VICTORIA – Jack Lambert was hoping his lawsuit against a contractor whose shoddy work caused structural damage to Lambert’s home would at least net him enough money to pay for the repairs… until Lambert accidentally accepted an offer to settle the case for $69 when he shouted out “noice!” during the settlement meeting.
“It turns out ‘noice’ is a Latin term which means ‘I accept this offer and give up all legal rights to change my mind,’” said a crestfallen Lambert. “The worst part is, they weren’t even done speaking, my lawyer said if I’d just waited another second they probably would have offered me $69 thousand.”
“It’s entrapment, is what it is,” Lambert contends. “No reasonable person could hear the number 69 and not shout out ‘noice!'”
Canadian legal scholars say the two hundred year old law which makes ‘noice’ an immediate and legally binding acceptance of terms is only one of a large number of obsolete laws that make the legal system in Canada antiquated and hard to navigate.
“There’s ‘Habseas corpus,’ which allows every current and former Montreal Canadien to store dead bodies in their homes. There’s the ‘I know you are but what am I’ defense, which often results in judges being arrested for the crimes of the defendants whose cases they were overseeing. And of course there’s the notorious ‘not-it’ loophole, which at least three alleged serial killers have used to have their cases thrown out,” said Abigail Roberts, a legal professor at McGill University.
“I just can’t believe this is how my case ends,” Lambert said. “This is the opposite of noice. This is a turd sandwich.”
At press time, Lambert was being informed by the authorities that by invoking the ‘sandwich au merde’ clause in regards to his ‘noice’ agreement, he had forfeited all his worldly property and agreed to serve a term of no less than five years shovelling manure.
