Man requests katana-based "trial by combat" to settle dispute with ex-wife and her attorney
Though Game Of Thrones ended last year, its lessons reverberate throughout modern culture—lessons like, say, solving interpersonal disputes by up and demanding that they be decided upon with sword duels. As reported by the Des Moines Register, this, incredibly, is exactly what a 40 year-old man from Kansas has done.
David Ostrom, the guy in question, has requested that he be granted the opportunity to respond to being “destroyed” in the courts by his ex-wife Bridgette and her attorney, Matthew Hudson, by meeting them “on the field of battle where [he] will rend their souls from their corporal [sic] bodies.” Having discovered that “trial by combat has never been explicitly banned or restricted as a right in these United States,” Ostrom has asked an Iowa court to let him answer his ex-wife’s lawyer’s “absurdity with my own absurdity.”
Requesting for himself only “12 weeks ‘lead time’ in order to source or forge katana and wakizashi swords,” Ostrom has graciously allowed that “his ex-wife can choose her attorney as a ‘champion’ or stand-in fighter.” Hudson, the attorney, has worked to deny this request by taking issue with Ostrom’s misspelling of “corporeal” and writing that “just because the U.S. and Iowa constitutions do not specifically prohibit battling another person with a deadly katana sword, it does not prohibit a court sitting in equity from ordering same.”
A truly chivalrous warrior, Ostrom said nobody needs to die in the duel if one party yields during combat and even offered to use “a ‘blunted practice style’ of sword play” to avoid killing his opponent. “If Mr. Hudson is willing to do it, I will meet him,” Ostrom said. “I don’t think he has the guts to do it.”
He has also said that, since “respondent and counsel have proven themselves to be cravens by refusing to answer the call to battle,” they “should lose this motion by default.”
To follow the rest of this incredibly mundane story, please read the entire article for yourself.
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