Then, on Friday, June 5, the Council defied both the Mayor and precedent by adopting a $34 billion budget.

Wilder defied precedent by seeking to serve as lieutenant governor for an extended period.

The scoreboard was hinting at a story that defied historical precedent, if not common sense.

The all-or-nothing argument defies not only precedent but common sense.

He defied convention and precedent by taking Dirk Nowitzki, a 7-foot German, who is now one of the league's rising stars.

Others, however, including several specialists in legal ethics, say the judge may have acted with a heavy hand but that the gravity of the circumstances defy conduct codes and precedent.

Railroad officials said they could not have expected that the engineers would defy law and precedent by walking out.

But the growth of a dependent class of teen-age mothers defies precedent and solution.

Part of the "naïve fable" was that the collapse of the Soviet Union would peaceably defy historical precedent.

To run from Chicago: Barack Obama, who will defy precedent by basing his reëlection campaign outside the Beltway.