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Old March 27, 2014, 06:20 PM   #2
Aguila Blanca
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Join Date: September 25, 2008
Location: CONUS
Posts: 18,434
Quote:
Nevertheless Judge Morin said, ā€œIā€™m persuaded these are bullets. They look like bullets. They are hollow point. They are not musket balls.ā€
But, your honor, musket balls are also bullets.

This is the result of allowing judges (and juries) to make decisions on matters about which they know nothing. A number of years ago I testified as an expert witness in a lawsuit involving a fire that wiped out eight or ten units in a three-story condominium building. The fire was started when a plumber stuck a soldering torch into a wall to replace a shower valve and ignited the paper covering on some fiberglass insulation that probably shouldn't have been there anyway. The fire spread because the bathroom backed up to the kitchen of an adjacent unit, and the wall wasn't firestopped at the soffits above the wall cabinets.

The opposition told the judge that the bathroom where the fire started backed up to another bathroom. I testified that it did not, that I had walked the entire building, that I had examined the original construction plans, and that I had drawn an accurate floor plan showing the relationship of the units -- which plan was submitted into evidence.

The judge determined that the bathroom backed up against another bathroom ... because a plumber said so, and who would know more about a bathroom than a plumber?

In another case, I testified (as an expert witness) that the third boiler in a public housing complex could not be repaired in less than three months because there was only one company in the U.S. who could make the parts needed to repair the boiler, and that was the earliest they could produce the parts.

The judge ordered the housing authority to have the boiler on line within three weeks.

You can't make this stuff up.
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