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Pastimes : Laughter is the Best Medicine - Tell us a joke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Carole Olkowski who wrote (11768)	9/29/1999 11:23:00 PM
From: Gordon A. Langston	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 62558

From my good friend Dave Free at Pacific Business News in Hawaii, an answer to some baaad sheep jokes I sent him. ?Were You Alone or By Yourself?? And Other Courtroom Gaffes By Margaret A. Jacobs ,Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Who says lawyers can?t laugh at themselves? Many of them have been circulating an e-mail list of memorable questions their learned colleagues have asked witnesses. The list was originally compiled by the Massachusetts Bar Association?s Lawyers Journal, which published it two years ago and has received requests for reprints from around the world. The journal?s editor, William Litant, who isn?t a lawyer, says he collected the examples from newspaper articles on courtroom bloopers; some of which credited a deposition handbook. ?I don?t know whether they?re true or not, but they had me in tears,? Mr. Liatant adds. Here?s a sampling: ?Now doctor, isn?t it true that when a person dies in his sleep he doesn?t know about it until the next morning?? ?Were you present when your picture was taken?? ?Were you alone or by yourseIf?. ?Was it you or your younger brother who was killed in the war?? ?Did he kill you?? ?The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?? ?How, far apart were the vehicles at the time of the collision?? ?How many times have you committee suicide?? ?Are you qualified to give a urine sample?? . Several witnesses had snappy comebacks too, such as: Q: ?You were shot In the fracas?? A: ?No, I was shot midway between the fracas and the navel.? Q: ?All your responses must be oral, okay? What school did you go to?? A: ?Oral.? ?As a group, lawyers deserve some ribbing,? says Steven Wolhandier, a lawyer in Taos, N.M., who recently received the e-mail version and forwarded It to five attorney-friends. The e-mail version he received included the following exchange between a lawyer and witness, which didn?t appear in the Massachusetts bar journal: ?Doctor ... is it possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?? ?NO. ? ?How can you be so sure?? ?Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.? ?But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?? ?It Is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.?