In 2001, a Mississippi chicken breeder claimed a lumber company inflicted $300,000 worth of damage to his pasture. The New York Times' Brett Weiner dramatized a bizarre deposition from the lawsuit, using dialogue completely verbatim to the official transcripts.
From the original story:
As I research legal transcripts for the Op-Doc video series "Verbatim," I search for unusually worded arguments and objections that tell us something about our judicial process. The transcript dramatized for this latest episode hooked me when I read how a plaintiff explained himself to a roomful of captive lawyers, telling them simply: "Because I follow the chicken."
The case involves a plaintiff suing a lumber company for damaging his land and chicken coop. As the deposition goes on, the plaintiff answers simple questions with increasingly absurd non sequiturs, which become immortalized in the legal record.
Because the "Verbatim" series is about reinterpretation, I don't try to recreate the body language and tone of voice used during the actual deposition. Instead, I use the transcripts as the basis for a heightened atmosphere — and a film that expresses a point of view about our legal system.
Fortunately, these "Follow the Chicken" transcripts are a wonderful starting point for my approach
See also "Photocopier," wherein the Cuyahoga County Records department was sued for charging $2 per page and a staffer played dumb over whether or not he knew what a photocopier was.
(The county lost)
