73: The Thief and The Psych Ward
Rebuttal
Rebmasel
4.9 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the rebuttal podcast where we break down case law, comedy, and chaos in the legal |
| 0:05.1 | field. I am your host, Reb Maisel, and today I have a case that came across my desk three days ago. |
| 0:11.9 | It was filed. This opinion in the Eighth Circuit was filed on April 23rd, 2026. I am filming this |
| 0:18.1 | on April 26th, 2026. And we do have an episode already slated for next week. So I am |
| 0:25.9 | recording this now so that we can get it out there because what? What? It may come as little |
| 0:32.8 | surprise that Franz Kafka, the Czech author of nightmarish and darkly absurd tales about impenetrable |
| 0:39.8 | bureaucracies, arbitrary and capricious courts, interminable proceedings, and confounding judgments |
| 0:45.7 | was, indeed, a lawyer. The term Kafkaesque now describes nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or |
| 0:53.2 | illogical situations, particularly those |
| 0:55.9 | involving oppressive bureaucratic systems where an individual feels powerless. |
| 1:00.9 | In a beige-walled courtroom in eastern Iowa, a man who has been William Woods for his |
| 1:05.4 | entire life faced a man who had been known as William Woods for much of his. |
| 1:09.9 | That hearing in March of 2025 brought an end to |
| 1:13.2 | what prosecutors called a quote, Kafkaesque plot that resulted in the false imprisonment, |
| 1:18.4 | involuntary hospitalization, and forced medication of the real Mr. Woods. By all appearances, a man |
| 1:26.0 | who went by the name William Woods had turned his life around. |
| 1:29.3 | Three decades ago, he was homeless and worked at a hot dog cart. But then the man got married and had |
| 1:34.9 | a child. He opened up bank accounts, received credit lines, and started working at an Iowa hospital |
| 1:39.9 | where he was a high-level IT administrator, quote, the key administrator of critical systems, |
| 1:46.2 | and earned more than $100,000 per year. There was just one problem. Although William Woods is a real |
| 1:51.9 | person, this man is not that person. Instead, the man's name is Matthew Kearins. Cairns met the |
| 1:57.7 | real Woods in the 1980s. Woods was Karen's coworker at the Hot Dog Cart. From then on, Cairns. Cairns met the real woods in the 1980s. Woods was Cairns co-worker at the hot dog cart. From then on, Cairns used Woods's |
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