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Is Bird the Word?

It's Thanksgiving week, and that means that Ed Stevens and friends are trying to decide what holiday traditions they should observe -- or start -- this year. Should Ed head south to visit his parents in Sarasota? Will Stuckeyvillians cast away their traditional birds in favor of a specialty gobbler from marketing madman Phil Stubbs? After a fall of break-ups and heartaches, will Ed and Carol share some pumpkin pie?

Stuckeyville Finally Has Jurors!

Ed's case of the week involves a geeky, injured high school student, who went with his friends to break into the cottage of a Stuckeyville local and get skunk drunk, only to be pummeled by a cantaloupe catapulted at ferocious speed. That's right - a catapult. The device injured the kid's arm and elbow. Turns out that the high schooler, like many Stuckeyvillians before him, participated in a regular ritual of breaking into the owner's cottage to drink. And the owner, accustomed to this tradition, had been waiting for them and was armed and ready. Yet fifty "no trespassing" signs could not deter the kid and his sophomoric crew from backing out of the prank. And he got hurt pretty bad.

You kinda' feel sorry for the kid. Not only is the catapult a mean looking machine, it works pretty darn well too. We know this when Ed demonstrates its effectiveness in the courtroom to the quiet amazement of the judge, jury, and bystanders, by nearly punching a hole in the wall.

That's right, the show's writers finally woke up to the fact that jury trials, not bench trials, should be the norm in most of Ed's civil cases. Hats off to them for heeding a gripe that I've had for weeks about this serious faux pas.

But that doesn't settle the confusion they create in another legal debacle. Since the plaintiff has the burden of proof, the plaintiff must be the first to present its case by calling witnesses and laying bare its proof to the jury. Yet this week the defendant's lawyer is the first to call the high school plaintiff to the stand for direct testimony, followed by Ed trying to rehabilitate the testimony of his client, the plaintiff.

No, no, no. That's not the way it's done folks. This may be TV, but the fact remains that trials have a proper order to them - something that the writers ignore. Plaintiff's direct examination, defendant's cross-examination, followed by plaintiff's rebuttal. But hey, these folks just write comedy and don't seem to care about accurately portraying the law.

Nor are lawyers allowed to present their own personal stories to the jury, as Ed does in his closing argument, when he tells jurors that he also broke into the defendant's cottage to go drinking with friends in high school. Any judge worth his or her salt would have stopped Ed's personalization of his client's case right away. The case is about the client, not about the counselor.

Ultimately, a unanimous jury finds that the cottage owner is not liable to the high school kid, who happily continues his role as the official "cannonballer" for the Stuckeyville High's football team, attempting to fire a cannonball during the game - something that Ed used to do when he was a kid.

Turkey Anyone?

While Ed's in court, his madman marketer, Phil Stubbs, has a new get-rich-quick scheme this week. Phil buys regular turkeys at the local grocer, and renames them "Fine Corinthian Turkeys" to add a little highbrow taste to the bird. Stuckeyvillians are drawn to the idea of a new Turkey to gobble for the holiday, but repulsed by Phil's prices. How many people do you know who are willing to pay $300 for poultry? Certainly nobody in Stuckeyville.

Phil's got a little hubris though, and lowers his Middle Eastern Bazaar-like bidding tactics to finally get customers to buy the birds at $1.00 over retail. It may not be much profit, but it's profit nonetheless. But did he sell all the turkeys?

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We find out when Ed invites friends and their families to the bowling alley for Thanksgiving (his folks rebuffed his visit to Sarasota, Florida because they were spending Thanksgiving in France). What they don't realize, however is that Ed and Carol have tried to create a new annual tradition by serving meatloaf on Thanksgiving - fifty pounds of the stuff. But it's a good thing that his guests didn't end up eating their host's raw, uncooked dish. That could have been the next great Stuckeyvillian litigation of the new millennium. Fortunately for Ed & Co., however, there are a few of Phil's "fine Corinthian turkeys" left over for all to share. And while Ed and Carol go celebrate the holiday with friends, that's what they remain, at least for now.

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