While many of us think little of the level of effort needed for a single bunny to bring candy to all of the Goyim boys and girls each year, this picture shows that the holiday takes its tool on Leporidae of the order Lagomorpha.
Category: Torts
Here my column in Sunday’s Washington Post on the increasing prosecutions in the West for insulting religion. The rise of international blasphemy prosecutions (and the proposal of the international criminalization of blasphemy) has sacrificed free speech in the name of free exercise.
Continue reading “International Blasphemy: The Free World Bars Free Speech”
Family Court Judge Cheryl Matthews had a logical question when Anthony and Karen Scully appeared in his court with a lingering estate asset question left over from their divorce: “Am I Being Punk’d?” The court and lawyers were presented with the rather novel question of who gets the frozen semen of AKC-registered bullmastiffs Cyrus, Regg and Romeo. The frozen semen is worth thousands of dollars and, while their six dogs were divided with the rest of the estate, the lawyers are set to go to trial on assets.
Continue reading “Frozen Assets: Court To Decide Distribution of Bullmastiff Semen as Estate Asset”
Under the common law, one of the more controversial rules is the “no duty to rescue rule” that says that, if you were not responsible for placing someone in danger or risk, you have no obligation to help them even when it would cost little to save their life. A New York judge has shown how far this rule extends in clearing two transit employees would did nothing but call their superiors while a woman was raped in their station.
In the same week as a teenager who was injured at a mall by a falling suicide jumper, bodies are also flying in Russia and China in an expanding area of body torts. In Russia, a man repeatedly through himself out of a high window without success while in China a teenager was hit by a flying corpse.
Continue reading “Legal Forecast: Overcast With a Chance of Falling Bodies”
There is an interesting potential torts case in New York. A woman in her fifties apparently decided to commit suicide at a Mall by jumping from an upper level. She landed on 17-year-old Derrick MuInoz who was knocked unconscious and suffered a large gash on his head.
Continue reading “Teenager Hurt After Suicide Jumper Lands On Top of Him at New York Mall”
There is an interesting case in Detroit on the liability of hospitals for the actions of third parties — a case with striking similarities to the famous 1976 ruling in Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California.
The Detroit case involves a woman murdered by her husband, Christopher Howard, 10 days after he was released by a Michigan hospital. The Sixth Circuit has ruled that the family of Marie Moses Irons can sue Providence Hospital under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor law requiring emergency treatment of patients by hospitals. The ruling by Judge Eric Clay (left) could have sweeping implications for hospitals across the country.
Continue reading “Tarasoff Revisited: Federal Court Rules That Hospitals May Be Liable for a Murder Committed By a Former Mental Patient”
The Church of Scientology has been sued again. This time former “Sea Org” member Laura DeCrescenzo (aka Laura Dieckman) has filed a complaint on April 2, 2009 alleging a long pattern of abuse that began when she was just 10. This is the third such lawsuit filed this year against the organization and alleges breaches of labor laws, infliction of emotional distress, forced abortion, and other grounds.
Rosanna Tomack, a former New York teacher’s aide, is suing a student from her Queens grammar school for running into her with an ice cream cone in the halls. The boy, Joseph Cicack, was eight years old at the time. He is now an eleven-year-old torts defendant.
Continue reading “Elementary Teacher Sues Eight-Year-Old Boy For Running Recklessly for Ice Cream”
It is well-known that, as a Torts professor, I have made my share of anti-contracts statements — part of a long-standing feud between common law Torts and Contracts faculty. However, to make up for decades of badmouthing contracts, I give you a really interesting contracts case worthy of . . . well . . . a torts class. In Stuttgart, Germany, Demetrius Soupolos, 29, is suing his neighbor Frank Maus, 34, for breach of contract. It seems that Soupolos hired Maus for $2500 to impregnate his wife, a former beauty queen named Traute, but to his surprise Maus desperately tried 72 times without success.
Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas N. O’Neill Jr. has handed down a significant ruling in Donovan v. Idant Laboratories that a sperm bank may be sued for product liability. The product defect in this case would be a genetic defect in the sperm itself.
Police in Allendale, South Carolina have taken the extraordinary action of exhuming the body of Minister James Hines to see if he was buried with his legs attached. A former employee of Cave Funeral Services claimed that the funeral home cut off the legs of the 6-foot, 5-inch man to fit into a coffin despite telling his widow that they had a perfect fit.
Covington & Burling has filed a response to the complaint filed by staff attorney Yolanda Young alleging that the firm inflated its minority staff numbers by relegating African-Americans in staff attorney jobs with no chance of promotion in the associate rankings. Covington responded with a remarkably rough (and low) appraisal of not just Young but, in the view of some, the other staff attorneys at the firm.
We have yet another cosmetic surgery case out of California. In this case, two doctors, Dr. Harrell Edward Robinson of Anaheim Hills and Dr. Shir Miskinyar of Santa Ana, face charges of gross negligence and incompetence for botched cosmetic surgeries, including on where a woman who went in for a tummy tuck received a face lift and liposuction without her consent. With the recent case of a woman who is accused of stealing breast enhancements and liposuction, there seems a growing need for a Liposuction Law course.
What is Blowin’ in the Wind at Bob Dylan’s Malibu home ain’t justice. Dylan’s neighbors are complaining that a portable toilet Dylan, 67, has in his yard stinks to high heavens and, when the ocean winds blow, has forced them to abandon parts of their homes. Dylan has not responded to complaints for six months over the nuisance.