Wednesday 14 October 2015

Judgement day

We've all had lapses of judgement from time to time - said or done something only to end up wondering 'what the hell was I thinking?' The good news is that, however abysmal your judgement, you're probably doing better than Jennifer Connell of New York.

In March 2011, Jennifer rolled up at her nephew's 8th birthday party.  The boy got off the new bike he'd been riding and rushed into her arms with a cry of ‘Auntie Jen, I love you!’ Unfortunately, his boisterous greeting caused her to stumble, fall and break her wrist. At this point she could have decided to:

 a) put the whole freak accident down to experience

or

 b) sue the kid for $127,000 damages.

Tough call.

Sadly for Jennifer, she judged that b) was probably the best course of action.

Having committed herself to becoming a public laughing stock and enduring a lifetime of very awkward family gatherings, Jennifer didn't exactly help her case by asking the jury to feel her pain with the heart-rending revelation that 'I was at a party recently, and it was difficult to hold my hors d’oeuvre plate.'

For some reason, the jury were unmoved by the harrowing story of Jennifer's hors d’oeuvre hell and took 25 minutes* to award the 54-year-old human resources manager zero damages, which only goes to prove that somebody in this story wasn't having a lapse of judgement.

 via

 *I'm guessing that was roughly 20 minutes to stop laughing, about a second to decide and 4 minutes 59 to confirm the verdict.

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