Sometimes lawyers will ask me if any of the legal oddities I've chronicled over the years are made up. The truth is, I'm nowhere near creative enough to make this stuff up, and thanks to the seemingly nonstop procession of bizarre lawsuits, odd litigants and truth-is-stranger-than-fiction filings, I'll never have to. If you don't believe me, just check out this roundup.

Not all lawyers work in sleek office spaces. Some have working environments that are, shall we say, somewhat casual. And some work out of their homes, which can present its own set of problems, as Pennsylvania plaintiffs lawyer William T. Coleman III is finding out.

Defense attorneys representing Temple University Hospital in a case pending in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania have filed a motion for protective order to force Coleman to stop holding depositions in his dining room. According to the motion, conditions in Coleman's house were not exactly conducive to depositions: During two completed depositions, “it was possible to hear family members in the house” who were sometimes so loud that Coleman “had to intervene to restore quiet.” In addition, the motion alleges, “family members passed through the dining room and at times interrupted plaintiff's' counsel about evening plans or to ask the court reporter and defense counsel to move their cars.”

The motion goes on to criticize the movement of people in the adjoining kitchen, the “noises and smells” emanating from the kitchen, and Coleman's dog—who would come and go through a doggie door behind the chair where witnesses sat. U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle granted the protective order, stating that depositions “should be taken in a professional setting devoid of domestic or other distractions.” While he had no problem with a “communal conviviality and canine companionship” under other circumstances, Bartle ordered that “there will be no more dining room depositions.” Darn—I was pretty sure this had the making of a great sitcom.

And if Coleman's homey depositions were a little too informal, there's always the danger of being a bit too formal—like the folks who run the New Orleans jail. In February, 25-year-old Frank Sams Jr.—who was wanted on an outstanding murder warrant—showed up at the jail with his lawyer, Kelly Orians, to turn himself in. But the deputies refused to book him, because Sams didn't have a state identification card on him. Orians and Sams tried for nearly an hour to turn himself in on the murder charge as deputies would not take him under custody—until Orians produced a copy of a newspaper article about the murder case with Sams' photo. Sams is now being held in lieu of $500,00 bail, and Orians calls the scene “nothing short of absolutely bizarre.”

I've heard colleagues describe a contract with objectionable provisions as a joke, but some contracts in South Africa take that a step further—they're actually comic books! Wanting to supply contracts that could convey information to individuals with low literacy skills or with language barriers, South African lawyer Robert de Rooy came up with “comic contracts” in 2016.

The contracts use well-designed pictures with minimal text in speech balloons and captions to convey the key provisions of a variety of agreements. De Rooy devised the first such contract to memorialize employment agreements for fruit pickers working on farms in the Western Cape province, but the practice has since expanded to include nondisclosure agreements and contracts between schools and parents. According to de Rooy, the comic contracts meet all the requirements under South African law to be legally binding—they just use illustrated characters to represent the parties and have terms that are “written” in pictures. Some legal observers in other countries, like Australia, feel that comic contracts can fill an important gap in communications—and that's no laughing matter.

Finally, if dining room depositions, murder suspects who can't interest police in taking them in, and contracts in comic book form don't do it for you, there's always a state that's good for a laugh: New Jersey. Recently, Shana Hilsman of Old Bridge, New Jersey, was arrested and booked on burglary charges after surveillance footage allegedly depicted her trying to break into cars (according to police, Hilsman also was in possession of “numerous burglary tools” when she was taken in). But when it came time for her mugshot, Hilsman didn't opt for the “coquettish ingenue” pose, the “high school yearbook,” or even the traditional crestfallen “I'm in jail” look. Instead, she opted to be immortalized on film defiantly “flipping the double bird.”

Well, maybe that's not that odd at all—after all, it is New Jersey.

John G. Browning is a shareholder at Passman & Jones in Dallas, where he handles a wide variety of civil litigation in state and federal courts.