Suing God

Getting in touch with God - to sue Him


C’mere ‘til I tell ya
Daniel Carey

A SCOTTISH friend spotted a story on the BBC website last week entitled ‘Legal case against God dismissed’. It wasn’t a joke. It seems an American judge has thrown out a case against God, ruling that because the defendant has no address, legal papers cannot be served.
The suit was launched by Nebraska state senator Ernie Chambers, who had sought a permanent injunction to prevent the ‘death, destruction and terrorisation’ caused by God. But Judge Marlon Polk ruled that a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a case to proceed.
“Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant, this action will be dismissed with prejudice,” Judge Polk wrote in his ruling.
Mr Chambers said that God had threatened him and the people of Nebraska and had inflicted ‘widespread death, destruction and terrorisation of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants’.
The court, Mr Chambers said, had acknowledged the existence of God. “A consequence of that acknowledgement is a recognition of God’s omniscience,” he reasoned. “Since God knows everything, God has notice of this lawsuit.” Mr Chambers, a state senator for 38 years, said he filed the suit to make the point that ‘anyone can sue anyone else, even God’.
The result may well have implications for the thousands of people who blame the Almighty for their own errors. Footballers who kick 14-yard frees wide are fond of shouting ‘Jesus’ or ‘For Christ’s sake’. But it seems they’ve no business looking for legal redress from The Man Upstairs unless they can find His post-box.
The case against God may well feature if there’s ever a sequel to the book ‘Disorder in the American Courts’. One exchange contained therein relates the time an attorney apparently asked a witness: “How was your first marriage terminated?” and received the reply: “By death.” The lawyer, clearly a stickler for detail, asked: “And by whose death was it terminated?”
Confusion of a more understandable kind arose in 2003 over the newspaper headlines ‘Hospitals are sued by seven-foot doctors’ and ‘Juvenile court to try shooting defendant’. Read ’em and weep.
Strange court cases aren’t confined to the United States, of course. Stories from the legal world which have made the Irish papers in recent years include ‘Ballymahon man in wedding dress blew kisses at drivers’ and ‘Pay for puppet show or get a criminal conviction’. A personal favourite was the TV ad-inspired ‘Judge told to give Kit-Kat man a break’, in which a solicitor sought clemency for his client, who had been charged with stealing a chocolate bar.
In 2004, an army man appeared in court in Athlone after colliding with a building at eight o’clock in the morning, largely because he was driving a tank. Over the road in Mullingar, one defendant attempted to excuse himself from court proceedings with the words: “I’m in a rush because I’ve a load of tarmac outside, and it will harden if I don’t keep going.” You couldn’t make it up.