Torts

“Something Wicked This Way Comes.”: Halloween is Starting With a Litigious Flare

“Something wicked this way comes.” Those words from William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” capture the approach of Halloween.

Traced to the Celtic festival of Samhain to mark the end of the harvest, pagans would often summon the dead. Halloween today more often summons contingency lawyers by the gross. If there is a holy holiday for personal injury lawyers it is Halloween with its mix of slip-and-falls, food liability, and costume defects.

After all, what can go wrong with a holiday celebrated at night with millions in ill-fitting costumes handing out tons of foodstuffs to strangers?

This year, it is already producing its share of spooky torts.

In Queens, a haunted house was shut down after various people filed lawsuits over being injured. “A Haunting in Hollis” was called “a death trap” by the Fire Department, but not the fun kind. The converted two-family home was accused of such attractions as the ankle shatterer.

Solainne Mancero-Tannis of Jamaica, Queens, says she was at the house with her family when she went down “Satan’s Slope.” The slide in a pitch-black space allegedly hurled her into a concrete wall at the bottom, shattering her ankles.

The FDNY has since allowed the house to re-open with improvements.

Sometimes, Haunted Houses are a bit too haunted, even for the trained eye. Take the case of Sgt. Eric Janik, 37, who went to a haunted house called the House of Screams when he was confronted by a character dressed as Leatherface with a chainsaw. Janik pulled out his service weapon and pointed it at the man, who dropped character and fled the house.

This year, an employee, Anora Jenkins, was working at a haunted attraction in Tennessee when she jumped up to scare a group, and a frightened man slugged her, sending her to the hospital. AMS Haunted Attractions said that spooked customers assaulted several of its actors.

Some haunted homes can be a tad too improvisational. In Dickson v. Hustonville Haunted House and Greg Walker,  Glenda Dickson, 51, broke four vertebrae in her back when she fell out of the second-story window left open at the Hustonville Haunted House. She was in a room called “The Crying Lady in the Bed” when one of the actors came up behind the group and started screaming. Dickson jumped back through an open window covered with only a sheet.

Halloween can bring out the best and worst of people, even neighbors.

A few years ago in Florida, a woman filed a defamation and emotional distress lawsuit after her neighbor set up decorations that included a fake tombstone that read, “At 48 she had no mate no date/ It’s no debate she looks 88.”

This year, another woman in Ohio took a more direct approach in Toledo. On Oct. 7, the woman went on a rampage in the front yard of the home of the Zeller family with their extensive Halloween decorations. Over half an hour, she caused roughly $1,000 in damages, including destroying cherished family items. Police arrested 48-year-old Christina Horvath, who is also accused of stealing some items.  Yet, the Zellers are not literally giving up the ghost. They put up a sign reading “She Came in Like A Wreckin’ Ball” next to a skeleton riding a wrecking ball.

Each year, costumes produce a slew of jump scare lawsuits from demon eye contact lenses that can actually blind you to this year’s witch hats that can turn into flaming headwear. In New York a few years ago, Sherri Perper, 56, of Queens, New York, filed a personal injury lawsuit due to defective shoes allegedly acquired from Forum Novelties. The shoes were over-sized clown shoes that she said made her trip and fall because they were . . . well … oversized.

I admit that my house is one of those over-the-top Halloween houses. As a torts professor, I try to walk the line between a fun attraction and an attractive nuisance.

Indeed, I have contemplated the ultimate jump scare of meeting children with a notary, and a waiver form covering everything from slips to nut allergies.  There are simply some scenes that are too scary for the young and old alike.

So welcome to the most hallowed holiday for lawyers. Have fun but it is strictly BYOC, bring your own counsel.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

137 thoughts on ““Something Wicked This Way Comes.”: Halloween is Starting With a Litigious Flare”

  1. * OT
    No way anyone could vote for Harris with the antisemitic component. There’s opportunity in the USA. It’s not perfect yet, everyone understands that.

    It’s such chaos and hysteria an actual election with security measures can’t be done when Amazon can track a 3 dollar bottle of shampoo, tracking ballots stumpfies everyone.

    Clowns have been elected to congress. That’s the true threat to democracy.

    Happy spooky day, Halloween 🦇

  2. Now this is somewhat bizarre:

    https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1851744877584728462

    A TV station in Pennsylvania called the state for Kamala even though no vote counting has taken place. The broadcast their call on TV. Then they said oops, hehe, we didn’t mean to do that. Our bad.

    Hmmm. Perhaps just human error, or could it have been a psyop? Remember that in 2020 a national network called Florida for Gore with the polls still open. That was estimated to have cost Bush 10,000 votes in the portion of the panhandle located in the Central Time Zone, where polls stayed open an hour later than the rest of the state. It was *almost* enough to swing the state, and thus the presidency, for Gore. Knowledgeable people doubtless remember that and then look at the potentially election-swinging state of Pennsylvania and start thinking, what if …?

  3. * It would be more fun to watch the dems lose the election. Trump will win. Get the petsi and pocorn ready. Stock up.

    This election is so illegal …

  5. * The injuries in haunted houses are due to a lack of city ordinances requiring inspection for safety and fire. Go to the local halloween parties at your churches. Trick or treat with your children. You do have choices.

    Think I’ll read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

    The jack o lanterns are the headless horsemanship head . A military messenger sent out to the enemy and returning without a head meant no deal.

    HAPPY HALLOWEEN 🦇

    1. So you arbitrarily deny citizens their absolute right to private property and give dominion over to local governments and corrupt politicians?

      No level of government holds dominion over private property; that dominion is held only by the property owner.

      Enterprises and industries must self-regulate to preclude deleterious litigation.
      _____________________________________________________________________________________

      2nd Amendment

      No person shall be…deprived of…property…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

    2. Re: Injuries in haunted houses

      I did not enter a haunted house on one Halloween past in Wisconsin that was located in the middle of a cornfield. It was pitch black inside, inducing claustrophobia. I was afraid the natives might sacrifice me to the Corn God.

  6. Evan, Evan, Evan. I asked you to search if Kamala Harris ever discussed the 25th Amendment with regards to remove Biden, and you say you can’t find ANYTHING? If not Harris who? Look what I found: Section 4 of the 25th amendment states that “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

    1. Estovir, I believe Biden made that remark because he can’t escape who he is at a fundamental level. One writer l saw likes to come up with one-word descriptions of politicians. He proposed the following:

      Trump – maniac
      Kamala – idiot
      Biden – a’h0le

      I think that’s not a bad summation.

    2. Trump is not driving arround in a garbage Truck, and taking press interviews from the passenger seat.

      Vivek is doing shifts with garbage men.

      This is turning out bigger than Trump’s shift at McDonalds.

  8. You folks are so easily distracted and OUT OF YOUR MINDS. The commentary was about Halloween legal cases . . . N O T the insane legal issues of America’s Politically Judicial Civil War Era.

    1. Cillax dude, folks gonna talk ‘bout what’s on their mind because that’s what they wanna talk about.

  9. Jeff Bezos has lots of work to do at taking out the garbage editors of his garbage paper.

    Did Biden call Trump supporters ‘garbage’? It comes down to an apostrophe
    – Washington Post

    2. Diversity (i.e. color judgment, class bigotry) including racism, sexism, feminism, and other class-disordered ideologies is an ugly characteristic. #HateLovesAbortion

  13. I can’t wait until next week when they find out that Puerto Ricans are American citizens who can vote.

    1. I can’t wait until next week when they find out that WOMEN are American citizens who can vote.

      1. I can’t wait until next week when they figure out black men can figure out who to vote for on their own.

    2. Trump drove up to his latest rally in a garbage Truck.

      You blew it. Biden Gave Trump a major victory.
      You lost another news cycle big time, there are not many left.

    3. “. . . Puerto Ricans are American citizens . . .”

      Apparently, you do not realize the irony of that statement.

  15. You are not an official legitimate Personal Injury Attorney until you have a billboard !

  16. !!!WARNING!!! You should be careful about reading what I am about to write because according to Joe Biden I am just “garbage” and I have nothing worthwhile to say. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are very angry that Jeff Bezos has not allowed the Washington Post to endorse Kamala Harris. Indeed they are so angry with Bezos that they are ending the sale of their books on Amazon. What an act of courage to lower their incomes for the Democratic cause. Of course my tongue rubs vigorously against the lining of my cheek.

    1. . . . for the Democratic cause . . .

      An operative for Democrat Sherrod Brown was just caught on hot mic saying he favors opening the f—ing border because “I don’t give a f— who comes in here,” and he says Kamala can’t win on the border issue because everyone is so racist, which is the only reason anyone could possibly disapprove of an open border.

      https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1851666169293316466

    2. @Thinkitthrough

      No doubt. The mental disconnect in the minds of modern liberals is just straight up something to behold. I am at the point where I don’t know what we do. Trump turned people’s brains to slush, and that in itself is absurd.

      Modern liberals could not abandon their proclaimed values harder if they tried, and they do, every day, more and more, harder and harder. This is madness. They are absolutely the hate-filled fascists they decry. There is not a single drop of human kindness remaining in the modern left, globally, but particularly in the American DNC and its cohorts, because unlike other Western countries, we have a Constitution that actually protects us, and they attack it with all of the venom they have. This is a kind of ugly I never, ever thought I would see in my own country, and it is 100% the product of our modern left. Either you agree with them, or die. Those are the options. It is SICK.

      Modern leftism is *absolutely* a mind virus, and I do not expect anyone afflicted to wake up to that fact. We will likely never come together again in our lifetimes, but our global population is far too big to even think about dividing up territory, it just won’t work. It really won’t. This is quite a conundrum. And again, it is largely the elitist left’s fault. they want the entire globe to be the USSR, history so easily forgotten.

      May Robespierre 2.0 not involve the actual separation of heads from shoulders in the town square, because our modern left are absolutely that old, ignorant, entitled aristocracy.

      1. James
        You’re spot on with the liberal insanity. I just saw the Aronld Shwartzanager (ex to Maria Shriver Kennedy) came out supporting Harris-Walz and of course denigrated Trump. He used similar language as old Joe and his garbage comment saying vote and “put this trash” behind us. So Arnold and Dougie are of the same cloth, both screw the nanny, knock them up and then hide. I will never pay to watch another of his dumazz movies again, they were pretty bad in the first place with his stupid one liners. It must be something in the water they drink out there in Calikookya. The irony of this pathetic loser telling us anything. Stay the course young man!

        1. @Traveler

          I saw the same. It is crazy that anyone thinks the modern dems are the moral or just or honest party. I guess I figured that bringing out Arnold was another attempt to try to win over male voters (not going to work 😂), when honestly, most of those younger guys have no connection to Arnold whatsoever and us older guys are self-realized enough to not give a sheet.

          Pathetic and the attempts at pandering are disgusting. The modern DNC knows their policies are sh*t and designed to keep them expressly in control and that nobody wants them or anything they offer. The people still voting for them are either preternaturally stupid or so wealthy they don’t need the help.

          They can kiss my ***, never voting dem again as long as I live, period, I will not forget, and that could easily be another 30 years. Sorry, younger cohorts: you are just going to have to deal with the fact that we exist and are smarter and more involved than you and will vote against you every single time. we will treat you like the children you are, regardless of your biological ages. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Somebody has to be the grown up, and it ain’t the modern left.

          1. TiT, OldManFromKS, Traveler, James,
            Well said.
            The insanity that has gripped the left is truly crazy. Some of the things they are saying, how could any sane and normal thinking person believe? Whoopie Goldberg claimed Trump wins the election, he is going to separate inter-racial marriages, deport the non-white person. Just read they took a old picture of a shift manager in a McDonalds uniform and photoshopped Harris’s face on it. Funny thing is, is the actual picture is a white female. The Nazi/Hitler thing? Democrats are trying to claim Trump’s rally at MSG was a disaster? Ah, no. A disaster would be claiming Beyonce was going to preform a concert in support of Harris. People paid real money to see Beyonce preform. When she didnt and just gave a lame three minute speech and walked off, people were pissed! They even booed Harris, many walked out. It was so bad, the SS was stressed out. Just read the DNC is pulling some $2m in ads from NC as they are losing and are going to lose the state to Trump. Yet our leftists friends continue to try to gaslight that it is Trump’s campaign that is imploding. Nope.

            1. Upstate – wow, good summary of the lunacy gripping the modern left. Depending on the person they either need a psychiatrist or an exorcist.

        3. @Traveler

          I would not be at all surprised, such is the pull of the DNC cult, and even though I am eternally grateful for this blog, that as a generational dem, our host votes for Kamala as a said generational dem (and incidentally erasing his own published book). I very sincerely do not know what we do. 🤷🏻‍♂️ ‘Democrat’ really is a religion for the so-called ‘secular’ without a Pope at this point.

    3. I mean… After reading the repeated dog whistles you tend to favor…

      At least you recycle them?

  17. Thank you for a post filled with a little levity. Wish the dems had an ounce of that remaining in 2024. It is astonishing how formerly, presumably intelligent, grown-up people have decided that personal autonomy and responsibility, and having to hear opinions one personally might not agree with, are fascism on par with Hitler. Upside down world, indeed.

    1. 66% of Israelis prefer Trump over Harris because they believe he’s good for Israel and Jews:

      https://allisrael.com/trump-a-nazi-new-poll-finds-66-of-israelis-want-trump-re-elected-because-hes-good-for-israel-and-jews-while-only-17-want-harris

      Trump was the first world leader to move their country’s embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israel’s real, eternal capital city. He was the first world leader to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Both of those are huge positive steps in the eyes of Israel. He and his Jewish son-in-law were also architects of the Abraham Accords. His son-in-law, as noted, is Jewish, and his daughter converted to Judaism, and they’re both close advisors of his. At the rally there were many Jews and many Israeli flags. Yet . . . because the Nazis once held a rally at the same place 85 years ago, somehow that makes Trump a Nazi? I guess all athletes who have competed there, and all artists who have ever performed there, are also Nazis? By that logic, anyone who has a dog is a Nazi, because Hitler and some other Nazis also had a dog.

      Bottom line . . . the MSM is totally desperate and in full panic mode. That’s a good sign.

  18. Dennis McIntyre is so afraid for his freedom to read porn books from the Florida school libraries. You can see why he’s so afraid because the Democrats are telling him he should be afraid. I have to admit that Dennis did a fine acting job in this video. Since YouTube warns you I will too. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Dgug7OJwQ&pp=QACIAgE%3D&rco=1. They want Dennis to think that he’s going to jail for spanking the monkey. Be afraid Dennis. Be very afraid.

  19. I, for one, think the wicked witch deserves a trick. Disclaimer: I once lost a tooth while bobbing for apples during a Halloween parade celebrating black cats in hats dancing on a global warming tin truth.

  20. Good time for a Halloween torts column, Turls. Trump’s star wars bar of a Nazi rally while Harris closes strong with a strong speech in front of the White House while trump implodes…

    The really interesting torts situation would arise with a trump win despite his attempts to self destruct. If he wins and deep sixes the indictments against him, it will basically empower a bunch of self deputized idiots to run rampant. It’ll be stand your ground meets open carry in the street as a bunch of George Zimmerman clones go around telling their neighbors what to do and what they can say. Bunches of white guys thinking they have control…

    Think it won’t happen? Just look at this blog. We have heckler cletus/turd magat tommy self deputizing as the blog censor, telling people what comments to read, lying his ass off, and making dictatorial attempts to control what comes out of people’s mouths…

    Now picture him as thinking he’s got actual power. Being from Georgia perhaps he’ll mimic his homies and begin shooting black joggers for inspecting the foundations of new homes and, well, just being black.

    Not exactly testaments to personal freedom and the Constitution, let’s just say that. His cyber stalking and s#$t talking will become actual surveillance of people.

    Just think, when will you become the ‘enemy within’ with magat b holes like that running around, appointing themselves boss in their own mind???

      1. Anyone who uses the word “Turls” has an IQ less than 70. The rest of their comment is not worth reading.

    2. “Good time for a Halloween torts column, Turls. Trump’s star wars bar of a Nazi rally”… and Turls, PLEASE shut down the trolls who say you should look at our Vice President Harris giving a warm Mama-la hug to our New Hitler Youth identity politics group.

      Our anti-semitic genocidal younglings are the future of our party as the idiot Hispanics and blacks decide to go back into chains under Trump. Back into chains, just like VicePresident Biden warned them would happen ten years ago.

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