By Neena Strichart, Publisher
With all the O.J. happenings in the news these days, it’s all I can do to contain myself from writing a diatribe about poetic justice and making “what goes around comes around” types of comments. All I’m going to say about the subject is that Al Capone may have gotten away with murder–i.e. St. Valentine’s Day Massacre–but he was later convicted of tax evasion (thanks to Treasury agent Eliot Ness) and died in prison from a heart condition reportedly caused by syphilis. Nice.
With that said I will restrain myself from further comments on the matter and instead entertain you with a tale recently e-mailed to me as a hard-to-believe–but true–comedic tale of courtroom justice/injustice. After reading the below story I did check out the accuracy at www.snopes.com, a fact-checking site that specializes in urban myths. They say it’s a tall tale with no basis in fact. Nevertheless–read on–it’s pretty entertaining:
A rather arrogant man decided he had a foolproof way of fraudulently collecting a bundle of money from his insurance company. He bought a $15,000 box of imported cigars and immediately bought an insurance policy to protect his precious stogies from theft or fire. After he finished smoking every one of the two-dozen cigars he immediately filed a claim with his insurance company claiming that the valuable cigars had been consumed by fire.
His insurance company refused to pay the claim and later took him to court. According to the story the insurance company had to pay the claim because the policy did not specify what type of fire was covered or excluded. Smug with his check in hand the man quickly went to the bank to cash in on his ill-gotten booty. Now for the payback and ironic twist … the man was immediately arrested, charged and convicted of 24 separate counts of arson–one count for each cigar he torched.
Now although this interesting story is indeed bogus–it is fun. Apparently the tale was made into a song in 2003 by country-western singer Brad Paisley.
Here are a few lines of Paisley’s “The Cigar Song”
They reviewed my case and they had no choice
But to pay me for what I’d done.
And I took that check and bought a whole new box
And I smoked ’em one by one.
Two weeks later this detective shows up
Tells me that company’s pressin’ charges.
One speedy trial later they locked me up
On 24 separate counts of arson.
