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Opening Arguments

COURTHOUSE OF HORROR

Opening Arguments

Opening Arguments Media LLC

Opinion, News, Liberal, Politics, Law, Harvard, Atheist, Legal, Supremecourt

4.33.7K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

OA1203 - Happy Halloween! We take shelter from a year of ghoulish legal news in the COURTHOUSE OF HORROR, a cabinet of macabre legal curiosities including:

  1. “SO I TRADEMARKED AN AXE MURDERER”: The historic Lizzie Borden House takes a whack at a nearby coffee shop

  2. “THE BONE DETECTOR”: Recent patent bar survivor Jenessa Seymour brings us the unbelievable story of the spookiest--and silliest!--lie detector ever registered by the US Patent & Trademark Office

  1. “ATTACK OF THE TORTIOUS CLOWNS”: Can you sue a haunted house for your fright-related injuries? 

  1. “THE GREENBRIER GHOST”: The bizarre tale of how a victim’s testimony from beyond the grave helped to convict her killer in an 1896 West Virginia murder trial

  1. “CANDYMAN 5: SUMMARY JUDGMENT”: In a tasty conclusion to last year’s Halloween footnote on consumers disappointed with the spookiness of their seasonal treats, a Florida federal judge finds as a matter of law that there is no wrong way to make a Reese’s.

Finally, we close on a serious note with Jenessa’s guide to how every registered voter can do their part next week to change the plot of our ongoing American horror story.

  1. Order in Ghost Adventures LLC v. Miss Lizzie’s Coffee, LLC, No. 23-2000 (1st 

Cir.)(Selya, J.)(11/15/2024)

  1. Federal Judge Known for Polysyllabic Prose Dies at 90,” Trip Gabriel, The New York Times, (3/21/2025)

  2. Would You Confess Your Criminal Misdeeds to This Skeleton?,” Cara Giaimo, Atlas Obscura (5/16/2017)

  3. “Apparatus for Obtaining Criminal Confessions and Photographically Recording Them,” Patent #1749090, H.A. Shelby (filed 8/10/1927)

  4. The Greenbrier Ghost Reexamined,” Greenbrier Historical Society, Arabeth Balseko (1/20/2022)

  5. Summary judgment order in Munoz v. Six Flags St. Louis LLC (10/12/2022)(Wallach, J.)

  6. Order granting motion to dismiss in Vidal et al v. The Hershey Company, FLSD No. 24-60831 (9/19/2025)(Damian, J.)

  7. “Your Cheat Sheet To The 2025 General Elections,” Daniel Nichanian, Bolts (10/1/2025)

Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Maybe people were just complete rube's in 1927.

0:06.5

That's possible because nobody expects a room with the talking's going in it.

0:17.7

Everybody who doesn't live in America and hates peanut butter for some reason, you're all wrong.

0:22.8

All of you go to hell, Reese's peanut butter cups are the best candy on earth.

0:26.5

I'll die on this hill.

0:33.8

Happy Halloween and welcome to ominous arguments.

0:36.5

I'm your host, Pat Cameron, here with the one and only doctor, Janessa Screammore. That's right. I gave us spooky names. I didn't even run it by you. Oh, that's so cheesy. Recent survivor of the patent bar. It's the one day a year where you get to have cheesy names. Come on. Lean in. All right. This is a big holiday in our

0:54.9

house. I don't know about you, but this is a big deal. This is our Christmas. I do love Halloween. Yeah, I'm in. I'm in. Well, it's a good thing because we've got all Halloween stories today. It's an oops, all footnotes kind of hour. But you know what? We deserve this. We've been talking so much about the downfall of democracy and authoritarianism and everything else. We can take a day to talk about some silly legal stories. The scariest thing of all. Yeah. We will close on a serious note to talk about how you can stop this horror show in progress. But first, we're going to go through a little tour of what I'm calling the courthouse of horror. I got all kinds of fun stuff lined up. I know that you've got an extra fun one, a patron suggestion that I'm excited to hear about. But we've got everything to talk about from a segment I'm calling, so I trademarked an axe murder to, we've got the tortious killer clowns. We've got testimonies from ghosts that's not from Salem. Last year, of course,

1:45.0

we did the Salem Witch Trials and the spectral evidence that was introduced there. And we're going to have

1:48.8

to follow up on a footnote from last Halloween, a very important civil case that has just been

1:53.9

settled just in time for Halloween about how spooky your candy can get. We're all over the place.

1:59.9

We got every corner of the law represented in today's Halloween spectacular. And we'll be right back to get going. This episode is brought to you by Hymns. You know, according to the National Institutes of Health, as many as 30 million men in the U.S. experience ED. It's more common than a bad night's sleep. That seems incredible. Who is getting a good night's sleep? Okay. That's the bad news. But the good news is, Hymns makes getting access to treatment simple. So you can feel like yourself again without the stress or awkwardness. Through Hymns, you can access personalized prescription treatment options for ED. Trusted generics that cost 95% less than brand names.

2:36.2

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2:42.2

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2:47.2

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2:56.0

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3:19.9

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3:30.2

Last year, we talked about the Salem Witch Trials, which is the most famous trial probably in Massachusetts history, a series of trials.

3:36.9

And I want to talk for a few minutes about the second most famous trial, perhaps, in Massachusetts history, depending on you're asking.

3:38.0

I'm calling this segment.

...

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