Imagine yourself to be a surgeon, a truly great surgeon. Among other things you do, you transplant organs, and you are such a great surgeon that the organs you transplant always take. At the moment, you have five patients who need organs. Two need one lung each, two need a kidney each, and the fifth needs a heart. If they do not get those organs today, they will all die; if you find organs for them today, you can transplant the organs and they will all live. But where to find the lungs, the kidneys, and the heart? The time is almost up when a report is brought to you that a young man who has just come into your clinic for his yearly check-up has exactly the right blood-type and is in excellent health. Lo, you have a possible donor. All you need to do is cut him up and distribute his parts among the five who need them. You ask, but he says, ‘Sorry. I deeply sympathize, but no.’ Would it be morally permissible for you to operate anyway?

— Judith Jarvis Thompson, “The Trolley Problem,” Yale Law Journal, 1985

A French gentleman made a will in which, among other bequests, he left handsome sums of money to his two nephews, Charles and Henri. The sums were equal in amount. When the testator died and the will came to be proved, the nephews expected to receive two hundred thousand francs each as their specific bequests. But the executors disputed this, and said that each legacy was for one hundred thousand francs.

The legatees pointed to the word deux.

‘No,’ said the executors, ‘there is a comma or apostrophe between the d and the e, making it d’eux.’

‘Not so,’ rejoined Charles and Henri; ‘that is only a little blot of ink, having nothing to do with the actual writing.’

Let us put the two interpretations in juxtaposition:

À chacun deux cent milles francs.
À chacun d’eux cent milles francs.

The first form means, ‘To each two hundred thousand francs,’ whereas the other has the very different meaning, ‘To each of them a hundred thousand francs.’ This little mark (‘) made all the difference.

The paper had been folded before the ink was dry. A few spots of ink had been transposed from one side of the fold to the other, and the question was whether the apparent or supposed apostrophe was one such spot.

The legatees had very strong reasons–two hundred thousand strong–for wishing that the little spot of ink should be proved merely a blot; but their opponents had equally strong reasons for wishing that the blot should be accepted as an apostrophe, an intended and component element in the writing.

The decision was in favor of the legatees, but was only reached after long and expensive litigation.

— William Shepard Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1892

In 1870 the Duke of Wellington received a letter from Sir Charles Russell. He was restoring a certain church and had taken the liberty to put Wellington’s name down for a donation.

“Dear Sir Charles,” Wellington replied, “I too am restoring a church, and if we both agree to give the same amount, no money need pass between us. Yours, Wellington.”

In 2006, exasperated when the parties to Avista Management v. Wausau Underwriters could not agree on the site for a deposition, federal judge Gregory Presnell of the Middle District of Florida scheduled a unique resolution on the steps of a Tampa courthouse:

Each lawyer shall be entitled to be accompanied by one paralegal who shall act as an attendant and witness. At that time and location, counsel shall engage in one game of ‘rock, paper, scissors.’ The winner of this engagement shall be entitled to select the location for the 30(b)(6) deposition to be held somewhere in Hillsborough County during the period July 11–12, 2006.

In 1596, when legal scrivener Richard Mylward produced a legal pleading that was fully 120 pages long when 16 would have sufficed, Lord Keeper Egerton found a fitting punishment:

It is therefore ordered, that the warden of the Fleet shall take the said Richard Mylward into his custody, and shall bring him into Westminster Hall on Saturday next about 10 of the clock in the forenoon, and then and there shall cut a hole in the myddest of the same engrossed Replication, which is delivered unto him for that purpose, and put the said Richard’s head through the same hole, and so let the same Replication hang about his shoulders with the written side outward, and then, the same so hanging, shall lead the same Richard, bareheaded and barefaced, round about Westminster Hall whilst the Courts are sitting, and shall shew him at the bar of every of the three Courts within the Hall, and then shall take him back again to the Fleet, and keep him prisoner until he shall have paid £10 to her Majesty for a fine, and 20 nobles to the defendant for his costs in respect of the aforesaid abuse, which fine and costs are now adjudged and imposed upon him by this Court for the abuse aforesaid.

“If the laws could speak for themselves,” wrote Lord Halifax, “they would complain of the lawyers in the first place.”

You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, ‘Look, we’re sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you–we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.’ Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation?

— Judith Jarvis Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1971

Driving habits of communists, according to J. Edgar Hoover:

• Driving alternately at high and low rates of speed.
• Entering a heavily traveled intersection on a yellow light, hoping to lose any follower or cause an accident.
• Turning corners at high rates of speed and stopping abruptly.
• Suddenly leaving a car and walking hurriedly down a one-way street in the direction in which vehicle traffic is prohibited.
• Entering a dark street in a residential area at night, making a sharp U-turn, cutting into a side alley, and extinguishing the car’s lights.
• Driving to a rural area, taking a long walk in a field, then having another car meet them.
• Waiting until the last minute, then making a sharp left turn in front of oncoming traffic.
• Stopping at every filling station on the highway, walking around the car, always looking, then going on.

“Always there is the fear of being followed,” he wrote in Masters of Deceit (1958). “One Party couple registered at a motel, then the husband parked the car several miles away. He walked back and climbed through a side window. Maybe in this way he would conceal his next night’s lodging!”

To the ladies. Any young lady between the age of 18 and 23 of a midling stature; brown hair, regular features and a lively brisk eye: of good morals and not tinctured with anything that may sully so distinguishable a form possessed of £300 or 400 entirely her own disposal and where there will be no necessity of going through the tiresome talk of addressing parents or guardians for their consent: such a one by leaving a line directed for A.W. at the British Coffee House in King Street appointing where an interview may be had will meet with a person who flatters himself he shall not be thought disagreeable by any lady answering the above description. N.B. Profound secrecy will be observ’d. No trifling answers will be regarded.

— Boston Evening Post, Feb. 23, 1759

What constitutes a name? In 1976, North Dakota short-order cook Michael Dengler sued for the right to change his name to 1069. He said that each digit reflected an aspect of his identity; 6, for example, symbolized his “relationship with the universe in my understanding of my spatial occupancy through this life.” He insisted that “the only way that this identity can be expressed is 1069.”

The state supreme court wrestled with the implications:

If the proposed change is written or printed it would simply appear in Arabic symbols, 1069; but if it is verbalized would it be ‘one thousand sixty-nine,’ ‘one naught six nine,’ ‘one zero six nine,’ or would it be ‘ten sixty-nine’? Petitioner, during the oral argument, stated how he would verbalize it, but this would not eliminate the problem because other persons will not know this.

Some observers joked that he could go by “Juan.” But in the end the court refused the request altogether. “Innovative ideas, even though bordering on the bizarre, are frequently encouraged and may be protected by the law and the courts, but to use the court or law to impose or force a number in lieu of a name upon society is another matter.”