toy. The condoms contain a battery-operated device, and, for the avoidance of doubt, are marketed as “Crezendo”. Opponents argue it’s a sex toy and thus unlawful in India, whereas the manufacturer says it’s a contraceptive and promotional of public health.

8. In 2006, a young man from Jiaxing, near Shanghai, found himself in legal trouble after failing to take advice before putting his soul up for sale on an online auction site. The posting was eventually removed by the auctioneer and the seller was told that the advert would be reinstated only if he could produce written permission to sell his soul from “a higher authority”.

There are 17 more over at the link that range from the bizarre to the hysterical. Enjoy.