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PaperclipPerfector  10hr ago (text post)   190 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 2, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Court opinion:

  • A woman is standing in front of a supermarket shelf, contemplating a purchase. An employee comes up next to her, kneels on the floor with one leg sticking out behind him, and starts stocking the shelf. The woman notices the employee's presence. Nevertheless, 30 to 60 seconds after the employee's arrival, she walks away, trips over the employee's outstretched leg, and sustains injuries.

  • The woman sues the supermarket, but the trial judge speedily dismisses the case.

    [The court] has stretched in every direction to determine how, in the absence of a case, rule, regulation, manual or anything else, this can be determined to be a dangerous condition created by the [supermarket] with which thus would have caused the injury to the plaintiff. And the court just simply cannot reach that conclusion.

    A genuine issue of material fact must be created for a jury to consider. This strains the definition, in the court's opinion, of a genuine issue of material fact. This is a normal interaction in a supermarket. There are shoppers that are coming and going. Shoppers that could be kneeling down trying to obtain an item on a lower shelf. Shoppers moving back and forth. Employees moving back and forth, moving things onto shelves, off the shelf. Nothing here appears to be outside the normal operation of a supermarket, as the court would understand it or know it.

  • The appeals panel affirms.

    By her own account, plaintiff was aware of the employee's presence and activities for a significant period of time before she turned to leave. She was thus under an obligation to exercise reasonable care after retrieving her item and walking away.

    Moreover, we agree with the trial court that the employee's extended leg did not create a dangerous condition subjecting [the supermarket] to liability because it did not create an unforeseeable risk of harm and there was no defect in the property itself. Plaintiff's failure to heed the presence of the employee who was performing a routine supermarket activity—where there were no visual or lighting impairments—does not create a dangerous condition of the premises.

Court opinion with hilariously hentai facts but also an interesting legal issue:

  • One evening, defendant was sitting on the couch watching a movie with his daughter, age three, and son, age eighteen months. Defendant's daughter adjusted her position and brushed up against defendant's genital area. He became aroused. Defendant went to the kitchen pantry, put honey on his penis, and returned to the couch with his penis exposed. Defendant then allowed both children to lick the honey off his penis.

  • The three-year-old informs the wife. The wife confronts the husband, and he confesses to her. The wife informs the couple's pastor. Both the wife and the pastor urge the husband to confess to the police. The wife and the pastor inform local police. Simultaneously but separately, the husband confesses, first to a 911 dispatcher, then to a municipal police officer over the phone, and finally to a state police officer in an extended in-person interview. The standard Miranda rights aren't read to him until he gets to the state police.

  • The husband is charged with seven felonies, pleads guilty to two of them, and is sentenced to 15 years in prison (with the possibility of parole after 13 years). He appeals, arguing that the dispatcher and the two officers misleadingly implied in their interrogations that he was not a criminal suspect and would be able to escape with merely counseling rather than prison.

  • The appeals panel rejects this argument. (1) "We emphasize at the outset that defendant was not in custody when he called 911 and spoke to the dispatcher." "The dispatcher's comments that defendant was 'doing the right thing by coming forward' and that [the municipal officer] would 'get [defendant] the best help' simply do not rise to the level of the repeated, explicit assurances made in [two cases where this argument was accepted]." (2) "Defendant is hard pressed to argue he did not believe he was a suspect in the crime that he had already confessed to. Furthermore, [the municipal officer]'s assertion that he was 'not familiar with the whole situation' was, in substance, true. And, finally, at the risk of repetition, this conversation occurred via phone. Defendant was not in custody." "Like the dispatcher's statements—and quite unlike the detectives' assertions in [a case where this argument was accepted]—[the municipal officer]'s reply does not constitute an affirmative representation that defendant will not face criminal charges or penal consequences." (3) "[The state officer]'s words do not in our view constitute an affirmative misrepresentation that somehow undermined defendant's waiver of his right against self-incrimination or was otherwise inappropriate, warranting judicial condemnation." "By comparison [with three cases where this argument was accepted], [the state officer]'s remarks are innocuous."

News article:

  • A person buys a defunct group home, converts it to a six-bedroom single-family house, and rents out the bedrooms. The building has a sprinkler system, as the code requires of group homes, but the system is broken. The owner spends 4 k$ on repairs, but the system breaks again, and he declines to spend another 6 k$ on more repairs, since a sprinkler system is not required in a single-family house.

  • Municipal code enforcement cites the owner for failing to maintain the sprinkler system. It argues that, once a sprinkler system has been installed, that system must be maintained and cannot be removed, even though it would not be required under the current use.

  • The owner appeals, arguing that code enforcement's interpretation is wrong. The code-enforcement board agrees with him and rules that the sprinkler system can be removed.

Court opinion:

  • A developer buys a defunct golf course and submits an application to redevelop it with two warehouses. The municipal zoning officer denies the application, because (inter alia) it does not show all the existing steep slopes on the land. The developer appeals, arguing that the manmade steep slopes of the defunct golf course are not included within the "natural resources" that the municipal zoning code requires an applicant to identify.

  • The zoning board denies the appeal, and the trial judge and the appeals panel affirm. "Natural resources" are defined in the municipal zoning code as "existing natural elements relating to land" and to include "steep slopes". The plain dictionary definition of "natural resources" includes manmade environmental features such as parks. And, under state precedent, any law that applies to "steep slopes" applies to both manmade and natural slopes unless the law explicitly states otherwise, since whether an originally manmade slope becomes "natural" 10, 30, or 100 years after its creation "is the sort of 'thorny bordering on philosophical' question best avoided by courts and left to legislation and policymaking".

FWIW, I continue to enjoy these greatly. All else equal, yeah, it'd be more fun to not have the pedophilia part, but the "my voluntary confession to the 911 operator wasn't mirandized" idiocy tickled me.

Alright this has come up before. No more pedophilia cases in the Friday Fun Thread. It's just not fun for a lot of people.

That's as good an excuse as any to end the whole series, then.

I originally started it because I had a bunch of free time at work, court websites seemed like a browsing target that the IT people wouldn't be able to complain about1,2, and the funny and interesting opinions that I found were a good karma farm3. After retiring, I continued it out of habit and for more karma. But I'm not going to post expurgated summaries just to satisfy some whiners.

1Especially because I actually found opinions directly relevant to my civil-engineering job every few months or so.

2My coworkers never got censured for browsing stock-market and news websites on their own work computers. But better safe than sorry.

3Though of course this website does not actually list a user's total karma anywhere, so perhaps the concept of "karma farming" is not applicable.

That's as good an excuse as any to end the whole series, then.

I greatly enjoy this series and appreciate you doing it and, prior to seeing the mod comment, was wondering if there was a way to report a series of posts for "quality contribution", because while I don't think any individual one of these posts rises to quite that level I think the series in aggregate is worth that.

I think you're being a little overdramatic here. This post has 4 stories in it, you could easily have included only 3 of them and, while you'd have lost 25% of the available content, it also would have taken 25% less time to type up. It does seem annoying, and goes against the Motte's general anti-censorship atmosphere, but if I squint I can see their point in that this is "Friday Fun Thread" and not the culture war post. They're not just picking on you to be mean.

I don't know, ultimately you get to choose what you do with your time and whether you're willing to compromise. I just think that this is a fun feature of the Motte that you create each week, and would be sad to see it go.

I have to be real with you — infants being abused by their pederast father is not my idea of "fun".

I said "hilariously hentai facts". I would not be surprised to find a similar storyline in a literal hentai manga.

I can understand including some of the more morbid cases weeks when the pickings are slim, but there were three other cases this week. I don't see any need to include this, and, Hentai or no, these facts aren't hilarious. Especially since people like me don't even really know what Hentai is and thus have no frame of reference for what you're talking about.

Hentai or no, these facts aren't hilarious. Especially since people like me don't even really know what hentai is and thus have no frame of reference for what you're talking about.

I strongly disagree. People joke all the time about how women allegedly coat their vaginas with peanut butter in order to trick their dogs to eating them out, and this is practically the same thing. It isn't as if he caused severe injuries to the three-year-old by inserting his penis into her vagina.

Bestiality's a 'funny joke' because as much as people say they care about animals, they don't really care about animals that much unless they're more than a little nuts, and the possibility that someone they know might even consider it is pretty unimaginable. There was a big scandal in the furry fandom a little under a decade ago about a zoophilia-sadist ring (cw: no matter how strong your stomach, you don't want to look to close into this, yes, insert 'beating dead horse' joke here), and it got a lot of critical attention from furries (and even some other zoophiles), but as far as I can tell the only criminal convictions involved literal serial killers of animals or separate possession of CSAM. There was a lot of conduct there that was physically damaging or even likely fatal to the animal, but ultimately, it's something normal people see as gross because of what the bad actors are doing to themselves, less than what's happening to the animal.

Animal protective services aren't going to pull custody from Hassan Piker; that doesn't make putting a shock collar on a kid funny.

Beyond that, a lot of the post-1990s changes to attitudes about abuse of very young children were driven by vastly increased understanding of what psychological impact these actions had on their victims. The Breendoggle or various priest abuses had a number of different reasons they were able to shovel themselves under the rug, but one of the biggest is that it was largely assumed that victims would forget, merely not understand, or at worst become 'precocious': 'corruption of a minor' as a charge was a lot more literally considered than modern readers think. But a significant portion of human victims end up pretty messed up by stuff that doesn't leave bruises or injuries, especially when it's committed by a trusted figure.

Man, one of my guilty pleasures is watching YouTube videos of sentencing and parole hearings. Often they involve child molesters who did shit like this. The chomos (or their lawyers) tend to give very similar arguments to what you said.

I don't know what circles you're running in if you hear that joke "all the time", but either way, you're talking about the theoretical sexual abuse of a dog and conflating it with the actual sexual abuse of small children.

I don't know what circles you're running in if you hear that joke "all the time"

4chan. I think it was also featured in Not Another Teen Movie back in 2001, so my impression is that it's a totally mainstream joke.

you're talking about the theoretical sexual abuse of a dog and conflating it with the actual sexual abuse of small children

There are degrees of "sexual abuse". I don't think this is any more extreme than how people laugh about underage boys who get the opportunity to have sex with female teachers.

If the best you can come up with is a message board notorious for offensive content and a movie that came out 25 years ago it's safe to say that this isn't part of normal polite discourse, and certainly isn't fun. The guy got a 15 year sentence for a first offense. As part of a plea deal. That alone should tell you how serious the conduct is in terms of degree.

Don't post that shit here. I think you go to efforts to find cases that contain 'legal interests' when your interest is obviously prurient (like you asking posters what they think about during masturbation, or that other case of sexual abuse you found 'funny'). Then you sandwich it all in a big post where other idiots respond to other parts of the post.

I checked all the opinions posted by New Jersey courts in the past week, plus some Pennsylvania appellate decisions, and came up with three opinions—one that was funny (supermarket), one that was interesting (developer), and one that was both funny and interesting (honey). I decided to add a judicial-adjacent newspaper article that I happened to have read, and to hold over for next week three non-judicial items that I also wanted to post. You can believe that or not.

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