Law Humor

By Judge Jerry Buchmeyer

From Mikal S. Lambert of Wichita Falls (Fillmore & Purtle), this excerpt from a deposition in a death case where a motorist had run over a pedestrian. Mikal is cross-examining the DPS trooper who had supervised the drawing of blood from the decedent for a blood-alcohol test.

Q. Is there any minimum volume of blood that you're attempting to extract or that you attempt to fill up?

A. They have told us in the years that I've been working that we need more than an inch of blood in the tube. Now, that's not "written in blood" anywhere in the manual, that's just the way we were told. And they say if we want to do a blood alcohol or drug screen on it, we need it just as full as you can get it.

And then they've always told us when we get the blood in it, to shake it up real good to mix that white powdery substance. And I'm sure they've told me what that was, but, hey, I'm no chemist. I've got enough problems trying to remember what I did yesterday.

Full post as published by Say What! on January 02, 2009 (boomark / email).