On Wednesday, just hours before Lil Wayne was due to be formally sentenced and begin a one-year prison sentence for a gun possession charge, his attorney shocked pretty much everyone when she announced her client needed emergency dental surgery and that the proceedings would have to be postponed until March 2.
Perhaps even more shocking was that the judge agreed and allowed the sentencing to be moved to next month. And in that moment, Wayne's cracked tooth officially became legendary.
Anyone can bail on a hearing citing "exhaustion," but it takes a true genius to cook up a scheme like "emergency dental surgery" (did Wayne crack his tooth on the way into court?!?) And while we're not questioning the validity of his claims, well, let's just say we're adding Weezy's name to a rather prominent list of other stars who managed to get out of unpleasant legal proceedings with, what one could generously describe as "questionable" ailments. Here are some of the minds behind the Greatest Get-Out-Of-Court Excuses in recent history.
Michael Jackson
The late King of Pop was perhaps the Michael Jordan of flimsy excuses, as highlighted by the whoppers he cooked up in 2002 as he was being sued by a concert promoter for breach of contract. While Jackson did take the stand during the trial, he apparently found the experience incredibly unpleasant and spent the next month bailing on appearances due to a pair of rather nasty spider bites on his hand and foot. The first bit didn't prevent him from traveling to Germany (the site of his infamous "baby dangling" incident), but the second was apparently so severe that Jackson was forced to show up to hearings on crutches. Expert entomologists — they study insects, BTW — didn't buy the story, with one dismissing Jackson's injury as "a bunch of crap."
Paris Hilton
In 2007, after she had already been sentenced to serve 45 days in jail for violating the terms of her parole (stemming from a 2006 reckless-driving charge), Hilton was scheduled to testify in a $10 million slander and libel suit being brought against her by actress Zeta Graff. But her psychiatrist declared she was "distraught and traumatized" by her recent sentencing, and therefore could not take the stand. The judge agreed, and the trial was postponed until August.
Britney Spears
She makes the list because she bailed on court without even making an excuse. In 2008, Brit had called an emergency hearing in her ongoing child-custody case against ex-husband Kevin Federline. And though she showed up at the courthouse, she never actually made it inside the courtroom, for reasons not even clear to her attorneys. When coupled with her behavior at an earlier hearing (when Spears arrived at court but declared she was "scared" and hightailed it out of there after spying the throngs of paparazzo assembled on the courthouse steps), it makes for a pretty impressive one-two punch of semi-plausible excusery