“In a 2000 civil lawsuit filed in Bucks County, Linda Thompson claimed a faulty pump sprayed her with gasoline, leaving her in damaged clothing and with a lingering fear of filling up her cars with gasoline. … ‘(Thompson) is unable to psychologically pump her own gas,’ the suit states. It also notes that ‘(Thompson) becomes ill upon the smell of gas and will not seek to obtain gas until absolutely necessary as a result of this incident.’” Earlier this month Thompson was elected mayor of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capital. [Harrisburg Patriot-News on still-pending lawsuit and election]
Tagged as:
emotional distress,
Pennsylvania
- Speech-curbing proposals continue to get polite academic reception: NYU’s Jeremy Waldron, big advocate of laws to curb “hate speech”, delivered Holmes Lectures at Harvard this past week [HLS, schedule]
- Lawsuit over collectible baseball hit into stands by Phillies’ Ryan Howard, his 200th career homer [Howard Wasserman, PrawfsBlawg; NJLRA]
- Orchid-importer prosecution a poster case for the evils of overcriminalization? Maybe not [Ken at Popehat]
- Texas State Fair and city of Dallas don’t have to allow evangelist to distribute religious tracts inside the fair, judge rules after three years [Dallas Observer blog]
- Drug maker: FDA’s curbs on truthful promotion of off-label uses impair our First Amendment speech rights [Beck and Herrmann and more, Point of Law and more]
- Did plaintiff Eolas Technologies go to unusual lengths to ensure Eastern District of Texas venue for its patent litigation? [Joe Mullin, IP Law and Business via Alison Frankel, AmLaw]
- Update: “Lesbian Denied Infertility Treatment Settles Lawsuit” [San Diego 6, earlier]
- Even in the Ninth Circuit, “psychological injury resulting from a legitimate personnel action” is not compensable [Volokh]
Tagged as:
baseball,
crime and punishment,
Dallas,
Eastern District of Texas,
emotional distress,
FDA,
forum shopping,
free speech,
Harvard,
hate speech,
law schools,
off-label,
patent litigation,
prosecution,
workers' compensation
Scott Thomas Zielinski was shot while robbing Nick’s Short Stop Party Store in Clinton Township, Michigan, at knifepoint, and is serving an 8-to-22 year sentence. Now he’s suing the store’s owner and some of its clerks for in excess of $125,000 for pain and suffering and emotional distress. [WXYZ] More: reader VMS recalls the story of an unrepaired stair tread.
Tagged as:
criminals who sue,
emotional distress
Chicago attorney Corri Fetman won a secure place in the Tasteless Lawyer-Ad Hall of Fame with her firm’s billboard showing a temptress and muscleman with the slogan: “Life’s short. Get a divorce.” She parlayed that fame into a spot as “Lawyer of Love” columnist (and subject of undressed photography) for the magazine Playboy. Now she’s suing, alleging she was sexually harassed and later deprived of her column by a lascivious executive at the publication. Her suit charges, among other things, “gender violence” and emotional distress.
Fetman lost her focus at work, grew depressed and anxious and sought medical care, [attorney Timothy] Ashe said. “Everybody has a breaking point,” he said. “She is not an overly sensitive person.”
[Chicago Tribune via Obscure Store].
Tagged as:
Corri Fetman,
emotional distress,
harassment law,
publishers
We briefly mentioned the other day the remarkable litigation over a laptop theft which (it seemed at the time) might have led to a data breach imperiling the personal information of military veterans. The feared breach resulted in an emergency request to Congress for $160 million to provide credit counseling to veterans, and, more recently, a $20 million settlement of class-action claims brought against the Veterans Administration, based at least in part on allegations of emotional distress associated with the (unfounded, as it turned out) fear of identity theft. If you’re wondering who the biggest winner will be from all this, Bank Lawyer’s Blog is pleased to provide the answer.
Tagged as:
class action settlements,
emotional distress,
military,
privacy
Ohio: “The 88-year-old Blue Ash woman arrested after refusing to give a 13-year-old neighborhood boy his football back after it landed in her yard has sued the youth’s parents, alleging emotional distress. The lawsuit by attorney H. Louis Sirkin on behalf of Edna Jester contends that Paul and Kelly Tanis “and their minor children ‘regularly and without permission’ enter Jester’s yard to retrieve footballs and other play items that have been ‘carelessly tossed’ onto her property, the suit adds. …The Blue Ash city solicitor and city prosecutor later dropped the misdemeanor theft charge filed against Jester after she refused a police officer’s order to return the Tanis boy’s football.” (Barry M. Horstman, “Football keeper files lawsuit”, Cincinnati Enquirer, Jan. 3).
Tagged as:
Cincinnati,
emotional distress,
Ohio,
recreation
If, like Eric Albritton, you’re a successful Texas lawyer who wants to claim that critical postings on the Patent Troll Tracker blog caused you “embarrassment, humiliation, mental pain and anguish,” you might actually have to document that. (Molly McDonough, ABA Journal, Nov. 3; earlier).
Tagged as:
Cisco,
discovery,
emotional distress,
Eric Albritton,
Patent Troll Tracker
Ronald Miller (Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog) on a case called Jarrett v. Jones: “The Missouri Supreme Court found [July 29] that a truck driver who was in a truck accident with another driver can sue for the emotional damages he suffered when he saw the dead victim in the other car. I’m not sure the decision is legally wrong. But it would not fly in the court of Moral Justice court.” (Aug. 8).
Tagged as:
emotional distress,
Missouri
The Canadian Supreme Court overturned the lower court C$341,000 decision in Mustapha v. Culligan of Canada, but it’s worth noting that the result would have been different in the United States. To recap, Waddah “Martin” Mustapha saw (but did not consume) a fly in a bottled water. As Yoni Goldstein memorably recounts:
[Mustapha] proceeded to vomit all over his house, and later experienced problems drinking anything with water in it, showering (because that also involves water) and going to work and having sex (where, presumably, water was involved in some major, incapacitating way).
Culligan did not contest that it was negligent; it did not even contest that the sight of the fly caused Mustapha’s injuries. It simply argued that Mustapha’s idiosyncratic reaction was not its concern, and that it should only be liable for the reaction of the reasonable person who had seen a fly in a bottle of water. In the US, that argument does not fly: basic 1L Torts teaches the “eggshell plaintiff” rule–you take the plaintiff as you find him or her. Canada differs. “The law expects reasonable fortitude and robustness of its citizens and will not impose liability for the exceptional frailty of certain individuals.” Canada is thus less prone to the sort of absurd claims that Mustapha raised than the United States is, as, if the courts follow the law, there is less incentive to exaggerate the scope of injury. In a US case, the defendant would have to engage in expensive pre-trial discovery to demonstrate that Mustapha’s psychological disorders were not caused by the incident, and would still have to go to a jury if Mustapha could produce an expert for hire who would testify differently. According to the Canadian Supreme Court, the appropriate approach is to simply use common sense and toss the case. But, as the lower court decision shows, there are certainly some in the judiciary who wish to move the Canadian model closer to the disastrous American one.
Tagged as:
Canada,
eggshell plaintiffs,
emotional distress
Martin Mustapha of Windsor, Ont. had won $340,000 over the fly for emotional distress and phobic reaction, though neither he nor any family member had come in contact with the water in question, since they spotted the insect before opening the bottle. Now the Supreme Court of Canada has refused to disturb an appeals court’s reversal of the award, and has ordered that Mustapha pay the water company’s legal costs. (”SCC quashes man’s suit over fly in bottled water”, CTV, May 22; earlier here and here).
Tagged as:
Canada,
emotional distress,
food safety
An Arizona antiwar activist has been much criticized for selling a T-shirt with the slogan “Bush Lied, They Died” along with the names of the more than 4,000 U.S. servicemen killed in the war. Parents of a soldier killed in action in Iraq are suing, saying the use of their son’s name has caused them emotional distress; they want class-action status on behalf of all the parents of other soldiers killed in action, amounting to $40 billion. The suit’s Amended Complaint does little to advance the dignity of its cause with assertions like, “Most respectfully, this is a concept that even a mentally-challenged monkey could grasp.” (Howard Wasserman, Prawfsblawg, May 5; Balko, Reason “Hit and Run”, May 6; The Smoking Gun, Apr. 23).
Tagged as:
damage theories,
emotional distress,
free speech,
wrong right
