Judge Orders Psychological Evaluation for Man Seeking ‘Trial By Combat’

Narrator: PYX 106, Capitaland’s Classic Rock with Quinn and Cantara.

Male Speaker: 1-800-LAW1010, 1-800-LAW1010, Paul Harding  from Martin, Harding & Mazzotti on the phone.

Male Speaker 2: How are ya living, Paul? How’s the quarantine going?

Paul: You know, it’s going okay. You know, I’ve never spent this much time in my house, ever. And it’s got us some upside, you know, obviously missing community.

Male Speaker 1: Yeah, that stir crazy vibe, you really feel it towards the end of the day.

Male Speaker 2: How about you? Everyday, at 6:15, you go out to the end of your driveway, Paul, all the neighbors, and y’all wave at each other. They’re doing that in Albany at one neighborhood.

Paul: Nope, there’s that uniqueness where I’ve never seen more people walking in our neighborhood, and that’s the thing to do. And of course, we’re spacing out, you know, just publicly, and yeah. I know that now they’re looking at April 30th as the date. People are saying, “Oh, it could be May, it could be June.” At some point, you know, you’re just looking forward to getting back to the stuff that maybe bothered you in the past, you know, traffic and getting back to the office and all the stuff that went with it.

Male Speaker 2: The novelty of this, which was cute for a couple of days, is the setting into this reality of, “This is how it’s gonna be for a while.”

Male Speaker 1: Is there a chance, if I’m a client of yours…then we can move on to the topic at hand. But is there a chance that if I have to do a video conference call with you, that you’re just wearing the top part of the suit?

Paul: No, a T-shirt. No, we are doing it all day. We are signing documents, we’re filing things and… But no, it’s been super casual and it has been an eye-opening to see what people wear when they’re not at work. Yeah, I will say that’s true.

Male Speaker 1: Right. It’s wild out there.

Male Speaker 2: Well, the reason we have Attorney Paul Harding on here is just to follow up with a story we had done. I’m not sure if we did this with you or we did it in one of our weird news segments. But an Iowa judge has ordered a psychological evaluation of a guy who asked a judge to let him engage in a sword fight with his ex-wife and her attorney so that he can “rend their souls.” David Ostrom…

Male Speaker 1: I like combat.

Male Speaker 2: …in a court filing said that his wife and her attorney had destroyed him legally, so he asked the judge to resolve the dispute in a field of battle. Have you ever seen anything like this, Paul?

Paul: No, I have never seen, but there’s the thing. You know, every once in a while, you know, at this point in my career, I think I know all the odd stuff that’s out there. But I found out, when you sent me this to take a look at, that New York State does, in fact, continue to have a viable option for resolving disputes through combat. It had never been taken off the books. You know, kinda pre-evolutionary war, you know, back in the day, when Great Britain…when we were kinda having that conflict several hundred years ago. So, when people do this, in New York State, they actually had a decision in 2016 where somebody attempted to do it also. And, you know, it doesn’t end up happening but they have to entertain the motion in front of the judge. True story.

Male Speaker 1: This is why we have psychologists now, and he’s gonna see one and we’re gonna get him better, hopefully.

Male Speaker 2: What would you do if someone challenged you to a sword fight, Paul?

Paul: Well, you know, I think, you know, [inaudible 00:03:15] is my only thing that I could actually kinda remember about that. And so, you know, I would probably get somebody to stand in for me, you know? Someone who actually knew what they were doing, you know. I forget what they call that but you have to elect a combatant or something. So, that would be my plan.

Male Speaker 2: See, this is great. It’s not all corona talk.

Male Speaker 1: A little mixture of like, yeah, “Game of Thrones,” maybe some Luke Skywalker out there with Darth Vader. You know, just draw on your experiences.

Male Speaker 2: Hey, Paul, we’re coming up on eight years being here on PYX 106 and you have been part of the program and a great sponsor of ours from the very beginning, so we wanted to thank you for that.

Male Speaker 1: Thank you, Paul.

Paul: You’re more than welcome, but, boy, that fees like a date that I would not have guessed, eight years.

Male Speaker 2: April 2nd will be eight years here. So, fingers crossed we make it but…

Male Speaker 1: Eight years and how many speeding tickets?

Male Speaker 2: I got one.

Male Speaker 1: I know I got a couple.

Paul: Oh, that’s so cool. Well, thank you, guys.

Make Speaker 2: You’ve been great to us, Paul, and we appreciate you coming on the show every week.

Male Speaker 1: Thanks, buddy.
Paul: You’re welcome. It’s been awesome. Thanks, guys.

Male Speaker 1: Paul Harding from Martin, Harding, and Mazzotti. 1-800-LAW1010, 1800law1010.com.

Male Speaker 2: Stay safe.

Narrator: Log on, listen loud, classic rock. And Quinn and Cantara at iheartradio.com