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Lawyer Offers $1M For Proof His Client Could Have Done It; Oops
A Florida attorney, Cheney Mason, made the mistake of offering a million dollars on a TV show to anyone who could prove that his client, Nelson Ivan Serrano, was able to travel across two states and kill four people in the time that prosecutors had alleged. Having a lot of free time, South Texas College of Law graduate Dustin Kolodziej decided to take Mason up on his dare. Dustin traveled the route prosecutors say Serrano took, completed the trip under the time allowed, and videotaped the whole process. He is now suing Mason in the federal district court — because the attorney doesn't want to pay, saying that his statement was just a joke.
Technically, all that was proven was that this Kolodziej kid was able to traverse a distance in a given period of time, not that anyone else, least of all the defendant, was able to do the same. Plus, as far as we know, Kolodzeij did not need to take time out in order to kill anyone.
I may not be a fancy big New York Country Lawyer or anything, but it seems to me that this guy doesn't really have a case. Plus, everyone knows you're not supposed to believe anything until its been posted on at least two different blogs. TV just isn't a reliable source of information anymore.
He should be disbarred for offering a reward to anyone who helps strengthen the case AGAINST his client.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Wow, a lawyer not up to his word. Trying to weasel out of it by saying it was a joke. I hope Cheney Mason loses. It'll probably be the only way anyone will get justice against anyone with Cheney in their name.
Reminds me of the Pepsi Points Case where someone tried to get Pepsi to hand over a Harrier Jet in return for Pepsi points during a contest. Pepsi won that case.
Anarchists never rule
Should make politics more interesting. Who is in with me for a few class-action suits? $1 a share, excellent ROI.
He can sue for false advertising. If the guy had made this offer in court, or as part of a contractual obligation, it would be a different story.
Offer and clear terms, acceptance and proof of performance. Seems like payment is next in order.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
As a lawyer, shouldn't this douchebag know better than to grandstand and make promises like that?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
The lawyer is a complete twit for basing a defense of his client on something that can (and has) been easily disproved.
The lawyer compounds his own stupidity by making a large cash offer for someone to prove him wrong.
Someone does that and asks for the money, and the lawyer puts the final nail is his coffin of bozo-ness by claiming it was just a joke all along. Ha ha, who wouldn't laugh at a trial of a man accused of four murders! Oh, those long nights must fly by with such hilarity!
...combining the worst points of Dick Cheney and Perry Mason...
Harvard Law School is thinking on teaching a class in shutting the hell up.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
What is it with Florida attorneys publicly offering money on clear terms and then backing out?
The last one that did it was disbarred for life, you'd think others wouldn't be in a hurry to follow his lead...
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
All he proved was that the drove the distance, not that the client could have killed anyone. For that he'd have to have killed someone or sometwo. ;-}
In his chambers, censuring the daring counsel, threatening him with disbarment (if not dismemberment, hehehe):
"You're more of a Cheney than a Mason. You should have tuned your open source defence more like MANdrake, not DRAKE man, and you'll be on the STREET because didn't ask DELLA to do the drive. You are APAULING, counsel. THIS very well could be YOUR D-Day. Your ass may be BURGER, you HAMfisted TON of Grade D daring.
(Thanks to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Mason i was able to cobble together some of my twisty humour...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
OK, corrected sentence:
If the guy had made an offer in court, or as part of a contractual obligation, it would be a different story.
Nobody ever pays out these prove "impossible" thing and I give you $1 million dollars offers, and no one ever will.
I will give $1 million dollars to anyone that can prove otherwise.
Lame.
It might have been a "contra-cat" but it wasn't a contract except under the terms of Slashdot law.
Take it from me- I've been making money this way for years, and I always have my attorney review televised dares before I go bolting across state lines.
he can get his client to fit that bill too?
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus
How fun to see South Texas College of Law in the news! I used to check my email in the library there when I recently worked in downtown Houston, because the multinational financial firm that laid me off had locked down access to Gmail and Facebook and Evite and all other sugar and spice in the online world. Nothing like those mid-afternoon breaks of walking a block to the school and getting a cappuccino out of their coffee machine and staring out the nice big windows of their library!
Ray Beckerman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Beckerman
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
Kolodziej is unlikely to win - judges tend to protect their own and is likely to side with the lawyer.
I see what you did!
I vote that Kolodziej get no money due to the simple fact that he forgot to kill 4 people during his trip. If something's worth doing, it's worth doing right, eh? Ok, so maybe that wasn't in the criteria, but it should have been, gosh darnit!
there are several things wrong here
1. The lawyer is devoid of intelligence to offer a million dollars
a. for some proof that damns his client
b. and not think that someone will take the challenge
2. The college student
a. should of made a written agreement that him the lawyer and a witness would all receive a copy of and sign
b. should remember that next time an opportunity like this (if ever) comes along he should follow point a.
Why else would he say what he said. He was making a point in support of his client. The lawyer intended the audience to believe that it was so unlikely that a person could make the trip in such a short space of time that there would be little risk even if he offered a million pound reward for doing so. Why else would he have said such a thing?
Sure, he says it was a joke now, but where is the joke? It's not funny. He was trying to sway the opinion of the public without having to prove his case. He bluffed, thinking that nobody would take him up on his challenge and that therefore his bold claim would be reinforced in the public mind (and those of the jurors and judge). His bluff was called and he deserves to pay up.
Does anybody really care which one of these lawyer scumbags prevails?
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
see he's already laying grounds for an appeal due to inadequate representation.
first rule in law school is never ask a question you don't already know the answer too. asking people to prove that something is possible if you don't know for sure is part of that.
If I go out on a public place and shout: "Whoever comes here first takes 20 bucks!!!", does that make me obliged by law to give 20 bucks to the faster (and dumper) who runs to me? Which law is that? The "You Said It Now" Act ???
Is a vial criminal one that steals test tubes?
You should never believe a lawyer who says on television that he will give you (or someone else) money if you can perform some task to which he defines the terms. Some years ago, Jack Thompson challenged gamers to create a violent videogame where a grizzled game designer goes on a bloody rampage across the office of "Take One" studios, an obvious rip on the name of Take Two who designed Thompson's nemesis, Grand Theft Auto. He stated he would give 10,000$ to charity if someone did... and when the challenge was taken and completed, he quickly backpedaled that he did not mean it and did not have to pay. Penny Arcade eventually donated the money, in his name, to a children's charity... and Thompson went to the police, claiming that Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins were criminally harassing him as a result of this donation. I swear I am not making this up.
It's posts like yours that inspired my sig.
The challenge was not to prove the guy committed the murders within that time, it was to prove he could make it from airport terminal to hotel security camera within that time.
Heck, many times I've made it from the same terminal to 10x the distance in just 2x the time.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
He only says he'll pay a million dollars. Does he specify US Dollars? He could mean ANY sort of dollars - Australian dollars, New Zealand dollars, Hong Kong dollars (which is pegged at 7.5 to 1 USD!!!). Differing exchange rates could mean he only has to pay a small amount in USD. If he was talking about PSD (Psuedodollars) which I believe have the current exchange rate of 1,000,000 PSD to 1 USD, then the maths is easy! This kid needs to prove he meant USD or get out of court...
sporange
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
This has got to be the weakest defense example posted here.
w00t
Reading on the not so always reliable Wikipedia that only apply to sale of goods. Might not be valid in this case. BUT IANAL!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_frauds
Don't quit your day job.
The guy didn't kill any people during those 28 minute.
The prosecution claims that he murdered people in Florida, flew back to Georgia under a false name, the plane landed, he got off it, and then showed up on security cameras 28 minutes later at his hotel.
The defense is claiming that's impossible, he couldn't have made it from the airport in that time.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Since when can you sue a lawyer for lying?
Trust me, if you could, I'd be a billionaire overnight!
You're absolutely right... You know, he WAS convicted of "gunning down" four people, and we all know how long it takes to pull a freaking trigger...
I would ARRANGE to have a suitable homophone for orange, but unfortunately, my accent doesn't let me mangle pronunciation like that.
--Joe
Okay. I'll make it a point to personally care about every criminal act that takes place in the United States of America.
I'll get right on that. Yeah.
In the meantime, I'm going to pretend like this system of common law that we have doesn't exist - where a unilateral contract offered on national broadcast television may or may not set a binding precedent.
The point of the justice system is to provide a public disincentive for future violations of a given law by the population of society at large.
It can't bring murder victims back from the dead, it's not there to extract vengence, it's not there to reform criminals into useful members of society, and it's not there to balance some imaginary cosmic scale (which, if it existed, would be enforced by the laws of physics without the need for human intervention).
In fact, it is possible for it to serve its purpose without an actual guilty party simply by demonstrating to potential future transgressors what will happen to a guilty party if they are caught.
Any argument claiming that the demonstration won't stop a crime is either a claim that the penalty is insufficient to provide disincentive, or they are arguing that no disincentive is sufficient for some people (which is true: we call those people "sociopaths", and we lock them away indefinitely in mental institutions when we identify them).
-- Terry
How many murders were committed the year of this trial? How many other trials were there? Do you care about all of them? Not in an abstract sense, because anyone can claim to care about something they have just heard about: in a real sense, DO YOU CARE? If your answer is anything but, 'no, I do not care in any concrete sense of the word' then we know you are a liar. You may care about 'justice' and 'people' and other abstract concepts, and these trials represent those concepts, but you do not actually care about the people involved because you do not know them and have never in your life done anything for them. Seriously, have you spared one moment of thought for any of them? How could you have, you don't know anything about those trials, they are, to you, completely abstract. Like this case. Weedhopper was being honest, you are merely pontificating about morality, possibly to make yourself look better. You are a what I like to call a Care Troll. You probably also feign offense when people joke about the recently dead, don't you? Care Trolls don't really care about anything but looking superior to others.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"The four engineers
wear orange brassieres."
No, they are only available to the military, thus, the commercial must have been a joke. However, anyone can acquire a million dollars. Therefore, there is some doubt whether this was a joke. I mean, yeah, it is pretty obvious the lawyer was not serious, but is 'pretty obvious' good enough? I guess we'll find out at the trial, if it goes to trial. Whichever way that goes, it is the original lawyer who loses and the law student who wins. The lawyer loses face, while the law student gains a reputation. Who would you hire, a dumbass who makes easily disproven claims, or the guy who goes out of his way to disprove them? To me, that law student looks pretty smart, and I'd hire him over the original lawyer any day (you know, assuming he passes the bar.) I don't think that kid ever expected to get his million dollars. He expected to get a little cheap publicity for his own law career.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Franka Potente would have made it in 20 minutes flat, and if she failed she'd rewind the world to give herself two more tries.
... who's there?
:)
Orange.
Orange who?
Orange ya glad I didn't say banana?
They have Nazis in England too? And why would they care about vocabulary anyway, I thought they just were into killing Jews and immigrants.
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