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May 18-21 -- "A
Smith & Wesson FAQ". An end run around democratic
governance, an assault on gun buyers'
Second Amendment liberties, a textbook abuse of the power to litigate:
the Clinton Administration's pact with Smith & Wesson is all this and
more. When this website's editor looked into the agreement's details,
he found them if anything worse than he'd imagined -- for one thing, they
could actually increase the number of people hurt because of gun malfunctions.
(Walter Olson, "A Smith & Wesson FAQ", Reason, June;
see also David Kopel, "Smith & Wesson's Faustian Bargain", National
Review Online, March
20, and "Smart Cops Saying 'No'", April
19).
May 18-21 -- On
the Hill: Clint Eastwood vs. ADA filing mills. The Hollywood
actor and filmmaker got interested in the phenomenon of lawsuit mills that
exploit the Americans with Disabilities
Act (see our March 7, Feb.
15, Jan. 26-27 commentaries) when
he was hit with a complaint that some doors and bathrooms at his historic,
32-room Mission Ranch Hotel and restaurant in Carmel, Calif. weren't accessible
enough; there followed demands from the opposing side's lawyer that he
hand over more than just a fistful of dollars -- $577,000, the total came
to -- in fees for legal work allegedly performed on the case. "It's
a racket", opines Eastwood. "The typical thing is to get someone
who is disabled in collusion with sleazebag lawyers, and they file suits."
(Jim VandeHei, "Clint Eastwood Saddles Up for Disability-Act Showdown",
Wall
Street Journal, May 9 -- online subscribers only). The "Dirty
Harry" star is slated to appear as the lead witness in a hearing on the
bill proposed by Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) to require that defendants be
given a chance to fix problems before lawyers can start running the meter
on fee-shift entitlements; the hearing begins at 10 a.m. Thursday, May
18 and the House provides a live audio link (follow House
Judiciary schedule to live audio link, Constitution
subcommittee; full
witness list). The National Federation of Independent Business,
Chamber of Commerce of the U.S., National Restaurant Association and International
Council of Shopping Centers all like the Foley idea. Eastwood told
the WSJ he isn't quarreling with the ADA itself, and the proposed
legislation would affect only future cases and not the one against him;
but "I just think for the benefit of everybody, they should cut out this
racket because these are morally corrupt people who are doing this."
May 18-21 -- "Dialectizer
shut down". "Another fun, interesting and innovative online
resource goes the way of corporate ignorance -- due to threats
of legal action, the author of the dialectizer, a Web
page that dynamically translates another Web page's text into an alternate
'dialect' such as 'redneck' or 'Swedish Chef' and displays the result,
has packed up his dialectizer and gone home", writes poster "endisnigh"
on Slashdot (May
17). (Signoff notice and subsequent reconsideration, Rinkworks.com
site). Update: it's back up now -- see Aug.
16-17.
May 18-21 -- Dusting
'em off. A trend in the making? Complainants in
a number of recent cases have succeeded in reviving enforcement of public-morality
laws that had long gone unheeded but never actually been stricken from
the books. In Utah, Candi Vessel successfully sued her cheatin'
husband's
girlfriend and got a $500,000 award against the little homewrecker (as
she no doubt views her) under the old legal theory of "alienation of affection",
not much heard of these last forty or more years. ("Spouse Stealer
Pays Price: Wife Wins Case Against Mistress for Breaking Up Marriage",
ABC News, April
27). Authorities in two rural Michigan counties have recently
pressed criminal charges against men who used bad
language in public, under an old statute which provides that "any person
who shall use any indecent, immoral, obscene, vulgar or insulting language
in the presence or hearing of any woman or child shall be guilty of a misdemeanor."
("2nd man hit with anti-cussing statute", AP/Detroit Free Press,
April
27) (same article on Freedom
Forum). And Richard Pitcher and Kimberly Henry of Peralta, N.M.,
"have been formally charged by Pitcher's ex-wife under the state's cohabitation
law, which prohibits unwed people from living together as 'man and wife'".
(Guillermo Contreras, "Couple charged with cohabitation", Albuquerque Journal,
March
11) (update: see May 8, 2001
for newer example).
May 18-21 -- Campaign
regulation vs. free speech. The state of Kentucky's
Registry of Election Finance has ruled that newspapers have a constitutional
right to editorialize on behalf of candidates of their choice, rejecting
a complaint that characterized such endorsements as "corporate contributions"
made by the newspaper proprietors. ("Kentucky election agency: Newspaper
editorials aren't contributions", AP/Freedom Forum, May
10). A general hail of dead cats has greeted the Congressional
Democrats' lawsuit charging House Majority Whip Tom DeLay with "racketeering"
over campaign fundraising practices, with Democratic operative Paul Begala
calling the suit "wrong, ethically, legally and politically." (David Horowitz,
"March of the Racketeers", Salon, May
15; Michael Kelly, "Hammering DeLay", Washington Post, May
10). And Mickey Kaus, on his recommended Kausfiles.com
website, spells out in words of one syllable to pundit Elizabeth Drew why
proposed bans on privately sponsored "issue ads" run smack into the Constitution's
guarantee of free speech ("Drew's Cluelessness:
Please don't let her anywhere near the First Amendment!", May
7).
May 18-21 -- Gotham
lawyers upset at efficient jury selection. A few
years ago, led by its Chief Justice Judith Kaye, the state of New York
began taking long-overdue steps to reform its notorious jury selection
system, under which lawyers had often been permitted to browbeat and grill
helpless juror-candidates for days at a time in search of the most favorably
disposed (not to say pliable) among them. The changes, which bring
the Empire State more into line with the practice around the rest of the
country, have markedly reduced the time jurors and others must spend on
empanelment. So who's unhappy? The state's bar association,
naturally, which opposed reform in the first place, and now complains that
"attorneys are feeling increasingly constrained by time limits and other
restrictions". A survey it conducted "suggests that many lawyers
feel that new practices are cramping their style." Yes, that was
the idea (John Caher, "NYS Bar Favors More Voir Dire Leeway", New York
Law Journal, April
12).
May 17 -- Not my
fault, I. In 1990 Debora MacNamara of Haileybury,
Ontario smothered her nine-year-old daughter Shauna as she slept.
Found not guilty by reason of insanity, she spent five years in mental
institutions before being released. Now she's suing two psychiatrists
and her family doctor for upwards of $20 million, saying they should have
prevented her from doing it.
The
docs say she was "an uncooperative,
recalcitrant patient who didn't take her medication as prescribed, often
cancelled appointments, wouldn't let those treating her share critical
medical information and either minimized or lied about both her symptoms
and state of mind." (Christie Blatchford, "Woman sues doctors for
not stopping her from killing", National Post, May 16, link now
dead)).
May 17 -- Not my
fault, II. "Fourteen years after accidentally shooting
himself in the hand, 19-year-old Willie K. Wilson of Pontiac is pointing
the finger at his father and Smith & Wesson, suing both last week for
at least $25,000 in Oakland County Circuit Court." His lawyer explains
that Willie isn't actually angry at his pa but is just going after the
homeowners' insurance money. Hey, who could object in that case?
(Joel Kurth, "Son sues father, Smith & Wesson", Detroit News,
May
16).
May 17 -- Comparable
worth: it's back. This time they're calling it "pay equity",
but a new study by economist Anita Hattiangadi and attorney Amy Habib for
the Employment Policy Foundation finds no evidence that the much-discussed
pay gap between the sexes owes anything to employer
bias, as distinct from women's individual choices to redirect energy toward
home pursuits during childbearing years (EPF
top page; "A
Closer Look at Comparable Worth" (PDF)). Plus: the foundation's
comments
on White House pay equity report (PDF); background
on comparable worth; and writings by Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the American
Enterprise Institute, "Still Hyping the Phony Pay Gap", AEI "On the Issues",
March;
Roger Clegg ("Comparable Worth: The Bad Idea That Will Not Die", National
Legal Center for the Public Interest, "Briefly..." series, August
1999 (PDF); and the Chicago Tribune's Steve Chapman ("Clinton's
Phony Fight for 'Pay Equity', Feb.
24).
May 17 -- Update:
judge frowns on Philly's Mr. Civility. Following up on
our March 13 commentary, federal judge
Herbert J. Hutton has imposed sanctions
on attorney Marvin Barish, including an as yet uncalculated fine and disqualification
in the case, over an incident during a trial recess in which Barish threatened
to kill the opposing lawyer with his bare hands and repeatedly called him
a "fat pig". Barish's attorney, James Beasley (apparently the same
one for whom Temple U.'s law
school was renamed after a large donation), said if anyone merited
sanctions it was the opposing counsel, representing Amtrak, for having
engaged in legal maneuvers that provoked his client to the outburst; Barish
is "one of the city's most successful lawyers handling Federal Employers
Liability Act cases". (Shannon P. Duffy, "Judge Hits Lawyer with
Fine Over Alleged Threat", Legal Intelligencer (Philadelphia),
May
2).
May 17 -- Disabled
vs. disabled. Strobe-light-equipped fire alarms -- a great
idea for helping the deaf, no? A sweeping new mandate to that effect
is pending before the federal government's Access Board, which would affect
workplaces, hospitals, and motel rooms, among other places. All of
which horrifies many members of another category of disabled
Americans, namely those with photosensitive epilepsy and other seizure
disorders: In a recent survey, 21 percent of epileptics said flashing lights
set off seizures for them. "Should a seizure be caused by stroboscopic
alarms during an actual fire emergency, that person would be incapacitated,
leading to even more danger both from the seizure and from the emergency
itself." And then there are all the false alarms. ... (Epilepsy Foundation,
"Legislative
Alert", Capitol Advantage Legislative Advocacy Center; Access
Board, Notice
of Proposed Rulemaking, relevant
section (see s. 702.3)).
May 16 -- Federal
commerce power genuinely limited, Supreme Court rules.
Big win for federalists at the high court as the Justices rule 5-4 to strike
down the right-to-sue provision of the Violence
Against Women Act on the grounds that the Constitution does not empower
Washington to muscle into any area of police power it pleases simply by
finding that crime affects interstate commerce. (Laurie Asseo, "High
Court: Prosecution of Rapists Up To States", AP/Chicago Tribune,
May 15, no longer online; U.S. v. Morrison, decision
(Cornell); Center for Individual Rights;
Anita Blair (Independent Women's Forum), Investors Business Daily,
reprinted Feb. 4).
May 16 -- Deflated.
After suing automakers up one side of
the street for the sin of not installing airbags earlier, trial lawyers
are now suing them down the other over the injuries the bags occasionally
inflict on children and small-framed adults. Last month Ford got
hit with a $20 million verdict in a case where an infant was paralyzed
by a Mustang's airbag, but last week a Detroit jury declined to find liability
against DaimlerChrysler in a case where an airbag detonation killed 7-year-old
Alison Sanders after her father ran a red light and broadsided another
vehicle. ("Jurors clear DaimlerChrysler in 1995 air-bag lawsuit case",
Detroit Free Press, May 11, link now dead; Bill Vlasic and Dina
ElBoghdady, "Air bag suits unlikely to stop", Detroit News, May
12).
Who was it that spread the original image of air bags as pillowy, child-friendly
devices, the right solution for all passengers in all circumstances?
Lawyers now wish to blame Detroit, but Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise
Institute quotes the remarks of longtime Ralph Nader associate Joan Claybrook,
who headed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration during the
Carter-era rulemaking: "Air bags work beautifully," she declared, "and
they work automatically and…that gives you more freedom than being forced
to wear a seat belt." (Letting people think an airbag might relieve
them of the need to buckle up is now, of course, seen as horrifically bad
safety advice.) Moreover, quoth Claybrook, the devices "fit all different
sizes and types of people, from little children up to…very large males."
("Only Smart Air Bag Mandate is No Mandate at All", CEI Update,
March
2).
Even more striking, CEI's Kazman dug up this
photo of Ralph Nader, who long flayed manufacturers for their delay
in embracing the devices, using an adorable moppet as an emotional prop.
Sam says the photo is from a 1977 press conference; he thinks it would
make a lovely display in Nader's planned museum of product liability law
in Winsted, Connecticut. [DURABLE
LINK]
MORE SOURCES: Bill Vlasic and Dina ElBoghdady, "Dead
girl's dad fights air bags", Detroit News, March
29; Janet L. Fix, "Father's heartbreak fueled lawsuit after 1995 accident",
Detroit Free Press, April
5; "The Deployment of Car Manufacturers Into a Sea of Product Liability?
Recharacterizing Preemption as a Federal Regulatory Compliance Defense
in Airbag Litigation", Note (Dana P. Babb), Washington U. Law Quarterly,
Winter
1997; Scott Memmer, "Airbag Safety", Edmunds.com, undated
web feature; Michael Fumento, "Paper Scares Parents for Politics and
Profit", 1998, on Fumento.com
website.
May 16 -- "Clinton's
law license". "The Arkansas Supreme Court should take
away Clinton's law license because he lied under oath," declares the editorially
middle-of-the-road Seattle Times. "It's unlikely that Clinton
will want to practice after he leaves the White House, but this has more
to do with the legal community upholding its own ethics
than the president's next career. The American Bar Association's
standards for lawyer sanctions leave little doubt: 'Disbarment is generally
appropriate when a lawyer, with the intent to deceive the court, makes
a false statement, submits a false document, or improperly withholds material
information and causes serious or potentially serious injury to a party.
...' Last April, federal judge Susan Webber Wright found Clinton in contempt
for 'giving false, misleading and evasive answers that were designed to
obstruct the judicial process' while under oath in her presence.
She also has filed a complaint with the Arkansas Supreme Court, but did
not recommend a specific penalty. ...Clinton should surrender his license
or the court should take it." (editorial, May
15). Plus: Stephen Chapman in Slate ("Disbar Bill",
May
12). [DURABLE LINK]
May 16 -- The asset
hider. Curious profession of a New Yorker whose specialty
consists in finding ways to help wealthy men hide assets so as to escape
legal obligations to their wives. The proprietor of "Special Services"
of E. 28th St. also boasts of his skill in private investigation, which
didn't prevent him from falling for the cover story of a New York Post
writer who posed as a divorce-bent
Internet millionaire while secretly taping their lunch (Daniel Jeffreys,
"The Wealthy Deadbeat's Best Friend", New York Post, May
15).
May 15 -- Doctor
cleared in Lewis cardiac case. A team of cardiologists
told basketball star Reggie Lewis that his playing days were over.
Then his wife helped get him transferred under cover of darkness to a new
team of doctors who said he could go on playing. Then he collapsed on the
court and died. And then Donna Harris-Lewis, having already collected
on her husband's $12 million Celtics contract, sued the docs for negligence.
One paid $500,000 to settle, but last week Dr. Gilbert Mudge of Brigham
& Women's won vindication from a jury. (Sacha Pfeifer, "The verdict
is in: no negligence", Boston Globe, May 9; Dan Shaughnessy, "Everybody
has lost in Lewis case; let's move on", May 9; Barry Manuel, "As usual,
only lawyers won in Lewis case", May 11, links now dead). Earlier,
Harris-Lewis drew flak by comparing herself to the families of six firefighters
who died in a Worcester warehouse blaze. "Lots of money is being
raised for those families, and I need to be taken care of, too. Everybody
has to say I'm greedy. But I do want my money back this time around. Why
should I lose?" Well, ma'am, we could start a list of reasons. ...
(Steve Buckley, "What was Harris-Lewis thinking?", Boston Herald,
March
28).
May 15 -- The four
rules of sex harassment controversies. We thought we had
'em memorized after the Anita Hill affair ... then we had to unlearn all
four during the late unpleasantness with President Clinton ... and now
they've all returned in coverage of the Pentagon's Claudia Kennedy case.
(David Frum, "Breakfast Table" with Danielle Crittenden Frum, Slate,
May
12). In other harassment
news, a jury has awarded $125,000 to a male waiter at a T.G.I. Friday's
near Tampa who said that female co-workers touched and grabbed him lewdly,
that co-workers made fun of him when he complained, and that the restaurant
chain proceeded to ignore his plight and retaliate against him. (Larry
Dougherty, "Waiter wins suit against Friday's", St. Petersburg Times,
May
5). And a Wisconsin appeals court has upheld a trial court's
award of $143,715, reduced from a jury's $1 million, to a computer analyst
who "said his boss spanked him with a 4-foot-long carpenter's level during
a bizarre workplace ritual" and then announced "Now, you're one of us".
The boss testified that the spanking ceremony dated way back as an initiation
at the Phillips, Getschow Co.,
a century-old mechanical contracting firm. (Dennis Chaptman, "Court
upholds $143,715 award for spanking", Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel,
April
18).
May 15 -- Convenient
line at the time. Tobacco
is special, said the state attorneys general who teamed up with
trial lawyers to expropriate that lawful industry via litigation and share
out the resulting plunder. It's "the only product that, if used as
intended, could be fatal." And so they categorically dismissed critics'
fears that the tempting new ways of raising revenue without resorting to
explicit taxation might soon be aimed at other industries. Who was
fool enough to believe them? (Victor E. Schwartz, "Trial Lawyers
Unleashed", Washington Post,
May
10).
May 15 -- Gloves
come off in Mich. high court race. We warned you it would
get nasty (see May 9, Jan.
31), but not this soon. At a recent NAACP gathering, the Michigan
Democratic Party circulated a flyer stating that incumbent Justice Robert
Young opposes the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board
of Education, which ended racial segregation in public schools.
Young, who is African-American and whose record on the court has been conservative,
terms the flyer "virulent race-baiting" and untrue and has demanded an
apology. State Democratic chairman Mark Brewer dares Young to sue,
but declines to name a source for the flyer's characterization of his views
on Brown. (Kathy Barks Hoffman, "Race for 3 spots on top court
sparks charge of 'race-baiting'", AP/Detroit News, May
11; George Weeks, "Election of justices needs changing" (editorial),
May
11).
May 12-14 -- Microsoft
opinion: the big picture. However well they're doing in
Judge Jackson's court, Janet Reno's trustbusters are getting slammed in
the court of public opinion, which continues lopsidedly opposed to breakup.
While a Harris poll finds less than 40 percent of respondents believing
that Bill Gates's company has treated its competitors fairly, that's still
a better rating than Joel Klein's Antitrust Division gets: only one in
three believe the government treated Microsoft
fairly. (Paul Van Slambrouck, "High-tech trust-busting a bust with
public today",
Christian Science Monitor, May
5; Manny Frishberg, "Public favors MS in antitrust", Wired News,
May
4). The Independent Institute's Alex Tabarrok calculates that
the loss in capital value of Microsoft as an enterprise amounts to $768
for every person in the United States, and that most of this sum can plausibly
be attributed to the legal action rather than to business setbacks.
("The Anti-entrepreneurs," May
1). Given that the rest of the high-tech sector has also taken
a thrashing, economics Nobelist Milton Friedman says Silicon Valley "must
rue the day that they set this incredible episode in operation" by siccing
the government on their Seattle rival (statement reprinted at National
Taxpayers Union site, April
28).
Does all this augur a revival of "vigorous", sock-'em-hard antitrust
enforcement, not much seen in the last couple of decades? If so,
ABC's John Stossel has some deserving nominees for breakup far more monopolistic
than Windows ever was, including the U.S. Postal Service -- yes, it's still
unlawful to compete with it in first-class service ("Give Me a Break: Government
Protection?" (video clip), May
5). And Michael Kinsley wonders why the U.S. government, if it
really takes trustbusting principles seriously, still takes such an indulgent,
price-fixers-will-be-price-fixers approach toward OPEC -- a genuinely noxious
cartel that inflicts great damage on the American economy, and whose member
countries (among them Russia, Norway, Venezuela and the spectacularly ungrateful
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia) appear to suffer nary a repercussion in the conduct
of U.S. foreign policy ("Readme: Oil Crooks", Slate, March
27).
May 12-14 -- Dismounted.
"A therapeutic horse-riding program
for 600 mentally impaired Oakland County children and teenagers is in jeopardy
this summer, a potential victim of a liability impasse among lawyers and
bureaucrats." Parents praise the Silver Saddles program, but the
county is unwilling to accept liability exposure for it, which could be
financially catastrophic in the event of an accident to a young rider.
(Hugh McDiarmid, Jr., "Riding-therapy program faces liability hurdle",
Detroit Free Press, May
5).
May 12-14 -- Steady
aim. Everyone who supports democracy -- as well as everyone
who opposes the abuse of litigation -- should favor legislative measures
aimed at reserving gun regulation to
elected lawmakers rather than the machinations of ambitious trial lawyers,
argues Vince Carroll of Denver's Rocky Mountain News ("Gun bill
puts halt to lawsuit abuse", April
30). And Washington, D.C.'s Sam Smith, who shows regularly that
there's still life on the Left in his remarkable online Progressive
Review (which we're pleased to see often picks up items from this
space), has put up a page of reasons "why politicians, moms, and progressives
should stop pressing for more gun control laws" ("Wild
Shots").
May 11 -- "Ad deal
links Coke, lawyer in suit". Both the Coca-Cola Co. and
plaintiff's attorney Willie Gary are denying a linkage between Gary's role
as a lawyer in the current high-profile race bias litigation against Coke
and the company's just-announced agreement -- financial terms not disclosed
-- to become a major advertiser on a cable channel of which Gary is part
owner. Last month amid fanfare the Florida lawyer arrived in Atlanta
on his private jet ("Wings of Justice") to assume representation of several
of the original plaintiffs in the much-publicized employee
litigation against the beverage company. "I want a settlement
that's fair and just," he said then. "I don't come cheap. I
think big, real big." On Tuesday Coke announced a major five-year
deal to buy ads on the fledgling Major Broadcasting Cable Network, which
Gary helped launch and of which he is chairman and chief executive.
Gary says his clients are aware of the deal and says, "There's absolutely
no conflict. We're not friends. We're
business people. Coke is not giving me anything. ... It's goods in exchange
for service. ... No way this is a conflict.'"
A sometime fund-raiser for the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH coalition,
Gary is best known in legal circles for the ruinous $500 million verdict
he obtained in a Jackson, Mississippi courtroom against the Loewen Group,
a Canadian-owned funeral home chain, in what had previously seemed a routine
commercial dispute (see our
editor's account). Last week he announced that he was demanding
nearly $2 billion from the Burger King Corporation on behalf of Detroit
restaurateur La-Van Hawkins, whose UrbanCityFoods business has not fared
as well as expected in its operation of franchised hamburger units.
Gary's entry last month into the Coke case came at a time of unpleasant
back-and-forth charges between some of the employees who were first to
sue and class-action lawyers who had worked to assemble their and others'
complaints into a suit on behalf of the company's entire black workforce,
led by Washington, D.C.'s Cyrus Mehri, of Texaco fame (our account
of that one), with the Mehri camp saying the individuals were holding
out for too much money for themselves personally as distinct from the class,
and a PUSH coalition activist, Joseph Beasley, countering that under the
settlement anticipated from the class action the "lawyers get all the money"
while "the black community is left high and dry".
SOURCES: Henry Unger, "Ad deal links Coke, lawyer in suit",
Atlanta Journal- Constitution, May
10 (fee-based archive); Constance L. Hays, "Coke to Advertise on Channel
Owned by Lawyer in Bias Suit", New York Times, May 10, no longer
online; Betsy McKay, "For Coke's Big Race Lawsuit, a New Wild Card", Wall
Street Journal, April 14 (subscription);
Beth Miller, "Cable network to focus on black families", Media Central,
Dec.
13; Trisha Renaud, R. Robin McDonald, and Janet L. Conley, "Money,
Trust Behind Coke Split", Fulton County Daily Record, April
14; "Burger King Has Greater Troubles: Internationally Renowned Trial
Attorney Willie Gary Asks Burger King for $1.9 Billion", Excite/PR Newswire
press release from Gary's firm,
May
3; Eric Dyrrkopp and Andrew H. Kim, "Prospecting the Last Frontier:
Legal Considerations for Franchisors Expanding into Inner Cities", Franchise
Law Journal, Winter
2000, reprinted at Bell, Boyd & Lloyd site.
May 11 -- Tort
fortune fuels $3M primary win. In Charleston, W.V., attorney
and former state senator Jim Humphries has won the Democratic nomination
in the Second Congressional District after investing $3 million from the
fortune he made in asbestos litigation. Humphries's "big-budget,
slickly produced campaign" overpowered his primary rivals, who included
one of the state's best-known politicians, Secretary of State and former
U.S. Representative Ken Hechler, as well as state senator Martha Walker,
who chairs the state senate's health and human resources committee; between
them Hechler and Walker split about half the primary vote. The campaign
"shattered all state records for spending in a congressional primary election."
Humphries now faces Delegate Shelley Moore Capito, R-Kanawha, who ran unopposed
in the Republican primary. (Phil Kabler, "Humphreys' $3 million pays",
Charleston Gazette,
May
10).
May 11 -- Stubbornness
of mules a given. A federal court in North Carolina has
dismissed a lawsuit by the producers of the soon-to-be-released film "Morgan's
Creek" against animal wrangler Alicia Rudd over the refusal of her trained
mule to sit down on cue or cooperate in other ways on the set. The
producers said the animal's recalcitrance had prolonged shooting by an
extra day, costing upwards of $110,000, but the judge said there was no
proof that Rudd breached a promise or misrepresented her ability to control
the mule. ("Judge finds stubborn mule no cause for action", AP/CNN,
May
8).
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