“A stripper mauled by a tiger in an Ontario safari park has won $650,000 in damages because her scars meant she could no longer work, Canadian media said on Friday.” Jennifer-Anne Cowles was awarded “some $650,000 in damages, almost half of it to compensate for income she would have made as a stripper. Her musician boyfriend, David Balac, won Canadian $1.7 million ($1.37 million), because his injuries left him unable to work as an accordion player.” (Reuters/CNN, Jan. 31). James Taranto at WSJ “Best of the Web” comments (Jan. 31): “Canada has some surprising priorities if an accordion player is worth twice as much as a stripper.” (& letter to the editor Feb. 13).
Archive for 2005
Budget hit for $20M after NYC crash
“A Manhattan pedestrian, paralyzed in an accident caused by a driver of a rental car, has been awarded a $20 million judgment against Budget Rent-A-Car”. The driver of the car had run a red light and allegedly was driving with a suspended license; a lawyer for the victim, Ethan Ruby, said his client might not have recovered if not for New York’s uniquely harsh vicarious-liability law which puts firms that rent or lease cars on the hook for virtually all accidents caused by their customers. (Dareh Gregorian, “Car-Rent Firm Hit for $20M”, New York Post, Feb. 1). For more on the New York law, see Sept. 5, Apr. 25, and Apr. 4, 2004 and links from there.
“Father sues over grade”
Another parent’s pro se complaint: this time Luping Qu is suing the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, “asking a judge to overrule a teacher who gave his daughter a bad grade.” (Raleigh News & Observer, Feb. 1).
Student’s shooting rampage: law school to pay $1 million
Once again the deep pocket pays for the crime: at the end of last year the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Va. agreed to pay $1 million “to settle four lawsuits over a deadly shooting rampage by a struggling student. … The lawsuits accused the [school] of ignoring repeated warnings that Peter Odighizuwa was a threat before he opened fire in 2002, killing the dean, a professor and a student and wounding three other students. Odighizuwa pleaded guilty earlier this year and is serving six life sentences. … The plaintiffs had argued that the school should have foreseen the violence because the 46-year-old Odighizuwa — who has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia — had a history of outbursts, threats and other disruptive behavior.” On the other hand, the Nigerian-born Odighizuwa “told The Associated Press in an interview earlier this year that the students should not get any money from the school. ‘The law school isn’t a psychiatrist. It doesn’t know what’s in my head,’ he said.” (“Settlement Reached in Suits Over Law School Shooting Rampage”, AP/Law.com, Jan. 3)
New guestblogger tomorrow
Another all-new guestblogger will be joining us for a week beginning tomorrow. Be sure to stop by.
Jacoby & Meyers
Conducting, um, outreach, to potential clients among survivors of the Glendale commuter train catastrophe (“In Bad Taste”, LAist, Feb. 1)(via Decs & Excs).
Welcome Wall Street Journal readers
Florida neurosurgeons
If a doctor has made three payouts in malpractice cases, there must be real grounds to worry that his care is substandard, right? In Florida, after all, voters last year approved a trial-lawyer-backed measure providing that physicians who lose three trials (as distinct from payouts short of that point) will have their license yanked. And yet if figures from one medical weblog are to be accepted, three payouts would not be considered anything special among members of one of the profession’s most elite specialties — neurosurgery — in one of the state’s most populous counties. According to a Nov. 21 item posted by Joseph F. Phillips, M.D., on wmed.com:
Bloggers as legal targets
Justin Levine at CalBlog takes a pessimistic view (Jan. 27).
Historic preservation laws
…can encourage midnight teardowns, as Ted explains on Point of Law (Jan. 27). See also Feb. 15-17, 2002.