In California, Jason Starn has filed a lawsuit that could be a challenge before a jury. Starn would purchase nitrous oxide canisters, or Whip its, from a local head shop in Modesto. He was regularly using the “laughing gas” when he lost feeling below his rib cage. The numbness wore off eventually but he suffered a degeneration of his spinal cord related to his abuse of nitrous oxide. He now uses a walker and has sued three stores that sold him the gas. Starn, 35, was a schoolteacher in Modesto and a student attending the Humphreys College Laurence Drivon School of Law
Continue reading “Law Student Sues Head Shops For Selling Him “Whip It” Cannisters”
There is an interesting case out of Reykjavik, Iceland where a 15-year-old girl is suing Iceland for the right to legally use the name that her mother gave her and the name that she prefers. While most Americans would be outraged, Iceland is one of the countries that requires all names of children to come from an approved government list. Since Blaer (Icelandic for “light breeze” is not on the approved list) she cannot go by the name given to her.
There are two interesting scientific and historical discoveries this week. Researchers have identified remains from both French King Louis XVI and Henry IV. The discoveries began with a handkerchief found in a gourd found in Italy . . . 
We have previously seen absurd examples of disciplinary actions taken under zero tolerance rules for 
It appears that not all apples are alike when it comes to food stamps. Tracy Browning, 38, of Louisville has been arrested for trying to buy several iPads with food stamps. After she was turned away by the Apple store and fled, she then tried to make the same purchase at a second Apple store.
We have been following cases where sperm donors have been 
Muhammad al-Arifi, a Wahhabi religious cleric, is being widely quoted on web 
We have often discussed the continuing crackdown on student free speech in high schools. The latest such case involves Courtni Webb, a seventeen-year-old student at California’s Life Learning Academy who was suspended for writing in a poem in a personal notebook that she “understand[s] the killings in Connecticut.”
New Year’s Eve I wrote about my shock in watching the crude and often unhinged conduct of Kathy Griffin on CNN with Anderson Cooper. We switched over to the networks due to her bizarre behavior, but it appears it got worse as the night went on. Griffin followed her juvenile antics with a simulation of giving Anderson Cooper oral sex on national television. CNN’s response to this controversy is rather muted. While a “wardrobe malfunction” in the Superbowl merited weeks of discussion, simulated oral sex on a host appears to merit a return for Griffin to CNN 
Disgusting eating contests appear to be a certain fatal attraction these days. We recently discussed the 
We have yet another case of a police shooting of a family dog. This case involved a particularly tragic
In one of the more novel federal disciplinary actions that I have encountered, a federal employee in Baltimore was given a formal reprimand for excessive workplace flatulence — a reprimand that involved a remarkably wide range of reviews and supervisory interventions. The 38-year-old Maryland employee, who insists that he is lactose intolerant, was the subject of an actual log recording his “release[] [of] the awful and unpleasant odor.”