Saturday, June 26, 2010

A failure of legal argument

Bystander, the magistrate & blogger, is unimpressed by the arguments put forward by former Solicitor General Vera Baird in a recent appearance before magistrates on a speeding charge.

That gives me an excuse to tell a story about a fellow student who was charged with failing to stop at a T junction. Instead of just pleading guity by letter & acccepting an endorsement on his licence, he went to court to defend himself. He explained to the justices that, since motion is a series of infinitely small stops, there must have been a point at which he was indeed at rest.

The magistrates, impressed by his mathematics but not by his driving ability, fined him £2.

Link

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