How Have You Been Censored in Court?

Question of the Week

Posted Sep 20, 2007, 11:23 am CDT
By Molly McDonough

There's some good discussion on ABAJournal.com about a Nebraska judge who barred a woman from using the word "rape" when she testified during a sexual assault trial against her alleged attacker.

The woman has filed a long-shot federal suit against the judge. The merits are being argued by our readers. And, to add to the spectacle, a state lawmaker has filed a lawsuit against God to make the point that he believes the suit is frivolous.

But we wanted to know this: What surprising words have you seen judges bar witnesses from using during testimony? Or, how have you or a client been censored in court?

See last week's answers.

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Posted by David Dorfman - 1 year, 2 weeks, 2 days, 17 hours, 57 minutes ago

Yes!
Posted by Dennis Hennen - 1 year, 2 weeks, 2 days, 16 hours, 31 minutes ago

Two years out of law school, I took a pencil to court. The judge suspended the rules of evidence in a case involving a defendant representing herself. As I objected a little forcefully, I tossed the pencil down on the counsel table. Of couse, it hit eraser first and bounded into the air. The Judge asked if I have ever seen striped sunshine. In the succeding twenty three yease, I have never taken another pencil to court.
Posted by Barb - 1 year, 2 weeks, 2 days, 13 hours, 45 minutes ago

While working as a clerk for a state court of appeals, I actually read a transcript once where the judge in a bench trial forbade an offer of proof. The prosecuting attorney had objected to a question, which the judge sustatined. The defense attorney requested an offer of proof to preserve the issue on appeal and the judge said no. The attorney didn’t really know how to respond, so he asked again, and then again (I don’t think he could believe what he was hearing, and they don’t really cover in law school how to address a judge who isn’t following the rules). He succeeded in making the judge really angry but was never allowed the offer of proof. Needless to say, the case was reversed on appeal - “manifest error”!
Posted by Hanan Isaacs - 1 year, 2 weeks, 10 hours ago

In the early 1990’s, in a realtor malpractice case, we argued that the realtors caused our plaintiff-clients to unknowlingly accept tens of thousands of dollars less per acre than their neighbors in the identical assemblage. The realtors were self-dealing. Hizzoner instructed me, in front of the jury, not to use the phrase “highest and best use of real estate”, even though that concept was at the heart of our case. We came up with some other words to describe the same thing, because we had to.
Posted by Karen White - 1 year, 1 week, 6 days, 16 hours, 56 minutes ago

I tried a case where our affirmative defense was that the parties entered into an illegal contract to market software to circumvent copyright laws. The judge granted plaintiff’s motion in limine and forbade us to mention illegality, copyright laws or in any way suggest that anything improper was going on. To him, it was a simple breach of contract case and all the jury was entitled to was information to help them determine damages. I put my objection on the record, but the judge was totally redfaced as he threated sanctions, contempt and a mistrial if we even remotely went down that path. We thought for sure we’d get a reversal on appeal as I had several cases directly on point (an ADA familiar with copyrights thought so as well), but the court of appeals did some real legal hair-splitting and affirmed.
Posted by Brad Shefrin - 1 year, 1 week, 2 days, 9 hours, 6 minutes ago

Years ago, a California firm opened it’s doors in my state, and applied its former state’s practice style here. In one particular case most all of the California firm’s experts were not local to the adopted state but were California. To my surprise, just before trial the opposition won a motion in limine banning me from eliciting from their experts the fact they were from California - yet crux of the issues hinged on whether local industry practice had been followed!

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