So Estelle Stamm, 65, is suing for $10 million, saying she’s protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act because the animal protects her from panic attacks and other mental symptoms as well as assisting her with her poor hearing. The city denies she’s disabled at all and cites online postings in which Stamm said the dog has “tremendous killing power” and asserted: “Livestock guard dogs in the subways is a wonderful sight to behold. The seas of people part before us.” Stamm, a former ad agency manager, says being questioned about her disability while using transit has itself caused stress reactions. [NY Daily News via Obscure Store; more coverage of service animals litigation]
Posts Tagged ‘NYC’
Tomorrow in NYC on loser-pays
I’ll be on a morning panel discussion sponsored by the Manhattan Institute to discuss a new paper on loser-pays reform by Marie Gryphon. Details here.
“He’s not a klutz”: $4.5 million for NYC cop shot in tippy chair
A Brooklyn jury has awarded $4,548,000 to Anderson Alexander, a former New York City police detective injured when the office chair he was sitting on tipped over and he shot himself in the knee with a 9 mm Smith & Wesson he was holding.
“This case is not about him shooting himself,” Alexander’s lawyer Matthew Maiorana told the Daily News. “This case is about a broken chair and an unsafe workplace.”…
Alexander, 49, who retired on a three-quarters-pay disability pension, moved to South Carolina, where he works as a sheriff’s deputy.
(Scott Shifrel, “Ex-city cop wins huge award after chair he sat in broke, sending bullet into his knee”, New York Daily News, Nov. 26).
Microblog 2008-11-14
- Lawyers and other professionals who blog should read new Kevin LaCroix post “On Blogging” [D&O Diary h/t @SecuritiesD] #
- Daily H.L. Mencken quotes [courtesy @ahndymac] #
- Funny, earthy blog by urban emergency room nurse [Crass-Pollination] # @danimari Odd how ERs generate so many of the best medblogs e.g. WhiteCoatRants, ER Stories, Movin’ Meat, SymTym, GruntDoc etc. #
- Calm down, conservatives, Dems aren’t planning to revive Fairness Doctrine [James Rainey, L.A. Times] # Or are we sure about that? [Ed Morrissey, Patterico]
- Advice on jury selection: “don’t continue to poke a bee hive with a stick” [Texas Country Trial Lawyer, h/t @HouCrimLaw] #
- Video humor for font geeks [College Humor, h/t @sekimori] #
- Do you blog, tweet, send saucy emails or IMs? You may not be well suited for a job in the new admin [Caron, TaxProf] #
- @rebeccawatson of possible interest regarding litigious diploma mills [this site, Oct. 27, 2003] #
- Beautiful photos of New York in the 1930s [Flickr h/t @CoolPics] #
Microblog 2008-10-31
- Beck & Herrmann skewer Waxman report on drug tort pre-emption [Drug & Device Law h/t Ted; much more at PoL] #
- Good news, Fed Circuit in Bilski case limits business method patents [AP, Patently-O, Parloff] #
- “Silicon Valley Stands United Against Prop. 8” [TechCrunch] # Not too late to donate against the proposition whether or not you live in California [before you forget] #
- Crash-faking ring in Queens targeted Asian drivers [NY Times] #
- Community Reinvestment Act: bogeyman in housing mess, or unrelated red herring? Truth somewhere in between [Husock, City Journal] #
- “Dopeler Effect” = tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly [@legalblogger] #
- Going to go as Wall Street and terrify everyone: Happy Hallowe’en. #
Another mechanical-bull suit
October 6 roundup
All-blog edition:
- Judges overheard chatting in coffee shop about sweetheart class settlement [WageLaw via Paul Karlsgodt’s weekly class action blog roundup]
- More attempts to sue/uncover anonymous blog commenters: “I was subpoenaed for a discovery deposition about one of my posts on this blog.” [Medblogger Dr. Wes]
- Thoughts prompted by the latest (NYC) round of litigation over “ladies’ nights” at drinking establishments [David Giacalone, f/k/a]
- Head of state (Bolivia’s Morales) to his lawyer: “If it’s illegal, go ahead and make it legal. That’s what you went to school for.'” [Cato at Liberty]
- Everybody run! Perennial Overlawyered mentionee Steve Berman has a blog [Class Action Law Today via his P.R. guy in Kevin O’Keefe comments]
- When infamous NYC lawyer Burt Pugach calls, hang up [Greenfield]
- Colleague described as “a soap opera doctor” elects to spend more time in the courtroom than in the operating room [Throckmorton]
- Dear Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee: “Please resist the efforts of vaccine-injury plaintiffs’ advocates to define themselves as representatives of ‘the autism community.'” [Kathleen Seidel, Neurodiversity]
Ladies’ Nights: a win for NYC clubs
Although lawsuits against “Ladies’ Nights” discounts have prevailed in California and Colorado, a New York judge has thrown out Roy Den Hollander’s much-publicized suit seeking class action status on behalf of men not offered discounts at China Club and other Manhattan nightclubs. (AP/CBS News, Sept. 29; earlier here, here, here, and other posts at our tag). More: Hollander was advancing the relatively unusual argument that the discounts were unconstitutional, which failed when the judge declined to find that they constituted state action; earlier lawsuits against the discounts have generally been based on anti-discrimination statutes, and the case might have come out very differently had those theories been relied on.
Kernel of sense
New York City: Judge Matthew Cooper has dismissed a suit for dental repairs by a moviegoer who said he broke his tooth on an unpopped kernel of popcorn at Manhattan’s AMC-Lincoln Square Cinema, ruling that plaintiff Steve Kaplan “could not reasonably expect every kernel to be popped”. (“N.Y. Judge: Broken-Tooth Popcorn Suit’s a Dud”, AP/1010 WINS, Sept. 29).
More: “Anyone who has ever made fresh popcorn … soon learns the bitter truth that the final product is almost always marred by the presence of unpopped, partially popped or burnt kernels,” wrote Judge Cooper. “Until such time as the same bio-engineers who brought us seedless watermelon are able to develop a new strain of popping corn where every kernel is guaranteed to pop, we will just have to accept partially popped popcorn as part and parcel of the popcorn popping process.” The judge suggested that the dentally risk-averse consumer stick to Raisinets or Milk Duds in future, although, he conceded, Milk Duds do have a reputation for pulling out your fillings. (NYLJ).
Get shot, sue Craigslist
“A Manhattan boutique owner is suing craigslist.com for $10 million, claiming he was shot with a gun purchased on the popular Web site.” Police say Jesus Ortiz, described as a schizophrenic resident of Calvin Gibson’s East Village neighborhood, shot Gibson in an apparently random attack. Gibson “claims Ortiz told the cops that he bought the gun on craigslist, and that the suspect’s mother told others the same story.” (Jennifer Fermino and Philip Messing, “Man Shot by ‘Craigslist’ Gun Takes Aim at Site”, New York Post, Sept. 5).