This may be time to tell you all those Staten Island Wants To Secede From NYC And How The Rest of Us Heard The News, Thought About It For, Oh, Three Seconds, And Said, Oh Okay stories.
Or the time one famous New York wit said, “Staten Island wanting to secede from New York City is like Gummo saying he’s going to leave the Marx Brothers.”
What follows appeared in Lowering the Bar. I’ve given you the first paragraphs, but you’ll probably want to read the entire hilariously batty story as covered by Lowering the Bar maestro Kevin Underhill (who is, as well, a lawyer, but one who is unlikely by virtue of his great intelligence, wit and articulateness to demand trial by combat as a way of settling a lawsuit; which probably could only be demanded by a Staten Island lawyer and yeah I’m sneering):
August 07, 2015
“Game of Thrones” Fan Demands Trial by Combat
So, this happened:
This was once relatively common, but not in the last half-millennium and not on Staten Island, so it’s newsworthy at this point.
The defendant, Richard Luthmann, made this demand in a reply brief he filed in Richmond County, New York, on July 24. (Credit to SILive.com, Volokh Conspiracy, and Above the Law for earlier reports.) Luthmann is a lawyer there, and while I haven’t checked out the other pleadings in this dispute because who cares, based on Luthmann’s brief this is some sort of fallout from a previous lawsuit against some of Luthmann’s clients. (I’m tempted to read the opposition to which this replies, because Luthmann describes it as “a glorified comic book piled on top of pure and adulterated extortion wrapped in a transparent abuse of legal process,” but it probably isn’t really a comic book.) That gives you some idea of the rhetoric involved, but here we are interested in the second half of the reply, beginning with paragraph 26, supra.