#TBT Sometimes, Lawyers Get Caught Up In Irrelevancies.

This is an actual transcript of testimony in a case where a lawyer is cros-examining a Medical Examiner. A cautionary tale.

Lawyers Say The Darndest Things.

As a capper on the Holiday weekend, I give you this colloquy between an attorney (or someone masquerading as an attorney) and a Medical Examiner concerning an autopsy that the Doctor has performed. I am not making this stuff up:

"ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?

WITNESS: No..

ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?

WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?

WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law."