It has never been my intention, deliberately or unwittingly, to end up as a participant in a court room in session. If I do, however, I think that I might quite like to be in front of Mr Justice William Waung Sik-yin.
I presume at some cost to the taxpayer, (so that's where my $1 goes?), the Honourable Judge found himself on the receiving end of a claim in the Small Claims Tribunal. According to the claim, the Judge had read a newspaper regularly for a number of years without paying for it, but the vendor had committed that most heinous of crimes - his records had not been transferred correctly, so bills had not been sent to the Judge. Nevertheless, after the case had been heard, His Honour still coughed up the princely sum of HK$5,010, for which he wrote a cheque there and then.
The Judge had closed his Court for the day for a medical appointment (fair enough), and to attend the Small Claims Tribunal. When asked why he had not sent a representative to the Tribunal (he should actually have been asked why he was wasting everyone's time and had not just paid what was due, given the amount), he said;
"This is my first experience of its kind, really. I did not do anything wrong, so why shouldn't I attend court myself?" It was the vendor who failed to send me the bills for five years."
So, Your Honour, if I should ever appear before you please accept my plea of not guilty on the grounds that I didn't do anything wrong; it was the bank that lent me the money in the first place - I used it, but I didn't know they wanted to be paid back.
(And surely the prize for a quick piece of opportunistic advertising to start the year came from Hong Kong's "Standard", a free newspaper which opined "Picking up a copy of this free newspaper, the city's biggest circulation English publication, from now on can help avoid another date at the tribunal." Nice one guys!)
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