A California pilot Tom Huey has been arrested for allegedly violating a restraining order by buzzing the neighborhood of a woman and dropping leaflets referring to her from his Beech single-engine plane.
Continue reading “Air Stalker: California Pilot Arrested for Violating Restraining Order With Private Airplane”
Category: Torts
Carolyn Savage of Sylvania, Ohio has given birth to a baby boy in a bizarre case of negligence by a fertility clinic. Savage, 40, has agreed that the baby is not hers after the clinic implanted the wrong embryo. The Savages have agreed not only to have the baby but to give up the baby to his biological parents.
Continue reading “Surprise Surrogate: Ohio Mother Gives Birth To Baby in Mistaken Implanted Embryo Case”
As we discussed earlier, ACORN has decided to move forward with a lawsuit against the independent filmmakers who showed its employees engaged in potentially unlawful conduct. While insisting that it is terribly sorry for the actions of its employees, ACORN is pursuing the people who forced the misconduct into the open: filmmakers James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles. It is curious method of contrition but ACORN is seeking massive damages for nonconsensual surveillance.
Continue reading “Contrition Through Aggression: ACORN Sues Filmmakers While Claiming Regret Over Misconduct of its Employees”
A car dealership in Ohio can honestly say that it will not charge customers “their first born.” The second born will do fine. In Cleveland, Ohio, Salimah Tutstone has charged that a repo company employee not only improperly repossessed her car but dragged her and her 1-year-old child while she fought to get her other child out of the towed car. The company allegedly abandoned the car with the 4-year-old child inside five miles away. The car dealership is appropriately called “Keep it Moving.”
Continue reading “Repostiltskin: Repo Man Allegedly Drags Mother Holding Infant and Then Abandons Four-Year-Old Along a Road Five Miles Away”
This video of a reporter hit by a studio light somehow missed our “perils of the press” series.
Lisa Hofstra, a nurse at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, has filed a civil lawsuit against the City of Chicago and a Chicago Police officer named Rodriguez (first name unknown) after she was arrested for wanting to speak to a supervisor before taking the blood from a suspect on Rodriguez’s orders.
Continue reading “Chicago Nurse Sues After Being Arrested for Asking to Speak to a Supervisor Before Taking Blood of a Suspect”
A New Jersey court has handed down a ruling that may be cited in thousands of disputes over pets by divorcing or separating couples. Doreen Houseman and Eric Dare split up after 13 years as an unmarried couple in 2006 and agreed on the easy division of possessions with one notable exception: Dexter, their pet pug. Now, Judge John Tomasello has ruled that the former couple must have joint custody of the six-year-old dog — rotating every five weeks.
Continue reading “Half-a-Pug Each: Court Orders Joint Custody of Pet for Former New Jersey Couple”
It took a jury only two hours to acquit Denver Police officer Cpl. Michael Cordova of excessive force, even though a videotape (below) of his actions breaking the teeth of John Heaney caused public outrage. Cordova faced a charge of third-degree assault after he slammed Heaney’s face into the pavement while Cordova served as a member on an undercover anti-scalping Vice unit.
Police in Merced, California are looking into a case of a double amputee who claims that he was tasered twice by police in his wheelchair, partially stripped in public, and then held for days without charge. Gregory Williams, 40, was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence and resisting arrest but never charged. Neighbors complained that the police were abusive and humiliating in their treatment of Williams.
Continue reading “California Police Repeatedly Taser and Partially Strip Double Amputee in Public — But Bring No Charges After Six Days Incarceration”
In Oklahoma, Rebekah Leigh Crouch, 27, has a curious way of preserving a relationship: she is accused of running over her husband’s best friend. Crouch believed that the friend, Mathew Dewayne Dowling, 33, was encouraging her husband to leave her so she allegedly ran him over after an argument with her husband.
Continue reading “Wife Argues With Husband So She Allegedly Runs Over . . . His Best Friend”
The nation of Nigeria is shocked that Sony is making fun of the country’s reputation as the haven for Internet fraud. The country is demanding an apology for this commercial — and the transfer of money to help release $10 million from the account of a deceased wealthy uncle.
Continue reading “Nigeria Demands Apology From Sony for Commercial”
Lawsuits against bars and businesses under Dram Shop laws have become routine, though still somewhat controversial when owners are sued for the excessive drinking of third parties, here and here and here. We have seen a few cases where parents or home owners have been sued, though those cases are far more controversial, here. A case in New York, however, pushes this line of cases to the farthest extreme. The parents of Robert Ogle, 16, have sued the people who they say are responsible for their son’s death by a hit-and-run driver: the people who threw a birthday party where Robert became intoxicated and the owner of the car that was stolen by the hit-and-run driver.
Continue reading “Teenager Killed on His Way Back From a Birthday Party By a Drunken Ex-Con Driving a Stolen Car — Parents Sue Parents of the Birthday Boy and the Owner of the Stolen Car”
The city of Wellford, South Carolina may be a felon’s dream come true. Mayor Sallie Peake has banned police officers from chasing suspects on foot or in a car.
Continue reading “I Walk The Line: Town Mayor Bans Police From Chasing Suspects”
For most personal injury lawyers it does not get better than this. Your client has suffered from two years of poor health, vomiting and stomach pain. Doctors finally use an endoscope and find the culprit: a spoon bearing the clearly marked name of Wendy’s. That is what happened to John Manley of Wilmington, North Carolina.
Continue reading ““It’s Waaaay Better Than Fast Food”: Man Finds Wendy’s Spoon Lodged in Lung”
Generally, the law distinguishes between casual buyers and commercial sellers in tort and criminal law. For example, product liability for defects does not extend to garage sales and transactions between private individuals. However, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is warning that the government will now be enforcing rules under the “Resale Round-up” program that can result in fines of $15 million for that Easy-Bake Oven that you want to unload.
Continue reading “Seller Beware: New Federal Program Allows for Casual Sellers to Be Fined for Up to $15 Million”