Shocking, funny and bizarre court cases of the year 2020

The year 2020 is considered to have been one of the most challenging ever, and with enough trouble to last a lifetime for many people. The world of law was not unlike many other areas of life. It had its good, its bad and ugly in the form of outrageous, funny and even shocking cases filed by litigants and decisions and judgments made by the courts.

To start with, one of the bizarrely good cases was that of Catriona Howie, who a court compensated 9,000 sterling pounds for injured feelings by an employer who failed to invite her to an office Christmas party while she was on maternity leave. 

The tribunal was told while the claimant was on maternity leave, her employer decided not to hold a traditional Christmas party that year and organised a trip to a pub instead. 

Maternity leave

The staff were informed by word of mouth or text. Ms Howie told the hearing she felt the company had done this in a deliberate effort to make her feel unwelcome in the business. 

A director of the company gave evidence that it did not occur to her to invite Ms Howie, being that it was not a proper party in the traditional sense.

In a decision that found the company liable for discrimination against an employee on maternity leave, Judge Corinna Ferguson said “she was overlooked because she was on maternity leave”.

The employment tribunal did, however, dismiss the former employee’s claim that a colleague had discriminated against her by mocking her decision to name her daughter after the singer Elvis Presley.

In Canada, an employment tribunal made a decision that vindicated a wildlife conservation officer whose employment had been terminated for insubordination and refusal to obey lawful orders of his superiors. 

The case was triggered by the dismissal of Bryce Casavant in 2015. His offence was that, after shooting a mother bear, he refused to also kill her cubs. 

He had been sent to a mobile home park near the British Columbia town of Port Hardy, where a female black bear was causing havoc by going into homes for food. 

As required by the policy, Casavant shot and killed the mother, but decided not to harm the cubs. Instead, he took them to a veterinarian and transferred them to a centre where they were attended to and eventually released back to the wild. 

The officer was suspended before his dismissal for refusal to follow orders. 

In June 2020, the courts finally held that the dismissal had been unfair. Casavant felt vindicated even if the court did not order his reinstatement.

Most bizarre case

In my view, the case that takes the judgment for the most bizarre if not funny is that of an 18-year-old gangster, Dylan Callander O'Brien. 

In an endeavour to prevent teenage gangster violence, a court in the United Kingdom made a decision in which the teenager became the first person to be banned from possessing a balaclava as part of a gang injunction designed to control his behaviour. 

In addition, he was prohibited from contacting 59 individuals or entering the borough of Islington near London or even riding a bicycle in public. 

The order was obtained by the police under a law passed in 2011 to prevent movement and communication by gangs. The teenager had to provide his mobile phone numbers and social media accounts to the police. 

To those who would think that prohibiting someone from wearing a balaclava overreached into the personal choices of a teenager, an officer of the metropolitan police explained that these actions were taken because “bearing down on violent crime in all its forms is our top priority and we have shown our relentless pursuit to reduce violence by imposing civil orders such as this one”. 

But if the teenager mentioned above is notorious and bad, the ugly court case is one that brought out the somewhat childish audacity of David Werking. He had lived with his parents in the state of Michigan for a brief period in 2016 after his divorce. 

When he moved to another state, he left some of his belongings in his parents’ house. A year later, he asked his parents to send him his belongings, which they did. 

He discovered shortly thereafter that some of his collection of pornographic films, magazines and adult toys were missing. He sued his parents for damage to property when they told him that they had destroyed the pornographic material. 

In the court papers, the parents described some items within the collection, as the "worst of the worst", which they feared could be illegal. 

Unfortunately for the parents, Judge Paul Maloney ruled in December last year that the parents had no right to throw out or destroy their son’s property just because it was pornographic in content. 

The judge said in his judgment: “In this case, there is no question that the destroyed property was David’s. Therefore, the court finds that there is no genuine dispute of material fact on David’s claim. 

“The parties have until next month to make submissions to the court on the amount of damages that should be awarded. 

The son’s lawyer indicated they were expecting compensation of at least thrice the value of the property.

Morbidly ugly case

But another morbidly ugly case of 2020 is that of a woman who is filing a suit to prove that she is still alive. 

This has been the fate of 58-year-old Jeanne Pouchain from Saint-Joseph, near Lyon, who was pronounced dead by a court in 2017. 

This decision was made in a protracted legal dispute involving a former employee at her cleaning company. 

A court in France made the decision to declare Jeanne Pouchain dead after an employee with whom she had been engaged in a dispute informed the court that she must have died because letters to her address were unanswered. 

This resulted in Ms Pouchain’s existence being expunged from the official records, invalidating her identity card, driving licence, bank account, health insurance and other official documents necessary to prove her existence. 

The cases to reverse this order have dragged on since 2017 and continue to frustrate her beyond any words other than her own. She said “I have no identity papers, no health insurance, I cannot prove to the banks that I am alive… I’m nothing. The case was not concluded last year.

But the final designation of ugly case or set of cases are the over 60 cases filed by President Donald Trump’s campaign team last year in attempts to nullify the election of now President Joe Biden in the election held in November last year.

In one of them, the court said this: "Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy, charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.” 

That for me was a beautiful response to the ugliness of the claims by the former president’s team.

The writer is the Head of Legal at Nation Media Group PLC