Tort Report

Drunken driver sues Tempe police after crash

Given the state’s tough DUI laws, many drivers would be happy if police cut them a break, let them off the hook and sent them home for the night. But 21-year-old Korie Hoke isn’t one of them.

Hoke filed a lawsuit last week against Tempe and its police department, claiming her drunken-driving collision and resulting injuries could have been prevented if not for police negligence.

Hoke left a New Year’s Eve party on Dec. 31 intoxicated and distraught after an argument left her fearing for her safety, according to the suit filed in Maricopa County Superior Court.

Hoke called Tempe police from the party after she found her boyfriend cheating on her.

She told police dispatchers that her boyfriend, the other woman and friends were following her, and she feared for her safety.

Officer Lateef Hampton arrived on the scene just after 3 a.m. to find Hoke hysterical and sitting in the driver’s seat of the car, crying and talking on her cell phone, according to a taped interview that Hampton gave to one of Hoke’s attorneys in March.

The tape was released by the Tempe Police Department.

Hampton said he found several people surrounding the car and trying to get Hoke to open the door, which she refused to do, even for the officer.

Hampton said he eventually persuaded her to open the door.

Hoke admitted to drinking, and others at the party said most guests had been drinking. Hampton said he cited her for underage drinking because she was 20 at the time but did not conduct field sobriety tests or otherwise try to determine her blood-alcohol content.

He said he didn’t think she would be driving because both the boyfriend and Hoke told him the boyfriend took her keys. The boyfriend left soon after Hampton arrived.

Hampton said he tried to make sure Hoke didn’t have any keys.

He had her empty her purse, and he searched the seats and other areas of the car and couldn’t find any keys.

“Obviously, my main concern was for her driving — her level of intoxication. So I wanted to make sure she didn’t have those keys anywhere on her,” Hampton said.

She called her parents to pick her up, and Hampton said he also spoke to her parents, who assured him they would be right there.

Read full story [East Valley Tribune]

Three Strikes for Judge Fancy Pants

First he lost his pants, then his frivolous lawsuit. Now Administrative Court Judge Roy L. Pearson Jr. has lost his job. Pearson was booted this week from his $100,000 job and asked to clear out of his office by the end of business, Tuesday.

This story's coverage was subterranean compared to the international notoriety of the $54 plus million lawsuit he filed against a Washington D.C. area dry cleaner. Pearson lost that lawsuit while the Korean couple closed their business.  His appeal is now pending, his job is not.

Was the lawsuit linked to Judge Pearson’s dismissal? Apparently the 57-year-old Pearsons' two year job ended last May, right around the time of all of the adverse publicity. At that time he retained a job working as an attorney adviser.   

Judge Pearson was under consideration for a longer 10-year term, but a judicial committee voted against him.

Read full story [injuryboard.com]

A mangled hand, a 'Heroes' suit, and NBC

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- NBC is getting sued by a garbage disposal maker that claims the network's new hit show "Heroes" casts its product in a negative light. You can't make this stuff up.

Apparently, the first episode of "Heroes" shows one of the characters, a cheerleader who is blessed with the power of indestructibility (must come in handy when being at the top of those human pyramids), sticking her hand into a garbage disposal and getting it all mangled. A few seconds later her hand heals.

What's the big deal? The brand name of the machine in question is visible in the scene. It's called the InSinkErator. (Sounds like a bad Schwarzenegger movie. "Hasta la vista, gah-bage. Foooood. I'll be back...to chop you.")

Anyway, Emerson Electric, the company that makes the InSinkErator, isn't too happy to have its product shown bloodying the hand of a pretty, young cheerleader. So Emerson filed a suit in a U.S. district court in St. Louis against NBC Universal on October 2.

In the lawsuit, Emerson claims that NBC used Emerson's trademark without the company's consent and that the show "implies an incorrect and dangerous design for a food waste disposer."

The company added in its complaint that NBC's depiction of the InSinkErator "casts the disposer in an unsavory light, irreparably tarnishing the product."

Emerson is asking the court to order NBC to remove Emerson trademarks from future broadcasts of the show and also reward Emerson damages suffered as a result of NBC's acts of "unfair competition, trademark infringement, and trademark dilution."

Read full story here. . .

Shopping Center Aided Attacking Squirrel

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.

Marcy Meckler had just left Tiffany's and was walking in a courtyard area of the Skokie shopping center about 11:30 a.m. on Dec. 3, 2004, when a squirrel "jump[ed] up and attach[ed] itself to her leg," the lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, read.

"As a result," the suit says, Meckler, "while frantically attempting to escape from the squirrel and detach it from her leg, fell and suffered severe injuries."

The suit, which alleges Meckler suffered internal and external injuries "and will in the future endure pain and suffering in body and mind," did not detail the woman's injuries.

The suit alleges that through its employees and security personnel, Westfield Corp., which owns and manages the Old Orchard shopping center, "encouraged the squirrel to remain on the premises by feeding and caring for the squirrel, despite the dangerous conditions that arose from allowing said animal to remain on the premises."

The shopping center management was negligent in, among other things, failing "to warn the plaintiff of the squirrel's presence," the suit contends.

The suit seeks damages in excess of $50,000

Source: Sun-Times News Group Wire

Tony the Tiger?

In 1998, Kellogg sued Exxon because customers might confuse the gas station’s “whimsical tiger logo” with Kellogg’s mascot, “Tony the Tiger.” It didn’t matter, of course, that Exxon had already been using this logo for 30 years. A federal court tossed the suit. Kellogg appealed the case claiming the Exxon tiger walks and acts just like Kellogg’s “Tony.”

All In A Days Work

In September 1988, two Akron, Ohio-based carpet layers named Gordon Falker and Gregory Roach were severely burned when a three and a half gallon container of carpet adhesive ignited when the hot water heater it was sitting next to kicked on.

Both men felt the warning label on the back of the can was insufficient. Words like “flammable” and “keep away from heat” didn’t prepare them for the explosion. They filed suit against the adhesive manufacturers, Para-Chem. A jury obviously agreed since the men were awarded $8 million for their troubles.

The wedding was lovely, except for the flowers: They were the wrong color

NEW YORK (AP) So says the bride, Elana Glatt, who was so upset that she sued the florist and alleged breach of contract.

She says Posy Floral Design in Manhattan substituted pastel pink and green hydrangeas for the dark rust and green ones she had specified for 22 centerpieces.

Not only that, she alleges that the hydrangeas were wilted and brown, and arranged in dusty vases without enough water.

"The use of predominantly pastel centerpieces had a significant impact on the look of the room and was entirely inconsistent with the vision the plaintiffs had bargained for," Glatt, a lawyer, said in the lawsuit, filed on behalf of herself, her husband, David, and her mother-in-law, Tobi Glatt, who paid for the flowers.

The flowers cost $27,435.14. The lawsuit asks for more than $400,000 in restitution and damages.

Stamos Arakas, the florist, said that he and his wife, Paula, tried to match the color of the hydrangeas with a picture Glatt had given them, but explained to her that the colors might not look the same.

Bad Hair Day

An Oregon student's mom says she might have been grateful if a school employee had given her son a good haircut.

But when her eight year old son returned from school with "next to nothing" on his head, she threatened to sue for the bad hair cut administered by a school employee without her permission.

Rather than head for the courthouse, The West Linn-Wilsonville School District agreed to pay the mom $10,000 to settle the case.

The boy, who is in the district's special education program at Cederoak Park Primary School, got the haircut on October 11th.

"First I was shocked," the mother told the newspaper. "Then I was embarrassed that I didn't have the money to get him a haircut. And then I was mad... I thought, 'What nerve. How invasive.' "

Invasive to the tune of ten grand, that is.

The single mother said she tried to keep her son's hair looking neat. "There was one stinking day, and I'm not lying, that I didn't brush his hair," she was quoted as saying.

The school's superintendent said the employee was wrong to play barber. "If someone needs a haircut, we'd be more than happy to go into our wallets to give them 20 bucks." Now they're reaching deep to fork over the $10,000, while not admitting any liability for the haywire hairdo. "We settled this case primarily because of the inordinate cost of defending," he said.

Lawyer Who Sued Wrong Physician Won't Pay Up

A Mississippi plaintiff lawyer sued the wrong physician in a medical liability case, but the doctor says he's the one paying the price.

Court documents show that Lawrence E. Stewart, MD, a McComb, Miss., otolaryngologist, was confused with his deceased father, Edsel F. Stewart, MD. His father was an obstetrician/gynecologist who practiced in the same town. He died in 1999.

The younger Dr. Stewart said he didn't think twice when he was first served with a lawsuit in 2002. It alleged that he prescribed the nasal spray Stadol to Sarah N. Ratliff and neglected to inform her of the drug's addictive risks.

"I didn't really worry about it because I had a pretty ironclad defense: I didn't even treat this person and never prescribed this drug before," Dr. Stewart said. "I was pretty sure I was going to win this."

Dr. Stewart said he had been wrongfully sued before in a flurry of class-action pharmaceutical lawsuits filed just before Mississippi enacted tort reform to curb the mass litigation. In the past, it usually took no more than a phone call or written notice to resolve the mistake. But this time, "neither phone calls, nor letters, nor notarized affidavits to the court helped," Dr. Stewart said.

Instead, he spent the next year defending himself because plaintiff attorney Charles E. Gibson III of Ridgeland, Miss., failed to drop him from the case voluntarily. Because Dr. Stewart's medical liability insurance policy had a $10,000 deductible, he was forced to pay $6,100 of his own money to cover the cost of dismissing himself from the suit. He won a preliminary victory in 2004, when the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi granted his request and ordered Gibson to pay his legal fees.

By Amy Lynn Sorrel, AMNews staff. Oct. 22/29, 2007

One for the Records - Classic Lawsuits

Matthew P. Dukes, 26, sentenced to 30 days in jail in 1989 following his sixth drunken-driving conviction, tried for 15 months (through December 1990) to get into jail in Ravenna, Ohio, but each time was turned away because the jail was full. In December, Dukes filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming that his constitutional rights are being violated by the jail's refusal to admit him.