“Man mauled by pet tiger fails in bid to sue rescuers”

“A man who sued the city for entering his apartment without a search warrant after he was mauled by his 450-pound pet Siberian tiger demonstrated a lot of nerve in taking the city to court, a judge said as he threw the lawsuit out.” After Antoine Yates was seriously bitten by the 10-foot-long pet tiger he was keeping in his East Harlem apartment in Manhattan, police removed it along with an alligator named Al and Yates served 3 1/2 months on a reckless endangerment plea. U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein dismissed his lawsuit, saying it demonstrated “chutzpah”. (Larry Neumeister, “Judge Bites Off Tiger Owner’s Lawsuit”, AP/New York Sun, Aug. 8; Volokh, Aug. 9). The headline in the title above is from the UK’s Guardian.

Driving while loaded

A Nebraska state trooper stopped Emiliano Gomez Gonzolez for speeding on Interstate 80 in 2003 in his rental car, then proceeded to seize $124,000 from a cooler in the back seat. According to the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals (opinion, PDF), Nebraska was within its rights to seize the $124,000 as presumed drug money (it then became the subject of a federal forfeiture action) even though 1) Gonzolez had no substantial or drug-related criminal record; 2) witnesses backed up his claim that the money had been pooled by several immigrants for purposes of buying a refrigerated truck for his produce business. Gonzolez had initially denied carrying money, and a drug-sniffing dog had detected drug residues in the rental car, though the same would probably prove true of many other rental cars. (“Court rules 2003 money seizure correct despite no drugs found”, AP/Sioux City Journal, Aug. 19; TheNewspaper.com, Aug. 19; libertarian blogs galore including KipEsquire, Radley Balko, Unrepentant Individual). Mike Cernovich (Aug. 21) analyzes what he finds the dubious maneuvers of the Eighth Circuit panel majority in dodging the requirement of deference to the trial court judge’s findings.

“Camper sues government over stumble”

“While finding a place to relieve himself, plaintiff walked off the unguarded and unprotected cliff falling approximately 20 to 30 feet to the creek bed below,” reads the complaint. And so Jerry Mersereau is suing the United States of America, which maintains the Mt. Hood National Forest in Oregon where the mishap occurred. (Noelle Crombie, The Oregonian, Aug. 4).

Lott v. Levitt, Part VII

Since our initial coverage, William Ford and Tim Lambert have been following this case so closely that I’ve been focusing on other issues where I have more of a comparative advantage rather than doing posts that would end up being similar to theirs. It’s unlikely that I’m going to have anything new to say about the case that you haven’t seen in earlier posts, so, barring major developments, from hereon out I defer to their coverage; John Lott’s blog also has occasional coverage of the case, as does Levitt’s. One last roundup of links:

As I previously mentioned, Levitt’s motion to dismiss is unlikely to succeed because of liberal pleading rules in modern civil procedure that forbid the consideration of evidence in most circumstances.

Fantasy sports lawsuit, cont’d

The Denver Post and National Law Journal have more on that lawsuit by Lakewood, Colorado lawyer Charles Humphrey and New Jersey’s Gardy & Notis (Aug. 2) claiming that CBS, ESPN and other media outlets are abetting unlawful gambling by sponsoring fantasy sports games, and seeking diversion of millions in resulting revenues into the plaintiff’s own fisc. Mississippi College School of Law sports law prof Michael McCann says Humphrey’s suit lacks “moral weight”. (Joel Grostephan, “Lawyer cites 1710 law in suit”, Denver Post, Aug. 15 (via Suz at Large); Tresa Baldas, “Fantasy Sports League or Real-Life Gambling?”, National Law Journal, Aug. 21)

“Lawsuit: Shopping Center Aided Attacking Squirrel”

Skokie, Illinois: “A woman who says she was attacked by a squirrel after walking out of the Tiffany and Co. jewelry store at the Old Orchard Shopping Center in 2004 filed suit against the shopping center Monday, saying its employees ‘encouraged’ the squirrel’s presence by feeding it.” In her suit, Marcy Meckler says the Westfield Corp., which manages the shopping center, “was negligent in, among other things, failing ‘to warn the plaintiff of the squirrel’s presence'”. (Sun-Times/CBS2Chicago.com, Aug. 14).

Oz: “Sex swap murderer granted leave to sue prison”

Some headlines just seem meant to keep tabloids in business, but in this case the report appears in the undeniably respectable Sydney Morning Herald. Among the key claims of transsexual Maddison Hall, who at the time of a 1989 murder conviction was known as Noel Crompton Hall, was that “a guard kept calling her ‘him'”. (Tim Dick, Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 15).