An old but interesting case came to my attention lately. While it has absolutely nothing to do with the condominium world, I felt blogging on it would be entertaining to many of our readers who have become accustomed to some of the very challenging legal positioning some ill-advised parties may take in condominium matters.
This is the rather peculiar case of Mr. Joly who claimed that he was a Martian and not a human being. In his numerous legal proceedings, he complained of the fact that the defendants (including doctors, medical facilities, government agencies, the CIA and President Clinton (to name only a few)) conspired to hide the true nature of his being by falsifying DNA test results.
Some of the defendants brought a motion to strike Mr. Joly’s claim on the basis that it disclosed no reasonable cause of action or was otherwise frivolous, vexatious and an abuse of the process of the Court. The crux of Mr. Joly’s response to this motion was that the only reason why he was now unable to satisfy the court that he was a Martian (and not a human being) was due to this very falsification of DNA test results of which he was complaining.
At the end of the day, sadly for Mr. Joly, the court struck his pleadings and dismissed his claims with a rather clever legal reasoning. The court concluded that our Rules of civil procedure defined a “plaintiff” as “a person who commences an action”. Since the dictionary defined a “person” as “an individual human being”, someone claiming to be a Martian could not possibly be a plaintiff before our court system. As such, the court concluded that, if we were to accept Mr. Joly’s assertion that he was a Martian, he did not have any status before our court system. For this and for other legally sound reasons, the court concluded that Mr. Joly’s claim was frivolous and vexatious and that it constituted an abuse of the process of the Court.
Just when you think that the arguments raised by the other party in your condominium case are “out of this world”, remember that at least your opponent is an earthling.
Beam me up, Scotty !
