Season 2 Episode 12:
Where There's a Will
Airdate:
December 22, 1983 |
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After a man with six months left to live scrawls an amendment
to his will on a napkin, leaving the patrons of Cheers
$100,000.00, they turn to Cliff to see if it's valid. |
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I don't want
to pronounce judgment too hastily Coach, but well, yeah, I
think there is a precedent in the case of Pennoyer v. Neff when
it was found jurisprudence is the better part of diction...
The truth:
The case Cliff was referring to,
Pennoyer v. Neff, was a a famous Supreme Court case from
1878 involving Sylvester Pennoyer and Marcus Neff.
(From Wikipedia)
Neff owed his
lawyer, John H. Mitchell, money for other service which he
never paid so Mitchell later sued Neff in the Circuit Court
of Multnomah County, Oregon for outstanding debts related to
his legal services; Neff was not to be found there, and
Mitchell won the lawsuit by default judgment which was
entered in Mitchell's favor after Neff failed to appear in
court. When Mitchell won the lawsuit in February 1866,
Neff's land grant hadn't yet been conferred. Mitchell,
possibly waiting for the arrival of the grant, waited until
July 1866 to get a writ of attachment on the property. The
court later ordered the land seized and sold in order to pay
the judgment. Mitchell bought the land at that very auction
and transferred the title to Sylvester Pennoyer. In 1874,
Neff sued Pennoyer in federal court to recover his land.
Neff won, and Pennoyer appealed to the United States Supreme
Court.
As for the quote; "jurisprudence
is the better part of diction", we'll
break it down:
(From Wikipedia)
Jurisprudence is the
theory and philosophy of law. Students of jurisprudence aim to
understand the fundamental nature of law, and to analyze its
purpose, structure, and application. Jurisprudential scholars
(sometimes confusingly referred to as "jurists") hope to obtain
a deeper understanding of the law, the kind of power that it
exercises, and its role in human societies. At a practical
level, some jurists hope to improve society by studying what
the law is, what it ought to be, and how it actually operates.
They seek a deeper understanding behind law's seemingly
unpredictable and uncertain nature.
(From Answers.com)
dic·tion (dĭk'shən)
n.
Choice and use of words in speech or writing.
Degree of clarity and distinctness of pronunciation in speech
or singing; enunciation.
We thought all Cliff
was saying that lawyers tend to twist the truth, but as one of
our readers pointed out, it seems Cliff mixed up
jurisprudence and diction, while he really meant
jurisdiction, as the court's holding was 'No personal
jurisdiction can be had over defendants who are physically
absent from the state or have not consented to the court's
jurisdiction'.
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