The Woman Who Wanted To Sue God

Episode: 3x10 [The Nutcrackers]
Client: Annabelle Carruthers
Case: The client's husband had been killed by lightning while talking on a cell phone, and she wanted to sue God.
CP&S Representation: Denise Bauer, Brad Chase, and Jeffrey Coho
Opposing Counsel: Attorney Beckham
Presiding: Did not reach trial.
Result: Settled.
Notes:

• The client entered Crane, Poole & Schmidt saying she wanted to sue God. The receptionist tried to shoo her away, but when Mrs. Carruthers threatened to make a scene, Paul Lewiston agreed to let Denise talk to her. He also sent Brad to ensure Denise did not take the case (though she did anyway).
• An angry Paul demanded that Denise and Brad at least take the case beyond summary judgment, probably thinking that an inability to do so would reflect badly on the firm. When an eavesdropping Coho snidely remarked that it "shouldn't be too hard", Paul assigned him to the case as well.
• The team was unable to come up with an approach (dismissing the idea of suing the church, for instance) until Clarence Bell, Claire Simms' new legal assistant, approached them with some research (see next bullet) connecting lightning strikes and cell phone usage. While the connection has been widely discounted, the mere existence of conflicting research would likely be enough to beat summary judgment.
• What Clarence found is the suggestion that cell phones - or any conductive material adjacent to the body - can negate the insulating ability of the skin, which somewhat helps to protect the internal organs from a lightning strike. In real life, this idea was proposed in a letter published in the British Medical Journal in June 2006. The contents of the letter are available via subscription only, but several articles (such as this one) in the lay media describeddescribe its contents.
• Denise, Brad, and Coho met with the legal team representing Cybus Technologies, the cell phone manufacturermanufacturer, and referredreferenced to the above hypothesis, also stating that the use of cell phones in a thunderstorm presented a foreseeable risk. They suggested that the negative publicity of a trial would hurt the company and reduce business.
• The Cybus legal team made a quick settlement offer of $75,000.