Huh, that really does seem like it'd bias the jury -- you've got him dressed like a convict even though he hasn't been convicted of anything. The guy might as well be in a skull shirt. It's crazy that they do it this way!

Which is precisely why in real life, they don't. The Supreme Court has ruled that the State isn't allowed to make a defendant wear that in court. A prisoner may choose to appear that way, if for some reason they want to bias the jury or just don't know what the hell they're doing. But preventing a defendant from appearing in the dehumanizing garb of a prisoner is so crucial that public defenders often hold clothing drives to make sure their clients can dress up. This is Defense Attorney 101 shit here, but both Nelson and Murdock appear to have missed that class.

Marvel Television
Though it is tough to find suit jackets with a skull on them.

There's also a thing really common in TV court dramas, which is that cases like this seem to go to trial before the victims have even finished dying. The judge gives Nelson and "Why does my suit have eye holes" Murdoch one week of pre-trial preparation time. High-profile trials (like ones for guys who have shot lots of people) are obscenely slow precisely because they require an absurd amount of prep work. For example, Aurora Theater shooter James Holmes was arrested in July 20, 2012 and didn't even start discussing plea deals with the DA until March 27, 2013 -- more than eight months later. His actual trial didn't start until two freaking years later. Just the process of selecting the jury took three months!

Once the trial starts, Nelson and Murdoch are railroaded by a clearly biased judge. There's no doubt that sort of thing happens in real life, but the system does account for the fact that judges are human and might be drunk that day. For example, she unfairly strikes the defense team's key testimony (from a medical examiner who admits falsifying records). Here's where a real lawyer objects -- not to get the judge to change her mind, but to preserve the issue for appeal (such an error on the part of a judge is one of the few things that can get a verdict overturned).

Marvel Television
The legal system does love its do-overs.

Instead, Foggy and Matt sit on their thumbs, essentially erasing all possibility of ever using the cornerstone of their defense again. Later, a guy in the gallery starts shouting that Castle killed his father, which hands them a chance to request a mistrial. Two guesses as to whether they bother.

Speaking of which -- if you're ever attending a real trial, please do not attempt to bring a handmade sign rooting for one side or the other. Judges tend to frown on that.

Marvel Television
As well as vuvuzelas.

First, the marriage took place in Nevada. So if a New York judge has moral hangups about granting an annulment or divorce, you would just go back to the state where this sort of stuff is commonplace. Second, those two things we just said aren't synonyms. An annulment declares a marriage to be void from its inception: It's like it never happened. A divorce means the marriage is legally recognized, but the parties no longer want to have any legal relationship. This is important, because dividing marital property can only happen in the latter case. Which makes perfect sense because the law was not carefully designed to produce nothing but wacky conflicts.

20th Century Fox
A world where Night Court is not how things really work is not a world we care to live in.

In Nevada, grounds for annulment include "want of understanding." This allows either party to a marriage to get their marriage annulled if either were incapable of assenting. Basically, it's one of the few times getting black-out drunk is a legal excuse for doing something stupid. Ever wonder how celebrities like Britney Spears and Dennis Rodman have gotten out of their Vegas marriages in a matter of days, while somehow managing to not get sued for a mansion ... or six of them? Yeah, it's this thing.

So, because Kutcher's character was blitzed out of his mind at the time he said his vows and thus lacked the mental capacity to legally enter into the marriage, he would have easily gotten a Vegas attorney to annul his marriage (to the surprise of no one, there are Vegas attorneys who specialize in this very thing). All the proof he'd need is their hilariously wasted "wedding video" for a judge to grant a swift annulment, and Ashton would have walked away with 3 million dollars and precisely zero Charlie's Angels in tow.

20th Century Fox
Although in real life he walked away with several million dollars and precisely one Charlie's Angel.

By Jim Carrey no less, which can get you disbarred.

The Legal Reality:

Yeah, nope.

It's true that there are laws to protect minors from getting tricked into signing themselves into slavery or Comcast bundles with onerous data caps, but once again there is some measure of common sense built in.

Universal Pictures
Except for gym memberships. Clarence Thomas himself couldn't get you out of that shit.

Any contract a minor enters into isn't automatically void, but voidable. That might seem like semantics, but there's actually a huge difference. A void contract is completely unenforceable, while a voidable contract is still valid after a certain point. In this case, that happens after the minor becomes a legal adult and either approves of the contract or lets a "reasonable amount of time" pass without doing anything to void it.

Again, this makes sense. If they're okay with the agreement after they're old enough to know better, they have effectively ratified it. You see why this completely sinks Mrs. Cole's case. Sure, she was a minor when she entered into the prenup, but 15 years had passed and she never made an effort to declare it invalid. That contract is ratified as balls.

Universal Pictures
"Goddammit, I just want to go home."

A good example of this is Changing Lanes. The movie you've probably forgotten starts with a minor fender bender between Ben Affleck, who plays a Wall Street attorney, and Samuel L. Jackson, who plays no-nonsense Samuel L. Jackson character #3567. Both men are late for court: Affleck must file documents that will ensure the control of a foundation for his law firm, and Jackson is on his way to a custody hearing. Affleck blows off the encounter by acting like a rich, smug Affleck, which you'll not be surprised to hear is a massive red flag for Sam Jackson #3567.

Paramount Pictures
"I think we've all had it with these motherfucking Afflecks on this motherfucking planet!"

In his hurry, Affleck leaves the original document at the scene, and is now in a race against time to get it back because only original documents are admissible in court. Sadly, it's now in possession of Jackson, and Affleck is exactly as screwed as you'd expect in that situation.

The Legal Reality:

A copy of the document would have worked just fine, because courts are totally aware that documents are fragile things that can be lost to fire, floods, and stoned interns filing them in the wrong place.

Paramount Pictures
"This was supposed to go to John Jackson, not Jack Johnson!"

According to the rules of evidence, a duplicate is admissible to the same extent as the original, unless there is a genuine question as to the original's authenticity. That means the admission of a duplicate is pretty hard to challenge. The link there goes to a case in which a defendant in a counterfeit-check scheme insisted copies were no good because the original might have somebody else's fingerprints on it, and the court said that was stupid.

Otherwise, the only problem is if somebody insists the copy is a forgery, but that's not the case in the movie -- no one ever disputes the fact that the old man wrote and signed the document, not even the guy's own granddaughter. There are some states that require originals of some documents like wills be kept on file, but if your dog eats it, there are just some legal hoops to jump through to establish why you're going with a copy instead. You probably don't even have to show the judge the dog turds.

Paramount Pictures
"But I mean ... if you want to show me ..."

Of course, there's always the chance that Affleck's character was just too stupid to make a copy of the single most important document in his life, in which case he was a disgrace to his profession anyway and fully deserved a Sam Jackson on his case.