When I saw a book of fart sounds at a gag shop this weekend, I told my friends I needed to buy for my grandmother since her birthday is next month and she loves anything that has to do with farting. (If you read this, Grandma, please act surprised when you open your present.) I am telling you this now because it ensures the next sentence make a whole lot more sense:

This post on the legal considerations of farting is dedicated to my grandma. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

The Real F Words: Farts and Firings

When I was younger, I took my kindergarten-aged cousin home on the bus in order to babysit her after school. One day, an older kid said shut up. My cousin swiftly got on to him for saying a bad word. He informed her he knew worse words than that.

“I could say the F word,” he told her.

“I know that one too,” she promptly replied. “It’s fart. But we are supposed to say booty burp.”

Now fast forward to the present, and we will see that not much has changed–farting is still very much a taboo subject. In fact, Case Pork Roll Company in New Jersey was so turned off by farting that they fired a worker who was apparently stinking up the place on a regular basis.

Ah, New Jersey. Yet again you leave yourself open to be called by your beloved nickname–the armpit of America. (You guys, don’t go by their reputation and this smelly story. New Jersey doesn’t normally smell any worse than any other state.)

Anyway, back to this case.

Richard Clem has a real digestive problem that causes him to be more flatulent than most. It, along with explosive diarrhea, were the side effects of gastric bypass surgery. The problem got to be so bad that there were complaints. Many of those complaints appear to have come from the company president himself.

For a while, Clem was asked to work from home. Eventually he was asked to just not come in at all anymore–and not because they wanted him to be a full-time telecommuter.

On the same day he was fired, his wife, who also worked for the company, quit because of the discrimination her husband faced at the hands of their employer.

The couple joined together to sue the company for wrongful termination and to start a movement toward a world in which we can all pass gas in peace and without judgment.

The Sex Appeal of Farting (Yes, I Did Just Type That)

According to the Clem’s lawyer, “farting is the sexy part of the story” (and isn’t it always? I mean talk about a sure fire way to set the mood on date night…) but it is not the real issue here.

The real concern is that the flatulence is a side effect of Clem’s obesity, and obesity is protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Therefore, the company really fired the man because he was obese, and that is discrimination.

We’ll find out what the court thinks soon, but in the meantime, what do you think?

Should farting be a reasonable accommodation in the workplace? Or do people have the right to an okay-smelling work environment?

Let me know what you think because honestly I’m not sure what my opinion is. On the one hand, I feel bad for the guy. On the other, I certainly wouldn’t want to have to work by him.

Well, now that I have spent the last hour writing about farting, I’m going to try to go find something sufficiently mentally stimulating in order to raise my maturity level above that of a 12-year-old boy. Eh…that sounds like a lot of work. Maybe I’ll just watch TV. Until next time, ya’ll.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Fired For Farting: Is it Legal? appeared first on Law Street.

As long as I have been writing about these weird legal cases, I have written on a shockingly low number of weird Alabama stories. And let’s face it: surely Alabama has some weird things going on in its legal system.

Has the fact that I lived in Alabama for 16 years made me biased? Am I hiding all the juicy gossip to downplay this great state’s craziness? Or have I really just not been able to find any good ones because I get too distracted by the oddities going on in Florida (and also in my current state of New Jersey where my bias has certainly not been showing)?

Whatever the reason I have been ignoring good ole Bama in the past, I am over it this week. Because I’m about to tell you all a story about the Alabama fashion police. You know. Since Alabama is so well known for its fashion forwardness and all that.

For those individuals out there who believe God only gets involved in big picture items, you will want to read this: it turns out you are obviously very wrong. Because God recently decided to give us all a fashion lesson of a very basic nature.

A civil council member in Dadeville, Alabama (where I am not from, thank goodness, since my fashion sense is pretty nonexistent) is trying to create a dress code that would ban, among other things, baggy pants.

I’m well and fine with that, personally, because I hate the look myself. However, why did Councilman Frank Goodman suddenly decide this should be his life mission? Because God, who I’m assuming got the idea after watching this year’s New York Fashion Week, told him to.

Okay. I admit, Goodman does not actually claim God spoke those words to him, but he does say that he has been thinking on this for a while. And more importantly, he has been praying about it.

What was the result of said prayer? Goodman–whose name seems very fitting in this story–determined that “God would not go around with pants down.”

Thank you for the info, Goodman. Because I have been wondering if that would be God’s fashion sense for quite some time now.

What is more, when Goodman asked God to show him if the councilman should do anything about the baggy pant epidemic, God gave him a pretty clear answer.

“He would show me this saggy pant,” Goodman told The Daily Beast, “—it’s one of the things He did not do. It is not in His orders to do that to gain eternal life.”

So there you have it, folks, right out of the mouth of some random Councilman in Alabama: wearing baggy pants is not one of the things you need to do to gain eternal life. Which is probably a big disappointment to the people who wear baggy pants, since I am sure that gaining eternal life was the sole purpose in the low-riding pants.

Now, there is some history in towns banning or trying to ban saggy pants. In that sense, this is not a unique story. However, as to my knowledge, this is the first time that the ban is being attempted on God’s direct orders.

I’m not exactly sure how saggy is too baggy, but if this dress code is passed, people of Dadeville, you just might want to invest in a good belt or two. After all, you don’t want to get a ticket from the fashion police–especially when those fashion police are being sent directly on God’s commands!

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post God Doesn’t Like Saggy Pants, According to an Alabama Councilman appeared first on Law Street.

It has been said that having a wife is like having a ball and chain, which isn’t the most flattering description of women. However, I now have definitive proof that, when push comes to shove, men actually will choose a lifetime of marriage over even a short jail term. Thanks, Judge Randall Rogers!

How did Rogers create this much needed proof? Why, by giving out a sentence unlike any other, of course.

How I Married Your Mother: The Romantic Tale of Josten Bundy and Elizabeth Jaynes

I like to picture Josten Bundy, currently 20, one day sitting his son and daughter down, “How I Met Your Mother” style, and telling his kids the true tale of his marriage to their mother.

“Now kids, it all started in March of 2015…” he will start to say while his kids roll their eyes because they are well aware their parents didn’t get married until August of 2015, so why was this story starting in March? They could already tell it was going to be a long one.

However, unlike Ted’s unnecessary additions to the mother of all stories, Bundy’s tale really did begin in March. That’s when he got into a fateful altercation with his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend. Because assault is a crime, especially when it results in bodily injury, the young man was arrested.

However, he would not go before a judge for several more months. Let’s just skip ahead to then: he was found guilty.

The Rule of Love: A Highly Unusual Sentence

Randall Rogers does not only have an unusual name, he also has an unusual style of judgment. Take, for example, his ruling on the Bundy case. He sentenced Bundy to 15 days of jail for his assault charge.

Wait! That seems pretty normal. What’s the catch? Well, unlike some judges who like to lay down the law and expect it to be followed, Judge Rogers believes in a little bit of freedom in his punishments. Thus, he actually let Bundy choose.

He could either …

a.) go to jail for 15 days; or

b.) marry his girlfriend within 30 days, write some bible verses, and go to counseling (you know–to prove that getting in a fight over her was worth it or something).

That’s right–Bundy married his girlfriend because he was required to do so by the court. It’s weird when the whole “write bible verses” as a legal punishment thing gets so outshadowed in a ruling as to be barely mentioned in the story, but there we have it.

Wait, What? Everybody Else’s Opinions on This Matter

Guess what? The people involved in this account, except presumably the judge, felt like it was a really weird ruling.

While Bundy and Jaynes did choose marriage, because they were planning on getting married one day anyway, they were not happy about not getting to plan the wedding themselves, and Jaynes didn’t even have a white dress.

Jaynes’ dad had doubts that it was legal for a judge to force his teenaged daughter into marriage to pay for a crime she didn’t even commit.

I guess it’s too late now, though, that knot has been legally tied.

(Also, with a punishment like this, are you allowed to ever get divorced? Or do you only have to remain married for 15 days? Or can you say I do then immediately say I don’t? What are the logistics required here to avoid reverting to a jail sentence?)

The Moral of the Story

Let this be a lesson to you, kids. One fight, and your whole life can be changed. In fact, if you know someone who gets into a fight, your whole life could change. So never fight, and also don’t become acquainted with people who might get in a fight.

That way, you won’t be forced into any marriages.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Need a Reason to Wed? Judge Rules “Get Married or Go to Jail” appeared first on Law Street.

There are times I love living in my adopted state of New Jersey–please don’t be shocked non-New Jersians (or even New Jersians); all the bad press isn’t true.

However, there are other times when I am reminded that this is a state where grown men hide under beds for days and multi-state car chases occur over stolen supermarket undies.

It is at these times that I ask myself if there is something wrong with me that I purposely select this bunch of weirdos to live amongst.

A Simple Game of Hide and Seek: A Man Stays Under Ex’s Bed for Three Days Before Family Notices

You know why it is always a good idea to check under all of your beds at night?

Because if you don’t, somebody might just live under there for three days without you ever noticing. Which is pretty weird.

Jason Hubbard, of Spotswood, New Jersey, decided that a great place to hang out would be in the spare room of his ex-girlfriend’s family home under the bed where she used to stay. Now, he was savvy enough to realize that if he asked for permission to make his home under there, he might be asked to leave.

They say you should never ask for permission, just forgiveness after you are caught. That is what Hubbard did here. He just waited until someone left the door open to take out the trash, waltzed right in, and got under the bed.

There, he stayed hidden–probably in order to win the world hide and seek record–for three days before he finally messed up. It’s a hider’s job to stay as silent as possible. Hubbard finally made a noise loud enough to get him caught on the third day, and the police were summoned.

What was he doing to pass the time while he hid there? For starters, he was charging his four cell phones.

Playing Keep Away: Man Steals Underwear, Flees from Police

Now, let’s move away from the hiding and move on to the chasing.

The police recently had a fun time chasing a man in a van from New Jersey to Philadelphia to New Jersey to Philadelphia before a police car finally bumped the van and caused it to flip. Why was this, I assume high-speed, chase being conducted, you ask? Good question!

It happened because the man, Robert Ritter, had been spotted shoplifting $21 worth of undies from a Brooklawn, New Jersey supermarket. In my opinion, this might just be the best reason ever for a police chase.

Basically, Ritter spent July 9 stealing a pack of underwear and a pack of t-shirts from a supermarket before shoving a security guard. He escaped, but there was a warrant out for his arrest. Also, there was another warrant out for him for stalking charges.

On Monday, an office saw Ritter chilling in his van so the cop went after the Rain Man of robbers. Ritter fled back and forth from Jersey and Philly until he was finally caught.

One good thing came out of this story, though.

If you have to be taken in to custody and strip-searched, how embarrassing would it be if it happened when you were wearing old undies? Good thing for Ritter he was prepared with his brand new supermarket pair.

New Jersey is a nice, if expensive, place to live. However, that does not mean it is not without its weirdos.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Weird New Jersey News: Stolen Underwear Police Chase and A Man Who Lived Under a Bed appeared first on Law Street.

If you ever wondered if spelling, grammar, and punctuation were really important, the answer is yes. Not only will using them make you look halfway literate, it will make law enforcing just that much easier.

You have to be a smooth talker in order to talk your way out of paying a parking ticket on a grammar-cality. Andrea Cammelleri, then, must be one smooth talker.

It’s a Comma Mistake

In Ohio, there are certain types of things that cannot be parked for more than 24 hours in certain spots. The village thought that Cammelleri’s pickup truck was one of those things that could not be parked where she chose. That is why they so happily provided her with a ticket when she failed to follow the whole ‘don’t park here for more than 24 hours’ law that they thought was so clear.

They were apparently wrong–both in that Cammelleri’s truck was not one of the vehicles that made the don’t park here list, and because the law was not as clear as they had assumed.

The reason they thought that Cammelleri was illegally parked was because a pickup truck is a motor vehicle and the way the village reads the law in question, motor vehicles were included in the list of covered things. However, they were missing one vital piece of information to make that assumption true: a comma.

If you have ever gotten into a debate about commas (this is a real thing that happens all the time when you are a writer and/or editor), then you will be happy to know that the debate has finally found its way to court with a definitive, legal answer.

What the law actually says is that motor vehicle campers could not park in the spot for that long. What exactly is a motor vehicle camper? A fancy term for RV? Or just a long way to say camper?

Cammelleri said that she wasn’t sure what it was, but she knew here truck wasn’t one. Therefore that ticket she got for illegally parking should be tossed.

The village had a different argument. Come on, they told the court. It’s pretty obvious we meant to say “motor vehicle, camper” and not “motor vehicle camper.” This woman’s just trying to weasel out of paying up. Let’s just fine her, and use the money to fix the law. (Okay. That last part was completely editorialized.)

Who did the court side with? If you read the headline, and I am assuming you must have in order to have gotten here, then you already know the answer. The court sided with Cammelleri.

Why? They ruled that while contextually the law might be understandable, technically it could be read both ways. If they want the court to interpret the law the way the village does, then they better go change it to be both contextually and technically right. Otherwise, they should start saving their parking tickets for illegally parked motor vehicle campers, whatever those might be.

Proofread or Lose Money

What can you learn from the forgotten comma? If you want to get paid, you better proofread. Otherwise, you miss losing more money than a Macy’s mispriced mailer.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Thank the Grammar Police For This Dismissed Parking Ticket appeared first on Law Street.

Okay. I can’t believe I am about to say this. I don’t care if someone takes your $5 but does not give you your weed, you just cannot call the cops to complain about being stiffed. If you do, you will get in trouble. And if my admittedly limited knowledge of pot prices is accurate, you will get in trouble over some very poor quality marijuana.

(Before I continue with this story, I have a confession to make. Whenever I do not have a good story lined up for the week, I just Google ‘weird legal stories Florida.’ It never disappoints. Now back to this week’s weird Florida story … )

Courtesy of Giphy.

I’ve Been Robbed!

Daneshia Heller, a 19-year-old Florida resident, had an emergency. She had just been robbed. When she went over to a man’s house to buy some pot, she had expected to receive said pot in exchange for the $5 she had given him.

Unfortunately, the man allegedly took the money but didn’t give anything back. Heller did what any irrational person would do. She called 911.

“He got my money, and I want my drugs. Can you send an officer?” she asked the operator.

A Wish Come True

You know how if you find a genie and you make a wish it is going to come true in a way you never expected? Like how in the Geico commercial a million bucks gets granted as a million male deer (aka bucks)?

Courtesy of Giphy.

Well think of this 911 operator as Heller’s genie in a bottle. Heller was granted her wish: a cop did come to the scene of the alleged crime. Only, the cop didn’t arrive for precisely the reason Heller had wanted him.

You see, drugs are illegal in Florida, both in buying and selling. Which means if you call up and admit you are trying to buy some, especially if you dial 911 to do it, you will probably get in a little trouble yourself.

Taking Some Flakka

If this had been the only thing to happen, though, then maybe this story would not have been so bad. However, when the cops arrived, they saw an angry Heller talking to herself. This aroused their suspicion.

When they checked her person, they found a white substance in one of her pockets. As it turned out, it was Flakka, a psychosis-inducing drug.

The Legal Consequences

After the substance was found, Heller was taken into custody and charged with the following:

• Drug possession
• Misusing the 911 system
• Violating parole from an earlier, unrelated charge

Moral of the Story

As with any good story, there are a few key takeaways:

1. Don’t be a tattletale (especially don’t tattle on your potential drug dealer);
2. Don’t call 911 unless it is actually an emergency;
3. If you call the cops about a theft, make sure you hide your drugs before they get there; and,
4. Just don’t do drugs in general.

This may all seem like a lot to ask, but I promise you they are all good ideas if you do not want to get arrested and be talked about here.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Woman Calls 911 When She Doesn’t Get Her Drugs, Gets Arrested appeared first on Law Street.

Everybody has an opinion about marijuana (and, as my cousin who is about to start his freshman year of college at the University of Colorado-Boulder will attest, they are not afraid to state that opinion when they learn someone is moving to a pot-legalized state.)

It can be a real lightening rod of controversy. No, really. It can actually be a lightning rod. And Jaroslav Kratky had to learn this the hard way.

The Lightning Round: A Quick Retelling of the Story

Where there is smoke, there is often fire. But sometimes the smoke and fire have nothing to do with each other. For example, let’s say that a bad storm caused a lot of lightning in a Florida town and when it struck, it caused some fires.

Now let’s say that while putting out said fires, a marijuana grow-house (i.e., the smoke) was discovered. Kratky would like for this all to have been a hypothetical story, but alas for him, it was all too real.

Courtesy of Giphy.

After the fire was put out and the police had obtained a search warrant, they confiscated 15 indoor plants, seven outdoor plants, and one large suitcase filled with packaged pot. All in all, 8.5 pounds of pot were brought into evidence.

As you might imagine, catching someone with this amount of marijuana leads to some charges. Kratky was arrested and charged with production/cultivation of marijuana within 1000 feet of a school or church as well as possession of over 20 grams of marijuana.

What could he possibly say to get out of that?

Greased Lightning: Mr. Kratky’s Defenses

The expression throw mud at the wall and see what sticks, or whatever variation you know, basically means that if you don’t know if anything will work, just try everything and hope that something does.

Now, any good definition will also include an example to demonstrate it. Here is mine:

When Kratky was arrested after police found a lot of pot at his house, he needed a good defense but could not decide what to go with. So he decided to throw mud at the wall and see what sticks. In other words, he claimed all of the following.

• I am a hoarder. I am a packrat. I collect things, and when I am collecting junk, you never know what I might accidently get. For example, somebody may just give me a suitcase full of weed and some magic seeds (or at least some seeds that make me feel magical). How am I supposed to know what they are? I’m just a junkman.
• Marijuana? What! That’s not marijuana. They’re just ragweeds. Doesn’t everybody keep a load of packaged ragweeds in their house? You know. Just in case a spontaneous ragweed collector’s conference pops up last minute. Oh? Wait. You did a test and found that it was marijuana? Hmm. I hadn’t expected that.
• What’s the big deal? Marijuana is practically legal everywhere now. [In a really whiny voice:] I mean, Washington’s government lets them do it. And Colorado’s government lets them do it. Why can’t I? You are so uncool. (To which the police reply, “Do I look like Colorado or Washington’s government? If everybody in those states jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?”)
• Um. You mean that marijuana. Sorry, I thought we were talking about something else entirely. Yes. That marijuana is mine. It is used for medicinal purposes. Now that we have that cleared up, I’ll just be on my way. Bye!

Courtesy of Giphy.

(Parts of these were exaggerated for dramatic effect. However, I assure you, at their heart–meaning the texts in italics–these were all things Kratky tried to claim.)

Do you think any of that mud will stick?

Lightening Never Strikes the Same Place Twice: Conclusions

I think if there was really one thing to learn in this story, it is that Mother Nature has no problem with being a tattle-telling narc. It doesn’t matter how well you keep your drug lair hidden, if she decides she wants to make you suffer, she will not hesitate to send out a smoke signal to the authorities, letting them know all about your whereabouts.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Now normally I would point out that if you were looking for a good place to start growing some weed, then Kratky’s house might be a great option. After all, I’ve heard that lightning never strikes the same place twice.

However, not only does this story teach us that we can’t trust Mother Nature, it also teaches us that the originators of this idiom do not know what they are talking about. Lightning can strike the same place twice. And I have proof.

The weekend before the pot was discovered, firepeople had been called to put out a boat that was on fire after having been struck by lightning. And, as I am sure you have guessed by this point, that boat was in the Kratky’s back yard.

After the boat was declared a total loss, the Kratkys were not that upset. After all, they said, the boat wasn’t worth anything. I wonder if they will have the same sanguine thoughts after this fire? Somehow I doubt it.

I guess if there is really one thing we can learn in this story is that it doesn’t matter where you go. It doesn’t matter how careful you are. If it is in your destiny to get caught, you will get caught one way or the other. So if you are doing anything illegal in your backyard, you might want to make sure you are doing it in a fire safe place. Good luck!*

*This is a fictitious good luck. I am in no way actually encouraging people to do illegal things and wishing them real luck in their efforts.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Stormy Times Ahead: Lightning Discovers Marijuana Grow House appeared first on Law Street.

What happens when your dream house becomes a nightmare? A couple in Westfield, New Jersey found out when they started living the plot of a horror movie after buying their so-called dream house last year.

What they want to know now is who is “the watcher” and why didn’t the previous owners mention him?

Courtesy of Giphy.

The Story

After purchasing a $1.3 million house, you might like to move into it; however, when the watcher doesn’t want you to, then you might not. Which means that $1.3 million just went down the drain.

A couple found this out the hard way when, after putting down the $1.3 million, they started getting threatening letters from someone who called himself “the watcher.” And the watcher had a lot to say.

For example, he claimed he had been watching the house for a decade and that his father watched the house before him and his grandfather before that. He claimed the former residents knew about him and that he had asked them to give him some young blood.

Creepy quotes from the letters include:

• “Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested? Once I know their names I will call to them and draw them to me.”
• He once “ran from room to room imagining the life with the rich occupants there.”
• “Have they found what is in the walls yet? In time they will.”
• “Who has the rooms facing the street? I’ll know as soon as you move in.”

Courtesy of Giphy.

Now, it is understandable that you might be a little freaked out if you started getting these letters because at the very best it means you are about to get one weird neighbor, and at the worst it could be a whole lot worse than that.

However, if you disclose these skeevy letters, you might have a little problem selling your house because nobody wants to buy a house being watched by a creepy weirdo. Which is the situation this couple finds themselves in now.

The previous residents did not disclose this information–even though it is alleged that they got at least one letter from the watcher a couple of weeks before they closed–and they sold the house. This couple made a big deal about it (because why wouldn’t you? I’d want some police protection, too) and now everybody knows and nobody wants to buy.

Which is why the buyers decided to sue.

The Lawsuit

The buyers decided that the sellers had a duty to disclose the watcher and that the watcher had a duty to not stalk them. Because of this, they decided to sue them both.

Here is the problem with both of the suits:

• Under New Jersey law, you have to disclose latent defects–think, the old wiring is likely to start a fire. However, there is no known requirement to report other things such as house stalkers. While there is a chance that a lawyer could somehow turn this on its head and win the case (since this is pretty unique and there is no current case law to give us a hint to the verdict), the chances are probably pretty low.
• Since nobody knows who the watcher is, it will be pretty hard to serve him papers. Though, of course, they could always deliver them to the house where the watcher seems to spend a lot of time. He will probably see them when they come if he is as good a watcher as he claims to be.

If You Know Anything …

The biggest problem in this case, of course, is that nobody seems to know who the watcher is, which makes it hard to catch him (or her, but I’ve been using him in the most gender-less way possible).

So if you live in the area and have information, don’t hesitate to tell the police. It would be nice to get this guy–or girl–off the streets.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Home Sellers Didn’t Disclose “The Watcher” and Now Face Lawsuit appeared first on Law Street.

What would you do if you almost drowned in molasses? Obviously, you would sue the owners of the cow.

What? That doesn’t make any sense. Well, then, take a minute to read about Thomas Hooten.

The Story

Truck driver Thomas Hooten was driving down the road when he saw John Johnson–and no, that is apparently not an alias–backing his truck onto the highway. Hooten, or Thomas as the case oddly calls him, swerved to avoid Johnson and instead ran smack into a black Angus cow that had, in Hooten’s words, escaped and entered the highway in “the dark of night.” Seems like a rather poetic thing for a cow to do.

Courtesy of Giphy.

The cow did  not survive the accident, and Hooten almost didn’t either. After the hit, the truck rolled over into a ditch and trapped Hooten inside. This on its own was not enough to kill him, but the next part was.

You see, the truck he was driving was filled with molasses, and the molasses started emptying into the cabin of the truck where Hooten was trapped. In other words, the man was drowning in a sea of molasses.

Looking out the window though, Hooten saw his chance to survive when a pair of legs emerged into his vision. He cried for help. The owner of the legs cried back. But not to say help was on the way. Instead, the man decided to go a different route.

“You killed my f**ing cow!” Or maybe just “you killed my cow,” Hooten said were the words yelled at him. He could not be sure which were actually said. And then the man left. I guess he decided to let the man stew in the molasses as a means to think about what he had done to that poor cow.

Luckily, all hope was not lost. The fire department eventually got there to let Hooten go free. And good thing he escaped. If he hadn’t, he would never have been able to file the suit his time in this sticky situation had allowed him to plan. But since he escaped, he got to.

He is suing both Johnson and the cow’s owners for a whole lot:

• Medical affairs
• Lost income
• Physical impairment

And those are just the starters. Add in his wife’s suit for loss of consortium, and you have yourself a big lawsuit.

Final Thoughts

This case has given me a lot to think about, and I am going to share some of these thoughts with you.

• I would hate to die by molasses drowning. It just has to be one of the most embarrassing and least fun ways to go.
• Why was Hooten driving fast enough down this road that he would have to swerve when he saw another car and kill the cow–cows are pretty tough–upon impact? That alone does not seem safe.
• On second thought, at least drowning by molasses would be a tasty way to die.
• Unless, wait. What flavor was it? That would make a huge difference.

Anyway, who knows what will happen next. However, I will say, no matter the outcome, this is a weird story.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Near-Death by Molasses: Driver Sues After Truck Crash appeared first on Law Street.

I recently went to my cousin’s high school graduation. As I rode with her to the civic center where the grand event would take place, I informed her that I had every intention of embarrassing her by being the person who cheered and whistled (or, since I can’t whistle, making whistle-like sounds) when they called her name despite the fact that they would clearly request at the beginning of the graduation to hold all cheering and applause until the end.

She told me she was fine with me doing this so long as I met one requirement: I could only cheer for her if someone made a lot of noise for any of the graduates before her.

I’d like to take a minute here to thank Emi for being smart. Since she graduated at the top of her class, very few students went before her. Which means that the cheering did not start until later in the program. Which means I kept my big mouth shut when her name was called. And that’s good because apparently you can get in a lot of trouble for screaming like a banshee in the middle of a dignified graduation ceremony.

All Those S’s in Mississippi Must Stand For Sssssshh!

Before Superintendent Jay Foster started reading names at the Senatobia High School graduation, he warned everyone that they better shut up until all the graduates’ names had been read. After all, Mississippi and dignified go hand in hand (is that the first time anybody has ever said that?), and he wanted this dignity reflected in the ceremony.

Now, as a member of a large family, I have been to way too many graduations. I have had to force myself to stay awake through some truly awful speeches and long lists of people of whom I only knew one. I can walk you through the steps of a graduation. And if there is one thing I know, it is that no matter how nicely you ask, there are going to be screamers in the audience.

Courtesy of Giphy.

(Disclaimer: the graduations I attend tend to be at small, Southern, extremely country schools, so if more ritzy schools don’t have this problem, please excuse my ignorance. Also, please excuse my earlier dig at Mississippi, where I am sure people really are generally dignified. But I’m from Alabama, and Mississippi jokes are all we have.)

Anyway, I have yet to hear of a school properly shushing the rowdy crowds that graduations tend to attract. That is, until I learned what Foster did when people disobeyed his direct orders.

You see, Foster was not joking when he told people to hold their applause. A few people must have thought he was, though. Because they cheered. And all sorts of chaos began.

Courtesy of Giphy.

As the ceremony progressed, the people who cheered when told not to cheer were escorted out. Okay. A little tough, but understandable. And it sent others the message. After all, only four people had to be asked to leave. Assuming the graduating class had more than a handful of graduates, that is not all that bad. So mission accomplished, Mr. Foster. Good job!

Wait! You don’t think that was enough punishment? You don’t think it will stop people from cheering at next year’s ceremony? But what else could you possibly do to teach them this valuable lesson on respect?

Hmm. I hadn’t thought about tracking three of them down and going to the police to press charges against them for disturbing the peace. That will teach them!

Foster thought of it, though. And more than just thinking about it, he actually did it.

What Will the Verdict Be?

Can cheering ever lead to an actual charge? (One which, by the way, could be punishable with up to six months in jail and fines of up to $500.)

We may never know. Because on Monday, the school district decided to drop the case–a day before the court appearances were set and more than three weeks after the infamous ceremony. And I don’t know how I feel about this. In order to sort through my feelings, I made a pros and cons list.

Pros of dropping the case:

• The school will not be wasting their own time or that of the defendants and the court with a case they probably do not have much chance of winning. After all, in the words of one of the defendant’s lawyers, “You don’t yell fire in a crowded theater. That said, you are entitled to clap.”
• They will stop getting the bad press associated with their actions, which many for some reason believe to be too harsh.
• They could avoid a lawsuit or two from the harassed cheerers.
• People might think a little bit better about Mississippi in general.
• It is just plain right–and smart–to do.

Cons of dropping the case:  

• People might find out that charges won’t be pressed, and so they might actually risk the wrath of the school district next year and–I don’t even want to think about it–clap in excitement for the accomplishments of somebody they love even if it is rude to the rest of the attendants.

After reviewing my list, I see that there is a clear winner. Should we really be encouraging all those cheerers by not pressing charges against them? I don’t think so. Stop being so soft on these criminals, people. If we let them get away with things like this, we might not ever get a quiet graduation. And that is a thought just not worth contemplating.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Mississippi Superintendent Hates Fun, Presses Charges Against Cheerers appeared first on Law Street.

There are a lot of reasons you should be discrete when you rob people. The most important one is that if you are not, then you might get caught red-underweared. Just ask Taykim Ross, whose flashy undies led to his arrest.

The Fashion Police–or, the Events Leading to Arrest

Taykim Ross has been accused of stealing $200, some electronics, and a pair of blue Air Jordans from an apartment. And once he got his hands on those sneakers, he could not wait to get his feet in them.

So instead of getting out of there as fast as he could, he decided to take a break in the backyard to change shoes. I do not know what he was thinking when he did this, but I have to assume that he thought he was in for a high-speed chase and that the only way for him to run fast enough to escape was if he had on more athletic gear. Perhaps he had previously been wearing sandals. Perhaps, even, that is why he grabbed the shoes in the first place.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Really, it is hard to say what he was thinking. All we can really do is say that he should have thought a little more. Or that maybe he should have nabbed a belt while he was creating his new purloined wardrobe. Because his fashion choices ultimately turned out to be his downfall.

You see, the neighbor of the victim happened to be looking outside that day and happened to see Ross changing kicks. So he shot a picture of him. What was clearer than anything else in the shot was Ross’ prominent red boxers hanging out of his jeans.

Red undies and blue shoes? And perhaps he had on a white shirt. Maybe he was just trying to pull together a patriotic outfit. America is the land of the free to dress how you want, after all. However, in this case, Ross should have been worrying a little less about style and a little more about stealth.

Pull Up Your Pants!–or, How He Was Nabbed

Later that day, Officer Russell Harris was returning from a neighborhood canvas when he noticed a young man being responsible and doing household chores. To be more specific, the boy was taking out the trash.

On most days, Harris would not have thought all that much about such an innocent activity, but this time he did. You see, he noticed something about the kid that made him a little suspicious. Something was flashing in his mind making him believe everything was not alright.

Over the top of the kid’s baggy pants, the officer saw a pair of bright-red underwear. Because this happened to be the same color boxers being worn by the possible robber, Harris had to take a closer look.

Upon examining the picture and the person, the officer determined that it was an exact match. And not with just the underwear. The person was a match as well.

After this embarrassing wardrobe malfunction, Ross was arrested and arraigned on a burglary charge.

Harris said that if Ross had been wearing a belt–or presumably had changed boxers after the theft–he probably would have gone unnoticed; however, apparently the red undies acted like a giant target that even the worst dart player could hit.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Ross, maybe it is time for a makeover because your fashion choices are just plain humiliating. You might not ever be able to live this down, my friend. I hope next time you go shopping, whether at a store or in someone else’s house, you make some better decisions. Follow some fashion guidelines; don’t fly by the seat of your pants.

Dress to Impress–or, What You Can Learn from Ross

Here is what you can take away from poor Ross.

• Always wear a belt. Not only will it make sure your pants don’t fall off if you have to make a quick getaway, they will also protect your showy undies from prying neighbors’ eyes.
• Do not stop for a wardrobe change in the middle of a robbery. If you do, you might give the prying neighbor a perfect shot of your thieving behind.
• After a robbery, change. Lady Macbeth scrubbed her hands to get out a red spot of blood that she imagined was there. So, at the very least, you should take the time to rid yourself of the giant red spot that is going to stick out like a clown’s nose and lead to your arrest.
• Just don’t rob people or commit similar crimes. If stupid criminals have taught us anything it is that there is always a newer and dumber way to commit a crime. So to avoid these embarrassing faux pas, let’s all just stop trying to commit stupid crimes. Also, you know, for moral reasons.

For all of my Friends fans out there, this is the story of the real Red Ross.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Red Underwear is Thief’s Downfall appeared first on Law Street.

The problem with online dating is that it might lead to an STD.

At least, that was the case with a woman who used the It’s Just Lunch dating site where the idea is you might find someone great, but if you don’t then it’s no big deal. After all, it’s just lunch.

In a lawsuit, the unnamed plaintiff found out that it could be a big deal and it was not just lunch when she left the date with Herpes II.

Her Story

Woman goes on date set up by It’s Just Lunch. Date goes well. Woman goes on second date. Date goes really well. Woman confirms that man was STD free, and informs him she is as well. Man and woman ‘enjoy each other’s company’ if you get my meaning. Woman finds out she has Herpes II. So maybe that date did not go as well as she had thought.

Now, after reading this, I am sure you are thinking, wow! I’m never using this dating service, not if they let things like this happen on the dates. I mean, there they are forcing people to have sex on second dates, and they don’t even require STD panels first. What kind of business is that?

The plaintiff in this suit felt the exact same way about the company, which she called the world’s #1 STD service. And since she is stuck with the consequences of the company’s irresponsible actions, she is obviously entitled to the big bucks.

The Court’s Rejection

 In court, It’s Just Lunch came up with a pretty shocking defense that might just shake you to your very core. They do not require you to have sex when you go on one of their outings. I know. If this is true, it changes everything.

Apparently, all they promise their users is a nice lunch with a stranger. If you follow up that lunch with a passionate workout that will burn the calories of the lunch and potentially leave you with a life-long memory of your experience, then that is not on them.

I guess they stop holding your hand after your introduction to the person because they think you are adults. So if you participate in adult activities, that is solely your choice.

The court agreed. It dropped her claim against the company and told her to put all of her eggs in one basket. Win against Norman, the poor, potentially STD-spreading dater, or do not win at all.

 Norman’s Story

Most of this case happened a few years ago (2011-2012 range). However, in an appeal filed earlier this year, we got some new light on the whole who-gave-who-what case.

Norman claims that he had undergone a medical exam not that long before this outing in which he was given the all-good-to-go stamp of approval from his doctor.

The court decided that the fact that he didn’t have Herpes II a couple of months before the fateful date didn’t mean he did not have it at the time of the date. Therefore, they ordered him to get a medical exam to find out his current condition.

Of course, the problem with this is that even if he did not have it then, he could have subsequently caught it. Or maybe she passed it to him. Either way, Norman is probably not going to be using It’s Just Lunch anytime soon–even if none of this was their fault.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Woman Gets STD on Date, Sues Dating Service appeared first on Law Street.

If I were to ever become a thief, my first choice of items to steal probably would not be pasta. I suppose perhaps if I was a really hungry thief and there was a plate of spaghetti sitting right there on a counter with nobody looking at me it would be a different story. But in general, I cannot see myself ever joining the illegal pasta game. So I feel it is pretty safe for me to say that I would definitely never try to steal a trailer filled with thousands of dollars worth of pasta. (Aside: is there some sort of black market for pasta that would make this worth it? I could always be convinced to change my mind if I had the right motivation.)

Apparently, though, these four guys from New Jersey do not have the same life goals as me. Because they were recently arrested for doing just what I would never do: stealing a trailer full of pasta.

Now, if I just had a need to discuss pasta-related crimes, I could have talked about the guys who got caught after robbing a Build-a-Burger in New York when the police followed their trail of macaroni salad, which I’m sure they left in a Hansel-and-Gretel-type plan to eventually find their way back to the Build-a-Burger and return their steal. So, thanks for ruining that act of conscience, police.

However, I’m not as interested in how pasta can foil your robbery attempts as I am in how it might influence you to start a life of crime. Thus, the trailer full of pasta theft.

Here is what happened:

Four men stole a trailer of pasta. Said trailer was parked on the street. Said street contained police doing surveillance. The thieves pulled up to the trailer in a car and a tractor. They hooked the trailer to the tractor and tried to drive away where they were no doubt going to fence the pasta for big bucks.

However, this is where the whole “police surveillance” hurt them: this particular trailer had been reported stolen a few days before the tractor pulled up to haul it away. Ergo why a pasta trailer was getting so much cop scrutiny and why it was so suspicious to see four guys attempt to remove it from its parking spot.

The tractor was pulled over and the men were arrested. Police ask that anyone with more information on this crime come forth with it by calling 908-474-8538. But even if you do not have information on this particular crime, if you just have any information on the pasta theft world in general, please contact me. Because it is really a confusing matter to me. I have to ask again, is there a thriving underground pasta ring out there that would make stealing this many carbs worth it? And if so, why? You know you can buy that stuff fairly inexpensively at most grocery stores, right? It just does not seem worth the jail time, if you ask me.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Men Buck the Atkins Diet Trend, Steal Trailer Full of Pasta appeared first on Law Street.

I am a busy person, which means I don’t get to spend hours at a time following the latest Hollywood gossip. I can usually survive without keeping up with the Kardashians and the Bieber and so on. However, every once in a while, I stumble across a celebrity scandal so interesting that I question everything I thought I knew about myself and begin to wonder why I ever do anything other than watch E!.

I mean, if I kept up with my star news, I would have known two whole weeks ago that Mila Kunis stole a transgendered chicken from a talking baby in Ukraine. And really, the fact that I am just now learning this is a travesty.

Since it’s a few weeks old, there is a chance you have already heard something about this. But I think it will be just as weird and entertaining to take an in-depth look now as the whole messy legal battle continues to heat up.

The Story in a Nutshell

According to Kristina Karo–and as she told Mr. Immigration Man in what has to be my new all-time favorite music video, “that’s Kristina Karo with a K, a KK. You know, like Kim Kardashian, only with talent.”–she and Mila Kunis used to be best friends when they were younger and were both still living in Ukraine.

However, that friendship ended with a hen-ious crime when the girls were in first grade. Although, as Aston Kutcher points out, since Karo claims to be much younger than the 31-year-old Kunis, she must have been one month old, in first grade, and talking when this all happened, making her the smartest baby of all time. Of course, her publicist tried to downplay her intelligence by saying she is, in fact, the same age as Kunis but exaggerates her age for sarcastic purposes. But, I think the talking baby thing is just as likely as everything else that happened in this tale.

You see, Karo had a beloved pet chicken named, as many a chicken is, Doggie. Doggie was a smart chicken and a good representative of his/her namesake, a dog. You could play fetch with her, and she would bring you the ball. You could call him, and he would come. If you didn’t think chickens did these types of things, you are wrong.

Of course, as good reporters must fact check, they asked Karo to clarify her mixed use of genders. Was the chicken a rooster or a hen? I’m guessing it was transgender because when asked the seemingly simple question, Karo said it was “not something she could go into.” Whatever the gender, one day, Doggie went missing.

Karo did not have to wait long to find out where he/she had gone. Kunis, an honest thief, quickly confessed to the crime, telling Karo she could have any chicken she wanted as a pet since she had an entire chicken farm. Then, Kunis fled the country to live out the rest of her life in hiding in the U.S.

Where are they now?

Unfortunately for Kunis, her plans to live on the lam were fowled when she became a mega-success in Hollywood. I’m sure had she realized this would make finding her easier, she never would have begun acting in the first place. But hindsight is 20/20.

A few years ago, Karo came over to the states in the hopes of getting a green card and a music career–as she relays in her hit, “Give Me Green Card”–so they were bound to run into each other.

Karo had repressed the horrible memory of her stolen, beloved pet for years, but when she came to Hollywood and saw the starlet who had betrayed her when they were youths, all of the wretched memories came rushing back.

Where was Doggie? Was he alive? Had he gone to chicken heaven? Had he finally selected a gender? These are all questions to which she would never have the answers.

The Suit

Now that Doggie was once again in her mind, Karo needed to get at least a little bit of closure. That is why she filed a suit in small claims court demanding $5,000 for the emotional distress caused by this traumatic childhood event.

For her part, Kunis has not yet been served. She has apologized for the confusion but says that, as a chicken advocate, she would never steal someone’s chicken nor would she have done so at any time in the past, even as a child. She kind of ruined the good intentions, though, when she followed the apology up with possible slander by hinting that it was no coincidence that this suit came out just as Karo is trying to promote her music video.

This is likely to be a close case when it finally makes it to trial. On the one hand, unless we find the chicken, there may be no evidence. On the other hand, nobody would ever be able to make up such a crazy tale, right? Plus, Karo did get a confession from young Kunis, which could help her case. However, I think Kunis could block this on some statute of limitations argument. We’ll all just have to wait and see.

The Countersuit

Speaking of that music video, Kunis is threatening to countersue for the same $5,000 she could lose. She claims that after watching the video, “my body hurts. My eyes hurt. They’re burning. That requires money.”

I watched the video, and I didn’t think it could be any more perfect than it was; I would not change one second. So I do not know how this countersuit will fare in court. I am looking forward to finding out, though.

Karo is clearly doing this all for the attention (because for some reason I do actually doubt most of this is true.) However, do I feel bad about giving it to her? Absolutely not! If you want attention so badly you’d make up this beauty, then you deserve to get it. And really, how can we not talk about this ridiculous case?

I’m signing off now. I need to go play that catchy song some more. “Give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me green card.”

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Star’s Legal Battles Over Childhood Chicken Theft Continue appeared first on Law Street.

One hospital’s trash is another man’s amputated leg. Or at least this was the case for 56-year-old John Timiriasieff.

Timiriasieff went to the Doctor’s Hospital in Coral Gables, Florida last October to have his leg amputated below the knee. This, as we can all imagine, was not a pleasant experience for the man.

However, to make matters worse, Timiriasieff received a knock on the door and was shocked to find homicide detectives there asking about foul play. You see, likely in an attempt to save fuel or prevent a forest fire, the hospital had apparently decided it was going to skip the incineration of the limb as would have occurred after most amputations, at least at other hospitals. Instead, it decided to take a much simpler approach: just throw out the leg.

Now, some advice for anyone who is going to be throwing out body parts in the future: when you throw away a human part, remember to remove the name tag before you do so. Otherwise, you will get caught a lot more quickly.

That is what happened here. The leg was found in a waste management facility where the shocked finder (at least I assume someone who just found a leg in the trash was shocked, though, honestly, I don’t know. Maybe they find weird items and body parts there a lot. This is, after all, Florida) swiftly reported it to the police.

The police investigation was made easy by the fact that the leg was labelled already. They didn’t need DNA testing as long as someone on the force knew how to read. Thus, they showed up on Timiriasieff’s doorstep shortly after he had already gone through emotional upheaval, wanting to know if there had been foul play.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Imagine you had to get rid of something you love. You go through the five states of grief. You deny it is happening. You get mad that it is happening to you. You bargain for any other situation. You mourn the truth. But finally, you accept that it has to be that way and you separate yourself from that thing that means so much to you – in this case, quite literally. Then, after you have finally accepted that it is gone, it shows up at your front door mocking you for your efforts. Would you be emotionally distraught?

Timiriasieff was. Or he said he was at any rate. And for this reason, he has decided to sue the hospital for emotional distress. To win, he needs the court to determine that intentionally throwing someone’s leg in the trash was outrageous conduct and that it actually caused emotional distress. Do you think he has a case? Or was the conduct not outrageous enough?

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Man Suing Hospital After Workers Throw Out His Amputated Leg appeared first on Law Street.

I spent all of last week in Costa Rica, so I had a lot of catching up to do when I returned. And when I went to check my news feed for weird legal stories to write about here, it did not disappoint. A man shot both an armadillo (or an armadilla, as it is pronounced in the South) and his mother-in-law (I feel as if there is a good mother-in-law joke in there somewhere), and a 70-year-old woman was arrested for smuggling cocaine in her girdle – though for me, the real crime there is that someone still wears a girdle in this day and age.

The Shot Heard Round the Yard

The expression kill two birds with one stone recently took on a whole new meaning. A Georgia man was out shooting armadillos with his pistol. It is, apparently, encouraged in his town to shoot armadillos in general, but pistols are not the gun of choice in such a situation. Why? Because if you shoot an armadillo with a pistol, here is what might happen:

• The bullet ricochets off the animal’s sturdy back;
• The bullet then hits a fence;
• The bullet ricochets off the fence;
• The bullet flies through the back door of your mother-in-law’s mobile home;
• The bullet goes through the recliner where your mother-in-law is sitting; and,
• The bullet finally stops … after hitting your mother-in-law in the back.

The lady in question walked away just fine and is not pressing charges; however, I would not recommend any of you mom-in-law haters out there try this at home. It might not work out so well for you.

Granny’s Got a Drug Cartel

It’s not often that we hear of a story where people are trying to find out what’s inside a 70-year-old woman’s underwear, but recently at JFK airport TSA officials did just that. Olive Fowler is not your average little, old lady. Sure, she wears girdles and granny panties just like everyone else, but her Victoria’s Secret is a little darker than most of the others.

Sweet lil’ Olive was spotted at JFK sweating profusely – wait! As anyone of her generation could tell you, women don’t sweat, they glisten – and avoiding the eyes of cops. So she was taken away for additional screening. The TSA officials found more under her girdle than they had bargained for, in the form of $73,000 worth of cocaine. She was taken away by the authorities and will likely face jail time.

The moral of this story is that you should not judge a book by its cover. Even the dusty ones that look old and boring can be a gold mine (which now gives new meaning to the expression digging for gold).

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Granny Arrested For Smuggling Cocaine in Her Girdle at JFK appeared first on Law Street.

Something is rotten in the city of Akron, and we finally know what (or rather who…unfortunately we’ve known the what for a while). That’s right, it’s official. After years of reported sightings, elusive behavior, and terrorized citizens, we have finally gotten a real picture of the legendary creature. He does exist, and if you park your car in his territory, he will mark it. So whatever you do, be careful.

Courtesy of Giphy.

I’m not talking about Big Foot, just in case that is where your mind went. Nope. The weirdo that was finally caught on film was the mysterious car pooper–in no way related to the party pooper. The car pooper is a guy who has been terrorizing the Akron, Ohio area for the last three years, using people’s vehicles as his own personal toilet.

Here’s a video clip of an interview with the man who caught the priceless photo–the only image captured of the culprit.

In middle school, my entire school was pulled into a meeting with the vice principal where we were told, “Stop wiping your feces all over the bathroom walls. The janitors shouldn’t have to clean that up.” I remember very clearly thinking how ridiculous it was that we needed to have this conversation at our advanced pre-teen ages. So imagine how I feel about this guy.

Mr. Crapper, which as far as I know is not his real name, has reportedly pooped on at least 19 cars in the last three years. Some of those cars have been defaced more than once, more than twice even. At what point does finding feces on your car in the morning just become part of your regular routine? I hope I never find out. I’ve walked to my car many times before and found something weird that made me say, “What is that crap?” But I have never had the answer to my question actually be crap. I didn’t realize that this was something to be thankful for.

Anyway, if this was not bad enough on its own, if you were unwise enough to leave your door unlocked, you might not find a package on the hood of your car, you might just find one on your passenger seat. So imagine being the person complaining about his bad day because he had to wash crap off of his car that morning, literally, and still not being able to win the worst-story-of-the-day award because some other poor sucker had to scrub crap out of his cloth seats. That’s a smell that cannot be easy to get rid of.

While the culprit had left his mark all over town, he has in the past been as hard to find as the mythical Yeti. Nobody has even gotten a picture. But that all changed earlier this year, when photographic evidence of the man finally surfaced. A man caught him mid-deed in what was hopefully the weirdest photo he has ever taken or will take again. Now that police know who they are hunting it will hopefully not be that long before the cops catch him.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Waking up to find your car has been pooped on (or worse, in) is a crappy way to start your day–and I refuse to apologize for my bad pun here. I hope for the sake of the people in this neighborhood, this man is placed behind bars and given toilet training rehabilitation lessons while he stinks up his cell.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Akron Police One Step Closer to Catching Serial Car-Pooper appeared first on Law Street.

Ladies, imagine you are all dressed up and ready to hit the town. You’ve got on your short skirt, your stilettos, and your low cut top. You’re looking good. Now, you can’t just sit around when you look this nice, so you have to decide: where are you going to go? Do you know yet? Good! (I really, really hope that nobody said France.)

Courtesy of Giphy.

If your night on the town does consist of a visit to France, it is advisable to bring bail money. Because France is set to pass a law that would make “looking like a prostitute” illegal. So no more standing on corners in your high heels and sexy dress–no matter how innocent your plans are. The French cops don’t want to have stop, examine your motives, and decide if there is a problem. Just arresting you is a whole lot easier.

Courtest of Giphy.

If this anti-vice law is passed, it will be illegal to appear to be offering sex for sale. Because in France, while it is legal to pay for sex, it is illegal to be paid for sex. Moreover, it may soon be illegal to look like you’re the type of person that would accept pay for sex.

The purpose of the law is to clean up red light districts where hookers line the streets. Having a law like this, however, obviously does not mean that prostitution will disappear in France, so if your vacation plans include visiting one, do not despair. (But also, probably reevaluate your plans, for obvious reasons). While it won’t disappear, it could, however, drastically change the hooker look. It is assumed that when the law is implemented, prostitutes will start to wear jeans and sneakers. So instead of wearing “hooker heels,” ladies will now go out on the town in their “hooker sneakers” and, as far as my feet are concerned, that’s a great deal!

The concern I would have is that if casual dress is the new prostitute attire, but it is illegal to look like a prostitute, then wouldn’t casual dress become illegal? And if casual dress became illegal, then prostitutes would have to find some other mode of dress. Perhaps business, which is fitting since it is the oldest profession, but then eventually business wear would cause you to look like a prostitute, and that would be banned. And so on and so on until your only choice is to go naked. And if running around naked doesn’t scream sex appeal, I don’t know what does.  But maybe I’m overthinking things.

To sum it up, in the words of Justin Bieber, “Stay sexy, girl.” Unless you are in France. In which case, stop looking sexy immediately.

Courtesy of Giphy.

—

Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashs) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured iImage courtesy of [Seth Anderson via Flickr]

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post France Considers Law Banning “Looking Like a Prostitute” appeared first on Law Street.

Sometimes, you read about some event and you think, “What?! No way! That’s such a freak occurrence, it could only happen once!” You think this, and then you see Facebook’s related stories and realize that not only did said thing happen once, it happened several times. And then, if you are me, you write about it. That leads us to this week’s topic …

I like to eat as much as the next guy (well, maybe not as much as the next guy if the next guy is any one of the people I’m about to talk about) and when I am really hungry, I get grumpy. I might pout and be snappish and generally act like a five year old, but that is the extent of my ire. I would never attack anyone over food; however, as my Facebook-related stories has pointed out to me, this is a much more common thing than one might think. So here are seven (yes, I have found seven, and I am sure I did not find them all) food fights that you need to know about.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Don’t Mess With Her Pork Chops

A mom in Ohio was arrested earlier this year when she threw knives at her 15-year-old son, hitting his thumb with one badly enough that he had to be taken to the hospital for stiches. What did he do that caused her to get so mad that she threw multiple knives at his head? According to her, he pushed her–which even she admitted did not justify the act. However, if you ask him, he claims there was even a stranger, less justifiable reason: they had an argument about pork chops. Specifically, he had eaten the leftover pork chops and when his hungry mom asked about them, he lied. I guess the lesson here is this: never lie to this woman about eating her food–and also, maybe just don’t eat her food at all.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Fried Chicken Mayhem

Let me start out this one by saying that there is never a good reason to beat up your wife (or girlfriend or husband or boyfriend or pretty much anybody with few exceptions); however, the following has to be one of the worst reasons I have ever heard. A man in Florida was recently arrested for beating up and choking his wife who escaped and called 911. While there were a couple of reasons for his alleged attack, the one that stands out is the fried chicken. The couple got into an argument when the husband accused the wife of not having enough fried chicken leftovers. What exactly do you think is the appropriate amount of fried chicken leftovers one should have?

Beer, Please!

This one is the most bizarre by far: a woman in South Carolina stabbed her common-law husband when he came home on Christmas Eve without beer. Okay. So far this one does not seem any more bizarre than the others. But that’s only because I have not yet told you what she used in the alleged stabbing: a ceramic squirrel. This woman, who does not like to spend Christmas sober, took a ceramic squirrel, hit her husband in the head with it, and then stabbed him in the shoulder and chest. The man had not bought the beer because the store was closed. Maybe this would have been the only good reason to rob a store: to avoid domestic violence by squirrel.

O.J. Syndrome

I feel like all I really need to give you here is the headline about this Louisiana man: Dad Shoots Son in Butt During Fight Over Orange Juice. I mean, wow! (Oh yeah, one last thing I want to add: the 18-year-old son did not appear to have life-threatening injuries, which makes it okay, in my opinion, to laugh at such a weird tale.)

Fiery Italian

I had a horrible roommate in college–well, one of them was horrible, not all of them–and so I know the absolute rage that a bad roommate can cause in a person. That being said, I never once set my horrible roommate on fire. A woman in Florida cannot say the same. And this woman is 33, so we cannot even add on a, ‘stupid immature college kid’ to this horrible story. When this woman found out that her roommate had thrown out her leftover meal of spaghetti and meatballs, which she was saving for later, she doused her roommate in nail polish remover, and then set him on fire.

Sassy Salsa

Courtesy of Giphy.

So here is another stabbing story: a woman in Ohio (Ohio and Florida just keep popping up as places you never want to live if you like to eat) was arrested for stabbing her boyfriend, allegedly over the fact that he ate all of her salsa. For this heinous crime, the woman stabbed him repeatedly with a pen. His injuries were not life-threatening. I hope that salsa was really, really good.

I Want Bacon, I’m Not Faking

This is the story that you are most likely to have already heard about. A woman in Michigan was arrested and convicted of shooting at a McDonald’s that twice forgot to put bacon on her bacon cheeseburger. Apparently the bacon is the most important part of a bacon cheeseburger. The woman was charged with shooting at an occupied building (she shot at the Micky-D’s, not at a person in the restaurant) and carrying a concealed weapon.

So there you have it. Seven good reasons why you should not mess with anybody’s food!

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Top Food Fights Ending in Arrest…Seriously, Food Fight Arrests appeared first on Law Street.

There are a lot of stories about idiots who are wanted for one crime or another who get caught through social media. This might be because the police post their searches on Facebook and people see them and report the fugitives’ whereabouts. It could be the girl who posted a video on YouTube talking about everything she had just stolen. Or the guy who posted a pic of himself siphoning gas from a police car. Basically what this shows us is that many crooks are stupid and arrogant, and the man in this week’s story is no exception.

Christopher Wallace was recently apprehended in his home. This was a big score for the police since they had been looking for him for weeks after linking him to a burglary. How, you wonder, did they finally find him? It actually turned out to be quite easy. He spurred his own downfall by using the app Snapchat.

Wallace is obviously a big fan of the kid’s game Hide and Seek because it was a giant version of this game that he played with the cops. First he sent a Snapchat, which the receiver sent to the cops (never forget that phones are screenshot capable, people, because if you do, you might have some embarrassing Snapchat photos leaked just like this guy). In it, Wallace said he returned to his house. So the police took that as an invitation.

Courtesy of Giphy.

When they got to the Wallace household they were told that he was not, in fact, home. The police were not content at leaving it alone, so they decided to search the premises. That is when they got their next Snapchat message: Wallace knew that the police were searching, and, oh yeah, also, he was hiding in the cabinets.

According to the sheriff office’s Facebook page, “a search of the kitchen cabinets turned up some food, some pots and pans, and also a pair of feet.” Now, I assume that the investigating cops figured one of two things when they saw these mystery feet: either Wallace was guilty of a much worse crime than burglary or else he had not lied in his post and they had just won this weird game of Hide and Seek.

As it turns out, it was the latter. Connected to those feet, as the Facebook page relayed, was Christopher Wallace. As you might imagine, he was quickly arrested.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Peek-a-Boo! Cops Find Crook Who Snapchatted His Location appeared first on Law Street.

I’ve been told that the best way to steal something and get away with it is to be so obvious about what you are doing that nobody takes any notice of you. In other words, if you look guilty, you probably are. This is why I make an attempt to look like I’m not supposed to be buying alcohol when I am at a liquor store–one of these days my sketchy behavior is going to get me IDed and then I’ll go brag to everyone I know about how young I must look.

Courtesy of Giphy.

A good scam is to rob someone in the middle of the day. The neighbors aren’t expecting robbers at this time, so they don’t think anything of it when they see you filling up your van with someone else’s furniture. “Oh, Ms. Solomon must be redecorating,” they say and get back to their gardening.

Another thing people do is take a large purchase item, let’s say a television, and walk right out the front door of the store. It is so obvious and ballsy, that nobody would do it unless they had just purchased the device from another cashier, right?

Now, before I get to my point, I want to give a disclaimer: Everything I know about stealing is information I got secondhand, usually from late-night sitcoms. If you are thinking about starting a life of crime, I would suggest that you find your tips somewhere other than this post.

If I am not trying to create a nation of savvy stealers, though, where am I going with all of this? Well, if the best way to steal is not to hide what you are stealing, then stealing a house ought to be easy.

And so here is the story I am relating to you this week: SOMEONE STOLE A HOUSE! I’m not making this up. It happened in Oregon, but more importantly, it happened.

Courtesy of Tumblr.

To be fair to the thief, and also to be fully honest, this guy didn’t know that he was stealing the house, he thought he was buying it for only $3,000, which was, in his actual words, “a hell of a steal.”

So here is the breakdown of what occurred (dramatized for, well, dramatic effect):

Sheriff Frank Skrah was sitting in a meeting one day thinking that this day would be like any other. In his life on the force, he had seen it all–nothing could shock him. Or so he thought.

In came a deputy to shake what he knew about himself to the core.

“Frank,” the deputy said to him in disbelief, “you’re not going to believe this. Someone just stole a house.” (Again, actual quote.)

Now, if someone had told me when I was picking out careers that as a detective I might one day be able to take part in the Case of the Missing Log Cabin, you can rest assured that I would be in uniform right now.

Courtesy of Giphy.

However, as I didn’t know houses could be stolen, I made other professional choices. Detective Eric Shepherd is luckier than me, though, because once this crime was committed, he actually had to investigate the whereabouts of a missing house. Turns out, it had not gotten far. It turned up about half a mile away in a nearby community. And it only took two days to find. That’s right, folks: an actual house went missing, was hidden less than a mile away, and it still took two days to find it (and I am pointing this out only because it is shocking. I am not saying it should have been found sooner because I honestly have no idea how long it should take to recover a missing house–though didn’t someone in the community find it odd to come home one day and find a cabin where only land had been just that morning?). Anyway, what did I tell you about the big crimes being the easiest? If this house had been moved two or three miles down the road, it might not have ever been found.

So now we are at the point where I explain to you how the guy who took this house thought he was doing it legally. The cabin in question was located in a remote area and was used as a vacation house. It was purportedly co-owned by three men. One of these men decided that he was going to sell it. Which he did, for $3,000, to a fourth man. The seller did not feel it necessary to share this information with the other two men. So the buyer, not aware of any of this, hired a logging company to move the cabin. Shortly thereafter, one of the other men came to visit and was pretty surprised to see that the cabin was no longer actually there. Which is what led to a house being reported stolen in Oregon.

The police are now trying to decide if this is a criminal case or a civil case, but I’m just happy it is a case at all.

To end this on yet another actual quote from this saga, let’s take it back down to Sheriff Skrah: “I’ve seen a lot of scams,” he said, “but I’ve never seen an entire house go missing.”  I couldn’t sum it up any better.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post House Stolen in Oregon, Found Several Miles Away appeared first on Law Street.

Do you need a break? Are you tired of the day-to-day life? Have you and your husband or wife been constantly fighting over the little stuff … and let’s not even get started on the big stuff? If you answered yes to these questions, then you need a vacation. Gideon Putnam Resort is the ideal vacation destination for you. Stay for just one weekend, and your biggest problems will be solved.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Relieve your stress as you are pampered in the luxury spa. Sleep in and wake up for a nice brunch. Then head down to the casino for some additional fun. Plus, go play golf, swim, and hike. They offer it all. And when you leave, they guarantee they will have stopped all of your marital bickering. Just select the divorce package, and you can leave on Sunday marriage-free. No need to worry about all the legal matters–Gideon Putnam will do that for you! See? You can’t fight with your spouse if you don’t have a spouse to fight with!

At Gideon Putnam, a popular wedding location, you can have your marriage come full circle and end it at the beginning. First, go there to get married. And then, when you are ready, go back and get divorced. That’s right: the resort has recently started offering divorces on its premises. You can come cut the tie that binds you to an unwanted spouse even if you got married at some other place. For just $5,000, you can start your new single live in comfort and style.

The idea is that you check in for the weekend (don’t worry: you get your own room), have a stress-free vacation, talk to some mediators, sign some papers, and hopefully leave on Sunday having had a stress-free divorce. They will even do their best to keep you away from all the happy weddings going on during your stay. Who needs a court when you can go to a resort?

Courtesy of Giphy.

While this idea seems pretty bizarre (at least to me), it has been going on in certain resorts in Europe for a while (which I suppose does not necessarily negate its bizarreness). I guess it must be working over there for people to want to move it here. So maybe this unique option is the right thing for you. Next time your spouse is getting on your nerves, do not lose your temper. Take a deep breath, count to ten, and calmly say, “Honey, I think we need a weekend getaway. Have you heard of Gideon Putnam Divorce … errr … I mean Resort?” And then relax: let them take care of the rest!

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Resort Now Offering Vacation Divorce Package appeared first on Law Street.

Jordan Meir of Nebraska thought he found the perfect way to disguise his stash–just mark it up as ‘not weed.’ After all, labeling it as weed is a sure fire way to get caught, so the opposite must be the solution, right? Maybe in the rest of the world, but the cops in Nebraska must be extra smart because this ingenious scheme actually did not end up working in their neck of the woods.

Twenty-one-year-old Meir was cruising around town one night when he was pulled over for suspected drunk driving. He was not worried. Sure, he was riding dirty, but in such a way that he knew he could not be caught. So when the officer saw a sour cream container labeled ‘not weed,’ Meir was probably as surprised as everyone reading his story that, in the words of the cop, containers labeled ‘not weed’ are what they in Nebraska call “a clue.”

Courtesy of Giphy.

When the cop opened it up, it turned out that the container had indeed accidently been mislabeled. Inside was 11 ounces of marijuana. (This really could have been an innocent mistake, by the way. If Meir is anything like me, he probably just reuses containers when he is done with them. When this specific container was first labeled, it probably was not stashing weed, and he just forgot to re-label when he was done.)

Courtesy of Giphy.

Meir admitted that it was his–are you surprised that he was so honest? Whatever gave you the impression that he was a liar?–and was fined $100 and arrested on suspicion of drunken driving.

It is a pity that the world has become so dishonest that nobody can trust anybody anymore. I dream of a day when we can see someone’s sour cream tub labeled “not weed,” and just take it for a tub of pot-free sour cream instead of being suspicious and untrusting. I want to live in a world where we can rely on others and take what they tell at face value. I want honesty and trust to be our guiding forces.

But until that day, I probably need to go re-label some sour cream jars…

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Man’s ‘Not Weed’ Label Does Not Fool Nebraska Cops appeared first on Law Street.

Do you know what is lurking beneath the crawl space of your house? Even if you think you do, you should probably go check because you might find some surprising things. Recently, Dwayne Melton found this out the hard way. You see, buried beneath the belly of his house lay 13 tarantulas. As you might expect, he was horrified when he realized this. There were supposed to be 18 tarantulas hibernating under there. And he would not even have realized that five of his pets had been stolen if he hadn’t gotten a call from the exotic pet store from whence the arachnids had originally been purchased. See? This is why you should do regular crawl space investigations.

Courtesy of Giphy.

(Now, before I say more about this week’s weird story, I have a couple of disclaimers: 1. I went to college in Cobb County where the criminal in this story resides; and 2. I, like most middle school girls, had a pet tarantula when I was growing up. His name was Harry, and I was never so scared in my life as I was the day I learned tarantulas shed their skin, making what appears to a 12-year-old girl a second, cloned tarantula that showed up miraculously overnight.)

A lot of what happened here is unknown as the Cobb County man being charged is still at large; however, what is known is that Melton was going about his day, thinking everything was good and his tarantulas were hibernating peacefully deep below his house. But those spiders were not the only ones that lurked there. A spider thief had found his way to the spider’s den.

This would have been the perfect crime. Since the tarantulas were hibernating, Melton was not checking them as often as he might, and it is possible that by the time the theft was discovered, the thief would have been long gone. However, this particular robber made a fatal flaw that led to him not getting the payback he would have received and might also get him arrested: he went to the local exotic pet store, Animart, to try to sell the tarantulas.

This is something that should go without saying, but I see now that it does, in fact, have to be said: if you steal an exotic pet from someone who is clearly a collector/breeder, do not go to the local exotic pet store to sell them. Go out of town for that.

If a pet is exotic, that probably means it is not as common a household pet, which means that someone who purchased 18 of them from a store is probably a pretty well-known client. Of course, Melton could have gone to another store or purchased them out of town or any number of other things, but why risk it? Make the chance of you getting caught that much lower and just go three towns over or something.

Not doing this is, at least partly, what got this man caught. (I don’t know enough about the tarantula trade to confidently say that no exotic pet store would find it suspicious to have a person try to sell it five tarantulas at once. However, if it wasn’t for the fact that the store knew the owner, I have to imagine it is much less likely this plan would have been foiled.)

When the thief took the animals to Animart, they looked at them, thought they might be Molten’s, and bought them for $60. Does it seem like a life of crime might be for you if money is the result? Well, since the spiders were worth about $60 each, it was not such a good payday for this man.

After the sale, the store called Molten and told him they thought they had his pets and asked him to come ID them (which shows this guy knew what he was doing in the spider world, because to me, one tarantula looks exactly like the one next to it–especially when the one next to it is actually the shell of his old tarantula skin that had been shed). He rushed home to check on his other 13 spiders and found them safe in their containers.

Courtesy of Giphy.

So there you have it, if you want to get rid of your spider problems in a more humane way, just cross your fingers and hope you have a spider thief lurking somewhere underneath your home.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Tarantula Thief Wanted in Georgia appeared first on Law Street.

I have some advice to anyone who happens to read this: if you are going to hit yourself in the face and then blame it on the cops, make sure there are no recordings of it. This is good advice both because leaving behind video evidence will land you in a lot of trouble, and also because if there is a video of you hitting yourself in the face, you will be the source of much ridicule.

Unfortunately for Aleksander Tomaszewski, he did not get my advice in time. Which is why he was recently found guilty of attempted coercion and initiating a false report.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Let’s go back some. Tomaszewski was brought in to the Lane County Sheriff’s Office for questioning on an unrelated case. He apparently was not there willingly, and so he wanted to get away as soon as possible and never have to go back. (Side note: I assume he was afraid of questioning because he knew the first question was likely to be about the spelling of his name, which is probably a question people with a last name like Tomaszewski get asked a lot. I, for one, can see how that would get annoying quickly, and so I definitely do not blame him for doing everything in his power to avoid hearing the question again.)

Just as he sat pondering how he would make his escape, the officers left him alone in his cell. That is when a brilliant idea struck (pun most definitely intended). Taking his only chance at once again seeing the outside world, Mr. Tomaszewski repeatedly hit himself in the face until he had a couple of black eyes.

Courtesy of Giphy.

He then did what any battery victim would do: he signed an assault complaint … against the detectives. It was the perfect crime. For sure, there was no way that it could go wrong. Wait! There was one way … (pssst, in case you have not yet figured out what I am getting at here, this is the part of the story where Tomaszewski could have used my helpful advice from earlier). That’s right: the reason I can say, without pesky qualifiers like allegedly, that this man hit himself, repeatedly, is that it was all caught on film. No wonder people always say there is too much violence on television these days: you can’t even hit yourself until you are black and blue and blame it on your interrogators without it being broadcasted to the whole world anymore.

Courtesy of Cheezburger.

After he realized he had been caught, Mr. ugh, do I really have to type out his name again Tomaszewski fessed up and admitted that he thought that filing an assault complaint against the cops would be his get-out-of-jail-free card. If only he had done this back before cameras were invented…

After pleading guilty to the coercion and false claim charges, he was sentenced to 20 days for each crime, given a $600 fine, and put on a three-year probation. It is too late for you to follow my advice to destroy all video evidence, Mr. Tomaszewski, but I have some words that I hope will be of comfort to you: this is all technology’s fault, not yours, so there is no need to beat yourself up about it. Oh, wait…I guess my words of comfort come too late, as well.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Worst Way to Get Out of Jail? Punch Yourself in the Face and Blame Cops appeared first on Law Street.

Lawyers. You can’t count on them for anything. It is why I decided to go into legal editing out of law school instead of actually doing a despicable thing like practicing. I mean, lawyers have to have good malpractice insurance because at some point, they are going to be sued for something stupid or dishonest that they did–not because the client is an idiot. No. It will definitely be the attorney’s fault.

Courtesy of Giphy.

What type of dumb or shady thing would a lawyer do anyway? I am sure we can all come up with some lackluster examples, but I have one that beats all of yours. What if a woman were to go to the office of a divorce lawyer and ask for help with her divorce? And what if, on hearing this request, that lawyer went ahead and helped her without giving her the proper disclosure that getting a divorce could lead to being divorced? Clearly that attorney would just be trying to get that paycheck without any regard for the client, right?

I am sure you–if you are a lawyer or are preparing to be one–would never make this mistake. I mean, you probably have warning signs in your office to alert incoming clients to this little-known side effect of divorce. I am sure you are all good guys looking to help your clients, not trick them; however, at least one lawyer has done this hateful crime. And it all happened in the UK.

Jane Mulcahy is a good Catholic who would never do something horrible like get a divorce. So when she entered the office of what would soon be her archenemies and asked for help with her divorce, she did not, and could not, know that soon the worst thing imaginable would happen: she would be divorced.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Now, as Ms. Mulcahy was not herself familiar with the field of law, it could not be expected that she came into the law firm with the knowledge that we, members of the legal world, have on this subject. I still remember, after all, the week in law school that we spent talking about the meaning of divorce and how, at the end of the proceedings, it would somehow end up with the termination of a marriage. It was a shocking revelation, indeed, and one that not a lot of outsiders were privy. So, of course, with this being such a legal secret, it is very plausible that this poor, abused woman had no idea what a divorce was when she asked for one.

Because of the murky definition of divorce, and knowledge of Mulcahy’s strong religious beliefs, it was the duty of her solicitors to inform her that if she were to get a divorce, her marriage would, in fact, be terminated. Also, they should have advised her instead to get a judicial separation–which is basically just all the benefits of a divorce without the sin of a failed marriage. In other words, it was perfect for Mulcahy, and yet her lawyers did not let her know about it. (It is my humble opinion that divorces probably make the lawyers more money, and so they deceitfully hid the meaning of divorce from their client to make a few more bucks from themselves. They should be ashamed.)

Courtesy of Giphy.

When Mulcahy learned of the trickery that had been done to her, she did not take it lying down. Instead, she sued. See, dirty lawyers? This is what happens when you play fast and loose with the lives of your clients: you get sued and lose lots of money … wait. What? A judge dismissed the claim? Man. Clearly, we are dealing with a crooked judicial team as well. Will justice ever be served to the poor, downtrodden Mulcahys of the world? Probably not. They all have pretty bad karma from committing the sin of divorce. Payback is a bitch, after all.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Woman Sues Because Her Divorce Ended in Divorce appeared first on Law Street.

As Romeo said, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” True, Shakespeare, true. However, I am going to pose an argument to you some 400-plus years too late. A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but it might not smell as realistic, plausible, or common. Like when I wrote last week about how Nutella is not a legit name in France unless you are actually a jar of the chocolaty spread. But the same is also true in cases when you try to change your name–say, for example, to have a bunch of fake prescriptions filled–where you might actually want to think twice when picking your new nomenclature. Because I can tell you what might be in a name: a charge for defrauding the government.

Now, I would like to say up front that most of this story is not very funny or amusing because it did lead to a lot of deaths. The tainted steroids discussed in this story allegedly led to the Meningitis outbreak a couple of years ago, where many people died or were sickened; however, this post is focusing on the alleged idiots who got caught, thank goodness, in part by being idiots. (Also, this paragraph is the last time I am going to use the word alleged, so please just insert it throughout the rest of this alleged story.)

A Framingham, Massachusetts pharmacy was linked with giving out bulk fake prescriptions under false names. The cofounder had a good plan on how not to get caught, and wrote it up in an email for the employees. In it, he said, “All names must resemble ‘real’ names… no obviously false names!” Good advice, I say.

So, here are just some of the names that the employees decided were real and not at all false:

• Jennifer Lopez;
• Filet O’Fish;
• Baby Jesus;
• Harry Potter;
• Coco Puff;
• Alec Baldwin;
• Bud Weiser; and
• Samuel Adams.

Courtesy of Giphy.

All of these are clearly real names, as I have heard of every single one of them. (Even Samuel Adams, who is not just a beer but actually a real person and not just in this story. And also, this is not the first time I have had to take the time to explain this as American History classes are apparently not doing their jobs!) So, it is quite shocking that our government caught them when they use such good pseudonyms, right?

Despite how well disguised these fake prescription recipients’ names were, last December, 14 employees were arrested under the charge of defrauding the government, and apparently their names had a part in leading to their arrests.

Courtesy of GIFSoup.

So, kids, the message here is that names are more important than Shakespeare claims. That which we call Chester Cheeto by any other name might make it less obvious that what we are doing is illegal.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Coco Puff and Sam Adams Charged With Defrauding the Government appeared first on Law Street.

One good thing about living in the USA is that constitution-given right to freedom of speech. So, for example, I could name my child whatever I wanted (unless maybe it is something along the lines of Hitler). While this may not seem like much, it is better than what we might get in some countries–though kids who were “allowed” to be named whatever weird thing passed through their parents’ heads at naming time might not think this is a good idea, right Apple Martin? Right my sister, Novella? (Named after short novels.)

Some countries tell you what you can or cannot name your child through the use of approved lists, banned lists, etc. Or, as is the case in France, the country lets you name the kid whatever you want, but then might decide the name is not in the kid’s best interest and require a name-change.

Just ask the parents of little Nutella…er, Ella. You see, a French court recently decided that naming your child after a trademarked, chocolatety, eatable spread could cause the child to be ridiculed one day. And since all any kid needs is one more reason to be made fun of when they reach the horrible school-year ages, the court felt that this needed to be rectified. Apparently, the name was bad enough that they felt the need to rule on it. And, as you might suppose from everything I have already said, they ruled that the baby should be renamed; however, the parents of the baby decided not to show up to trial, so the court was forced to pick a new name for the kid on its own. And thus, Ella was born–the name, not the child, who had obviously already been born by this point.

Courtesy of Giphy.

This was not the only time France has banned a name. They have also overruled Fraise, or ‘strawberry’ in French. So basically, what I am getting is that French judges hate chocolate covered strawberries, if not anything that could be related to fondue–and anything that has to do with that whole fattening, if not delicious, world.

Courtesy of Giphy.

In conclusion, if you are planning on naming your child something weird, please do not birth your child in France. Or maybe do: your kid might name you parent of the year after having their name changed from Steak’n’Eggs to Stan because you were smart enough to go into labor in a place that cares so much about its citizens that it wants to get into their lives even at the naming stage.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post French Court Renames Baby From Nutella to Ella appeared first on Law Street.

College alone these days is very expensive. Now, add grad school on to that, and I don’t care what you are going to make in the profession in which you were just trained, you are going to be in a whole lot of debt when you get out of school. Then, you have to go through the whole resume, interview process. And let’s face it, that is no fun. Which is why I think the teenager in the following story has the right idea: just skip the schooling portion of job placement. And while you are at it, just skip through the whole application process too. How do you do that? Just show up to the place you want to work, and blend in. Probably no one will ask you if you are supposed to be there.

Courtesy of Giphy.

To learn more, let’s examine St. Mary’s Medical Center in, of course, Florida–because that is where all these stories happen. A young doctor was recently escorted out of the building by security because, well he wasn’t actually a doctor so much as a teenage boy wearing a doctor’s coat.

Ok. Well, he tried and didn’t succeed. The way security is these days and the importance of safe hospitals means you couldn’t get away with such a scam for very long.  I mean, like in this story, the kid only got away with posing as a doctor for about 20 or 30…days. That is right. A month.

To be fair to the hospital, he didn’t actually work with patients in his month on staff. In fact, it was when he stepped up his game and actually went into an exam room, with a stethoscope around his neck and a mask on his face, and introduced himself as Doctor Robinson (and didn’t follow it with “I’m not a doctor, I only play one on TV”), that he got caught.

One of the real doctors noticed him and thought something wasn’t right. So he called security, who was surprised that the kid was faking it–as they had seen him around the last few weeks and thought he belonged there.

Here is the thing about this story that makes me feel a little bad about making fun of it: the kid, according to his mother, had an illness for which he had stopped taking medication. And I cannot joke about that. However, here is the part that make me feel perfectly fine joking about it: we know the kid’s excuse for doing this. What was the hospital’s excuse for not catching this kid faster? That I can make fun of.  And that is probably a big part of why the center will not be pressing charges.

This story has been told far and wide, and there is a good chance you have already heard about it. So you might be asking yourself just why I didn’t make that one obvious connection that everyone is making. And I will tell you why. Because everyone is making it, and I want to be a little more unique than that. So I will not say a word. I’ll just leave you with this picture, which will say a thousand words for me:

Courtesy of FanPop.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Doctor Who? Teen Tricks Hospital For an Entire Month appeared first on Law Street.

There are two lessons I learned from the following story:

1. Never go on a cruise if you owe the government money (or even if the government erroneously thinks that you owe it money); and
2. Yellowstone National Park is all about collecting its debts so don’t think you can get away with cheating it out of even a dime.

It all started in 2003 when Hope Clarke forgot to put her hot chocolate and marshmallows away one night when she was visiting Yellowstone. Helpful hint: if you are visiting a national park, do not forget to put away your food. There is actually a good reason for this: animals that eat people-food. So, when she forgot to put away her food she received a $50 fine that was probably reasonable and frankly would in no way inspire me to write about it. So why am I?

Courtesy of giphy.

To answer that, let’s move forward to 2004. Clarke, in another travel-related expedition, went on a cruise to Mexico. Everything was going great, and–I assume, but I did not ask her this myself–if you had asked her right before she exited the cruise when it landed back in the US, she probably would have told you that she had a good time; however, the government had something to say about this smooth sailing.

You see, Clarke did not exit the ship of her own accord. She was escorted out of the ship in handcuffs after having been awakened at 6:30am by federal agents. The agents then dragged her before a judge in leg shackles.

What happened?

Well, customs agents who meet ships at the port and perform random checks of passenger lists had found an interesting thing on Ms. Clarke’s record: that year-old $50 fine from Yellowstone. They did what they would have done to any hardened criminal and immediately threw her before a judge.

Clarke tried to come up with some defense for her horrid deed. She said something really lame like that Yellowstone would not let her leave until she paid the fine, and thus, since she was not still in the park, she must have already paid it. Of course, she might have said that a little more respectfully, but I wouldn’t know since I wasn’t there.

Clearly she was lying, though. There was no way this would have happened if that fine had already been paid. So basically, she should have been thrown in jail for both the unpaid fine and perjury. Only wait, the judge went a different way. Instead of buying either the story of the criminal or the claims of the feds, he looked at the citation itself, which said that the fine had indeed been paid. Understandably after that he dropped the case and Clarke was free to go while the government was left to ponder what exactly had gone wrong.

Courtesy of giphy.

All I know is that my mom was right: if you don’t clean up your mess right now, young lady, bad things are going to happen.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post What Happens in Yellowstone Does Not Stay in Yellowstone appeared first on Law Street.

I have never owned a business. Truthfully, unless it is a business consisting of only me as an employee, I have no interest in owning one; however, there are some basic tenets  that all business owners should follow. For example, have a solid business plan; make sure to know, understand, and follow all applicable employment laws; and never, ever, ever slap your employees with a bearded dragon, especially if you have a video surveillance system set up (though, admittedly, that last one is pretty hard to follow when a dragon is sitting right next to you and an employee is being a sass mouth).

What? You ask. Why in the world are you telling me not to slap people with dragons? You say. That is such an obvious mistake that nobody would do it! You yell. I hate to tell you but you are dead wrong. I can say that people who assume nobody would ever use a dragon to slap another human are wrong all thanks to Benjamin Siegel. So thank you, Siegel, for your contribution to the ridiculousness that I so love to share with others.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Let’s talk a little about this interesting case. It all started (allegedly, of course) when this business-savvy pet store owner decided it would be a good idea to put a bearded dragon in his mouth, swing it around, throw it in the air, and then use it like an eighteenth century dueling glove (in other words, he slapped his employees with it).

Now, if you think this story cannot get weirder, you would once again be mistaken. You see, this is not the first time that Siegel’s store has made the news. A couple of years ago, it rose to fame as that place that held a cockroach-eating contest where the winner choked to death on bug parts. Yes, you read that correctly.

So what is being done to protect cockroaches, dragons, and people from the strange hands (and mouth) of Mr. Siegel? He was taken into custody and now faces charges of battery and animal cruelty. His attorney says he wants to hear all the facts before he comments. I assume this is just in case Mr. Siegel has a good reason for his action; however, short of ‘it wasn’t me,’ which, since it was on video, would be hard to prove, I don’t know that I will buy any excuses here.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Dragon Tails: Bearded Dragon Slapping Leads to Legal Woes appeared first on Law Street.

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2015, everyone. It is the time of year that we all make some resolutions that we have no intention of actually keeping. And to help you decide just want you want to resolve to do this coming year, I am going to tell you some of mine. And if you want to avoid the old standards such as losing weight or being a better person, I suggest you take my lead on these.

So, without further ado, here are my 2015 New Year’s resolutions:

1. Don’t be stupid.

When John Doe (since this guy’s name was unreported, I will have to go with the old John Doe pseudonym) was receiving a parking ticket, I guess he got really excited. Who could blame him? Parking tickets are great, right? Anyway, I say this because as he was receiving the ticket, he apparently grabbed it from the officer’s hands really quickly. Too quickly.

Snatching a ticket from an officer is a really stupid thing to do. How do I know this? Well, as Doe was being pushed up against the wall and handcuffed, he asked just what it was he had done to lead to this arrest, and he was told he was being arrested “for being stupid.”

Courtesy of Giphy.

And since I do not want to be arrested, my first New Year’s resolution is to avoid being stupid. Though I fully admit that this is easier said than done.

2. Don’t threaten to kill dinosaurs.

Violence is never the answer. Let’s just be clear about that up front. Which is why writing stories about shooting dinosaurs is just plain wrong. Alex Stone learned this the hard way.

Sixteen-year-old Stone was supposed to write a little bit about himself and a status in the style of a Facebook page. So when the teacher saw that on the page he threatened to shoot his neighbor’s pet dinosaur, she had no choice but to take the threat seriously. After all, this was a nonfiction report, so there was no way this kid could have been making up his desire to kill that dinosaur. And killing pets in youth is the first sign of becoming a sociopath, correct? This was not something to take lightly.

Courtesy of Giphy.

After reading the essay, the teacher immediately reported the incident to the office where the kid was both suspended for a week and arrested for disorderly conduct (though to be fair, the police claim the arrest had nothing to do with the threat to the dinosaur’s life).

Stone is suing. I suppose he just isn’t an animal lover. PETA would not be pleased. And in the manner of many sociopaths, Stone’s mother could not see anything wrong with her son’s conduct. She was quoted as saying something silly along the lines of “we don’t have dinosaurs anymore.”

This story has really opened my eyes to the dinosaur awareness movement. In result, I pledge to not threaten dinosaurs even once in the year 2015.

3. Don’t point bananas at police officers.

Nathan Channing is a funny guy. Or at least he says he is. I’m inclined to think he is right because when I heard his story I did laugh. So basically a cop was driving down the road when Channing decided to take a yellow object out of his pocket, point it in the air, and then point it at the officer. The cop, in fear for his life, called for backup. The backup cop, thinking he was about to be shot, started to pull out his own, non-banana, gun when Channing finally yelled out, “it’s a banana.”

Courtesy of Giphy.

Channing said that he did this because he thought it would be funny and good as a YouTube video. The only problem, other than the whole making police officers think that you have a gun pointed at them, is that Channing did not think to record this future YouTube video. I assume he thought it was going to be acted out later documentary-style a la Drunk History. He claims the reason it wasn’t taped was because this was just the test run; however, he does admit that he now realizes his joke probably wasn’t a really good one.

In honor of Channing’s lately-developed wisdom, I now resolve to not point bananas, or any other gun-looking item, at any law enforcement member.

So there you have it, a complete list of resolutions that I encourage you all to follow. Of course, I’ll probably be doing all of these come mid-January. Especially the dinosaur one. Who can ever keep these resolutions anyway?

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post New Year’s Resolution: Don’t Get Arrested appeared first on Law Street.

It’s Christmas! And in honor of the spirit of the day, I am going to give you all a present. (For everyone who does not celebrate Christmas, I am still giving you a gift just because it is more fun to give than to receive.) My gift is some free advice that could change your life: do not go to Indiana if you plan on drinking and being annoying. Because that’s illegal.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Now you know those laws that were created four hundred years ago and are never enforced, but also never repealed, so we all like to make fun of them? You know what I’m talking about. Like how in my home state of Alabama, there may or may not be a law against wearing fake mustaches that cause laughter in church. Or how in Arkansas, you can’t keep an alligator in the bathtub (incidentally, famed critic Dorothy Parker once bought two baby alligators and put them in a bathtub while she decided what to do with them. She came home one day to find a note from her ex-maid saying she quit because she “cannot work in a house with alligators” and that she would have told Parker this earlier, but that she “never thought the subject would come up.” So maybe this law is a good idea if you want to keep good help, but I digress … ) The one I’m writing about today is not one of those archaic laws. This one was actually upheld quite recently.

Rodgregus Morgan was drunk when he was arrested, it is true. However, that alone was not why he was arrested. You see, the cops thought that he was being annoying and, really, in Indiana, that is all it takes. Indiana has a public intoxication law – enacted in 2012, so, again, not an archaic one – that says you cannot be drunk in public and harass, annoy, or alarm another person.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Morgan, as mentioned before, was drunk. So when he wouldn’t leave the bus shelter where he had fallen asleep, even though a cop asked him to do so, he was arrested because, well, that is just plain annoying, right? I mean, it really annoys me when people don’t do what I ask.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Morgan had a different take on the matter: he “wasn’t being annoying;” he was “waiting for the bus.” Hmm. That’s harder to classify as annoying, but I can try to make it work. Maybe the bus would have been really overcrowded and let’s face it, when I cannot get a seat and have to stand, that’s pretty annoying. But would that really be Morgan’s fault? Or is it a product of the situation itself?

At any rate, let’s see what the courts have to say about this situation. Well, an appeals court said annoying is too hard to define, and so they overturned the conviction. I’d disagree with this ruling. I may not be able to give annoyingness a concrete definition, but, like pornography, I for sure know it when I see it.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Luckily, we can move on to the Indiana Supreme Court to find some common sense. In that high court, they basically agreed with me. Which, in my book, makes them the exact opposite of annoying, because I am always right. They said that you can tell what being annoying is by using the reasonable person test and that the statute was perfectly legit. However, they then said that Morgan wasn’t being annoying and so they dropped his conviction. But that is actually beside the point in this morale tale. The point, of course, being that you can be arrested for being drunk and annoying. Which means that many people I know should stay far away from this state because I know a heck of a lot of annoying drunks.

Anyway, I hope everyone has benefited from my present whether or not you are celebrating today. And for the many of you who found a paid vacation to Indiana as your stocking stuffer, I am sorry if I put a damper on your exciting present.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Annoying Drunks: Stay Far Away From Indiana appeared first on Law Street.

It’s Christmas time. And that means it is the best time of the year to go shopping. No crowded stores, no long lines, no fighting over a pair of on-sale shoes that I want to buy someone–definitely not myself, though, all my Christmas shopping is for my loved ones–with a lady who also wants to buy those shoes for someone–definitely not herself. Oh wait! That doesn’t sound like any Christmas shopping that I have ever done. Mine sounds more like this story (which took place in January 2011 not at Christmas, but which stills sounds like something that would happen at Christmas).

Frank Maio saw what my sisters would tell you was Princess Parking out in front of a Deerfield Beach shoe store. (Princess Parking, as defined by Urban Dictionary, is “just like rock star parking or prime parking; when one finds the perfect parking spot, right next to or in front of the entrance to wherever he or she is going.”) But when he went to claim the spot, something horrible occurred: Clausel Pierre pulled into the spot first!

Now, we all have experienced and/or caused this event. When it happens to me, I yell things I am not proud of yelling and fume about it for hours while plotting a revenge that I have absolutely no intention of actually enacting as big as I talk. So imagine how much I cheered when I heard what Maio did to handle this situation.

Courtesy of Giphy.

He asked Pierre to move. Tough, right? I wouldn’t have the guts to confront the guy at all; however, that actually was not the end of it. Pierre said no. I mean, he claimed something along the lines of it wasn’t reserved and he got there first and blah blah blah a whole lot of stuff that might have been true but certainly did not get Maio the royal parking spot he felt he deserved. So then he had to go a step farther.

Did I happen to mention that Maio was an off-duty cop who was at the shoe store to do some moonlighting as a security guard? Well, that is exactly what was happening here. And believe me, this cop was not afraid to use his power for his own gain. Park in the spot he wanted? Well, do not think he would be too mature to arrest you for that. Don’t believe me? Ask Pierre. Because yes, he was arrested for parking in the spot this police officer wanted.

Pierre was so confused that he was being arrested, that he called 911. You can listen to a recording of the call below. According to Pierre, the officer not only arrested him, he roughed him up a bit too.

Pierre has been fighting the charges against him (including battery against law enforcement and resisting arrest) for two years and finally he had some success! The charges were dropped (since apparently a judge realized that Maio’s statements over the last couple of years were conflicting); however, Pierre was not throwing a party over his victory. He said he’d been hurt and he wanted payback. So he recently initiated a lawsuit.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Will he win? I don’t know. But I do know that this whole thing has taught me a lesson: when someone takes a spot I think belongs to me, it might seem like a good idea to fight for it, after all, it is the principal of the thing, but if I am still fighting for it years later, it might have been an even better idea to just park a couple of spots down. Oh. And if I ever become a cop, I am going to do my best not to arrest people on trumped up charges no matter how tempting it might be to arrest the person who got in front of me at the grocery store with 500 million items when I only had like two and then wouldn’t let me cut–but I am digressing, because really, abuse of power only comes back to sue you in the long run.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Off-Duty Cop Arrests Man for Taking Parking Spot appeared first on Law Street.

With a name like FastTrain College, you probably expect a top-notch education system along the lines of Harvard or Yale; however, what you apparently get is a different type of top entirely. When FastTrain wants you (so basically if you are a man), it will send out its top admissions officer. And by top officer, I of course mean an exotic dancer dressed provocatively in an effort to lure you into the school. Because every life decision should be made by the size of the breasts and attractiveness of the faces you will see when you get there. (Though since I chose my college strictly on the size of its dorm rooms, I suppose I cannot really judge.)

Courtesy of Giphy.

Strippers aside, the school was not as morally motivated as you might expect from an organization that got you to attend by showing you sexy women. The school had a few questionable practices, too. For example, it would apparently give you a high school diploma if you didn’t have one so that you could attend college, which really is very nice even if it is not legal. Let’s all pretend that the real reason isn’t so that the new high school “graduate” can now apply for student loans that will go to the school to pay for their higher “education.” The school also asked students to lie on their government forms. All in all, it stole a whole lot of government money–meaning millions–which led to an FBI raid, criminal charges against the owner, and an ongoing civil suit.

Courtesy of Giphy.

This is a pretty titillating subject don’t you think? (Yes that pun was intended.) More than 100 students from this now-defunct school (only open a few years) are in default on their loans; however, the students going there during the raid will not have to pay. Because of a closed door provision, the government will do the following to a loan from this time: drop it like it’s hot.

I have a feeling this school will not win its lawsuit and will have to repay the money it took. Lucky for FastTrain, it has a real clear way to collect those fees: strip show on campus!

Here is my advice to prospective college students: do not go to a school that is run by strippers unless you are going to school to become a stripper or a stripper-voyeur. I promise you will not regret this advice as ludicrous as it might seem now.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post BS in Dancing: When Strippers Work Admissions, It Might be a Scam appeared first on Law Street.

If you tell people you want to write a book/movie/play, etc., you will likely hear something along the following: “A good writer writes from personal experience.” And Maryann Castorena might just have followed that advice a little too closely to its intended meaning.

This story came to light when Jose Hernandez’s body was found buried in the snow by his still-running car. Hernandez was the former paramour of Castorena and the former roommate of Anthony Delagarza, who was arrested for the murder and then confessed to the crime. However, he claimed he was not acting alone. According to Delagarza, Castrorena offered to pay him $50,000 to commit the murder so that she could cash in on Hernandez’s life insurance. And it turned out this was not a case of his word against hers. There was a pretty detailed letter involved.

The letter from Castorena, found in the backpack of the killer, basically said things like the following:

• Are we still on for that ‘thing we discussed’ (wink, wink)?
• Just do it right by his car.
• The snow will cover it up.
• Don’t drop stuff on the ground that people can find.
• Don’t park by the gas station or ATM that’s right there because there might be cameras there.

You get the point. It was basically an advice column on how to kill one specific person. According to Castorena, though, this is all just a big coincidence. Her letter was not about having Hernandez killed, but about making money. I know, I know, it seems like one and the same: she was going to make money by having him killed; however, that was not actually her plan. You see, what the police thought was a letter addressed to a hit man on how to kill an individual man, was actually a movie script/book idea that Castorena wrote after overhearing two women talking.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Strangely, this story was met with a few raised eyebrows. I mean, believable as her claim was, there actually were a few … plot holes. Like, why were these women talking about killing someone in such a specific manner in a public place? Were they trying to kill Hernandez or just anyone? If it was Hernandez, why would Castorena write a movie about it instead of going to the cops? I mean, at the very least she should want this nipped in the bud so that there would be no spoilers, right? Why would she have the murder in the movie take place right outside of her boyfriend’s place near the same ATM and gas station that was really there? Why was the letter written as an instruction sheet and not a book or script? You probably get the picture.

Since nobody seemed to buy her completely legitimate, realistic story, she had to write another one: she finally admitted to police that this was not actually a book idea, but that it was a letter she wrote about the murder of Hernandez … that Delagarza made her write. Wait! You don’t think that sounds realistic either? Okay. Um. She means … oh! She’s got it! This guy broke into her apartment one night and forced her to write that letter at knifepoint! That’s it! That’s what happened!

Delagarza is saying that not even that last, clearly likely version of her tale is accurate, though, and maintains that it was, in fact, Castorena who wanted Hernandez dead. The alleged playwright is being charged with a whole bunch of crimes, including murder. She better hope that the judge is a Mark Twain fan who knows that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post How Not to Get Away With Murder: Say It’s Your Murder Novel Script appeared first on Law Street.

Thanksgiving is the time of year when you sit back and think about all the things for which you are thankful. I made up my list. Of course my family, friends, shelter, yada yada yada, is all there. But let me move away from that boring stuff and tell you what I am really thankful for this year: that I don’t have neighbors with an annoying propensity to make noise all night.

Dog-Tired

Don’t we all hate when our neighbors cannot control their pets? Of course, it is a lot worse when they could control their pets but choose not to do so. However, worst of all is when they do not even have a dog, but still insist on blasting dog barking sounds over speakers pointed straight at our houses. Right?

So have you always wondered what it is like to be one of the rich and famous? Apparently it is a world full of annoying fake dog noises. At least it is in the case of former “Baywatch” star David Charvet and his wife Brooke Burke-Charvet, a former host of “Dancing with the Stars.”

The Charvets are in an interesting situation. Their neighbor, “The Bachelor” creator and Texas Chainsaw Masaacre producer Mike Fleiss, has decided to harass them in an unusual way. He set up speakers, pointed them toward their house, and played a new CD–“The Sounds of Dogs Barking” (at least I assume that is where he got his dog noises. It’s where I get all of mine.)–at all hours of the night. The Charvets are one of those unique couples who like to sleep at night, so they actually did not appreciate all this racket. And neither did the cops. They charged Fleiss with disturbing the peace.

This could possibly be good news for his neighbors who have tried and failed to get a restraining order against Fleiss in the past because what better way to prove you need one than to show the criminal record he got from the things he did to you?

One last note about this: where did Fleiss come up with this idea? Maybe it just popped into his very creative head; however, an alternate theory is that it came upon him in a dream … that was interrupted by the real barking dogs over at the Charvets’ house.

It’s Like (Not) Watching the Grass Grow

When I am asleep in the wee hours of the morning–meaning, of course, any time before noon–I do not want to be disturbed by my neighbors mowing the lawn. Wait until normal hours to do that, please–like 4:30 in the morning because I am still out partying at that hour.

Philip Ray Gage wanted to give his neighbors a nice surprise, but he chose an odd hour to do it. This is what I imagine led up to the crazy event: Gage was lying in bed and could not sleep. There was something weighing on his mind. The grass was growing right outside his window and there was nothing he could do about it. Wait! There was one thing he could do! Go out and mow the lawn. So he did. But he was not a selfish man. He did not want to be the only one to benefit from his stroke of genius. So when he was done with his own yard, he moved on to the neighbor’s.

Courtesy of Giphy.

One of his other neighbors was clearly jealous that he did not get special treatment, though, because when Gage was almost done with the lawns, the cops showed up and told him it was illegal to mow lawns at 4:30 in the morning. Then, they wrote him a ticket for the same thing that caused Fleiss to get one–disturbing the peace.

So, yeah, that is definitely what I am thankful for this year; kind neighbors who don’t disturb my peace. I need my sleep, after all.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post This Thanksgiving Be Grateful That These People Aren’t Your Neighbors appeared first on Law Street.

I have a quiz for you (don’t worry, it’s only one question, it isn’t math, and it’s multiple choice): If your four pit bulls break through a fence and enter the neighbor’s yard, then kill Bailey the ten-year-old beagle that resides there, what do you do?

a. Apologize.

b. Offer to buy the neighbors a new dog.

c. Both a and b.

d. Sue the neighbors for $1 million.

Now this is kind of a trick question, I have to admit. You see, the answer depends in large part on the type of person you are. If you are anyone in the population other than Emerald White, you will probably choose a, b, or c (or whatever else normal people do when their dogs have just killed another dog). However, if you are Emerald White, you will choose option d.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Before you judge White (and I assume we you are all judging her and calling her crazy), let me tell you her side of the story. You see, she actually has a pretty legitimate claim: she was injured while trying to stop her dogs from killing Bailey. Her injuries were both physical and mental (she says the mental injuries are anxiety, fear, and trepidation, but I think her mental problems are something different entirely), and since her dogs cannot pay for her pain and suffering nor can the beagle, she has to find someone who can pay. Clearly it must be the Bakers, her neighbors.

During the dog attack, White received dog bites and “scratch-type injuries” as would be expected in the midst of this type of an event. She had to pull her dangerous dogs (as subsequently declared by the police) off of the beagle who had the audacity to both live next door and stay in his yard instead of laying around locked up in a kennel where all dogs should have the decency to stay–other than, of course, dangerous pit bulls.

All of this could have been avoided, White claimed, if the Bakers had done their job and kept Bailey better confined. Never mind that they had recently had part of the fence fixed to make it safer and more secure. It was not enough–if it had been, none of this would have happened. I mean, the Bakers had to have known they lived by these four dogs. I assume they were probably doing scary things behind the fence all the time like that dog from The Sandlot. So, since they knew all that, they had a duty to keep Bailey locked up inside because clearly the Whites could not keep dangerous animals inside their house.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Basically the Bakers were just asking for a fight, and White was the one that had to face the consequences when her neighbors got what they wanted. For example, outside of her injuries, she is now required to register her dangerous dogs annually, get a six-foot fence, and pay $100,000 liability on the dogs.

I have some advice for Ms. White. If for some crazy reason you do not win this case, I have someone else you can sue. In 1996, a Kentucky man threw a boomerang that then returned and hit him in the head, so he sued himself and won (and then his insurance had to pay the money, so all in all, it was actually a pretty smart idea by a guy stupid enough to hit himself in the head with a boomerang). Thus, Ms. White, maybe you should take a page from that guy’s book and drop the suit against the Bakers and sue someone who might actually be at fault: yourself.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Woman Sues Neighbors After Her Own Pit Bulls Kill Their Beagle appeared first on Law Street.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be an undercover cop. At least, that was the case in New Jersey on Halloween this year.

If you see a duck stepping up and down from the sidewalk at a crosswalk, and not just any duck, but an adult-size cartoon Donald Duck, would you stop to let it walk across the street? Or would you keep going because you assume, “Hey! This is New Jersey, and that is probably a crazy man in there!”

Courtesy of Giphy.

Well, the answer to this question could be a matter of life and death. Well, okay, maybe not that–though it could be for the duck–but the answer very well could be the difference between getting a ticket or not.

Fort Lee New Jersey has a problem with people hitting pedestrians, and the town has an unusual way of fighting it. It sends out an undercover cop, sometimes dressed as a duck, to see who stops when he tries to cross the road–and I could make the really obvious joke here, but I will refrain.

Courtesy of Giphy.

On Halloween, several people (and by several, I mean more than 100 New Jersey drivers) got ticketed for failing to yield to this silly goose–I mean, silly duck. One of these individuals was Karen Haigh, who was not happy when she found out she was “getting a ticket for not stopping for a duck.” She claimed, though, that–because she thought he was crazy–she was afraid to stop for him and that she, and probably everybody else, would have stopped if he had been a regular guy since it is only crazy ducks that scare her.

She was probably scared because she thought if a 6’2” Disney duck were to decide to break into her car in the middle of the street, it would not draw a lot of attention from other passersby and drivers. It also would be done quickly since I am sure the duck costume is designed with easy car entry and exit built right into it. So since a giant duck could discreetly and easily break into your car in broad day light under a traffic light with a camera, it would probably be the perfect … decoy (get it? A decoy, as in an artificial bird used to entice game into a trap, as paraphrased from the free dictionary) … costume in which to become a criminal. I understand her fear.

She claims she is going to get her ducks in a row so she can fight the ticket (which costs $230 and two points on your license) in court, but what is the point? Those annoying judges will probably say something dumb along the lines of, “It’s the law to yield for pedestrians in costume or not, crazy or not.”

As Fort Lee Police Chief Keith Bendul said, “When you see a pedestrian, child, adult or duck, stop.” That seems like very good advice to me. He also said that last year, 62 pedestrians were struck in the town, down to 40 this year, and with a goal of zero in the future. So, I cannot really make fun of that, but I do have something I want to say: why does it have to be a giant duck? Couldn’t the officer have gone undercover as a superhero, a pirate, or, I don’t know, a regular dude? Dressing as a giant bird just makes him a sitting walking duck for all the avian jokes that follow.

No matter the outcome, one thing this story proves is this: nothing good comes from driving in New Jersey.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Over 100 New Jersey Drivers Ticketed for Ignoring Donald Duck at Crosswalk appeared first on Law Street.

Sometimes in life you hear stories to which the only way you can respond is to say, Huh? Maybe even, What? How? Why? I am sure this has happened to all of you before, and everybody should know exactly what I mean. So, this week’s post addresses this very issue with bad lawsuits that make you say all of the above — What? How? Why?

What?!: Me, Myself, and I

A city employee in St. Paul, Minnesota, while performing her duties, hit and damaged Megan Campbell’s car. As most reasonable people would, Campbell expected the city to pay for the damage and, to further this point, she filed a claim asking for reimbursement of it. Sounds reasonable, right? Nobody in his right mind could deny the validity of of this claim. This should be an open-and-shut case, but if I have not already convinced you of this, let me add some details for you.

Megan Campbell, a St. Paul Parks and Rec employee, was driving a supply van for the city when she turned and hit a parked car belonging to one Megan Campbell. Campbell was upset that the city would hire such reckless drivers, and she was angry that Campbell was allowed to drive a city vehicle. Campbell decided that she would not get much from Campbell, so she went after Campbell’s employer.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Following?

In case you are having trouble, let me clear up the details for you: city employee Megan Campbell hit her own personal car while driving a city vehicle and then filed a claim saying she thought the city should pay for the damage since it was a city employee who hit her car. What?

How?!: This Club Is on Fire

Katelyn Sobon is proof that with enough effort you can definitely heat up a dance floor. Sobon was sitting at the Trilogy Nightclub and Hookah Lounge in Philadelphia while people danced wildly on the nearby stripper pole — which, as the club later clarified, was not actually a stripper pole, but a regular pole that patrons — specifically girls — could pose in front of and take pictures looking like a stripper; but, again, it was not a stripper pole. In their gyrating, one of the dancers hit the leg of Sobon’s table, knocking the hookah over and spilling hot coals down the front of her top, causing her breasts to be burnt. I’m sure this is not what she wanted people to mean when they said, “You look hot in that dress.”

Sobon is suing for the pain and embarrassment of the whole situation, but the club manager does not buy it. He wants to know why she has come back to his club several times since the incident, asking for free admission in lieu of a lawsuit — even after she filed — if she was so embarrassed. I don’t know who will win, though I have my guesses, but I do know that Alicia Keys said it best when she sang, “This girl is on fire.” But really, how does stuff like this happen?

Why?!: Micro-Management

When it comes to microwave journalism, you had better do your research. You wouldn’t want to mess that stuff up. The makers of the movie “American Hustle” are learning that lesson the hard way. I’m about to tell you about a scene from the movie, but if you have not seen it, note that this is in no way a spoiler: at one point in the movie, Jennifer Lawrence’s character said she does not believe in the technology behind the microwave. She claimed that contraption just zapped the nutrition out of the food, and she had proof: an article written by Paul Brodeur. She even hands the magazine with the article over to Christian Bale’s character.

Who cares, you ask? I’ll tell you who. Paul Brodeur cares, that’s who. The real journalist behind the real article stomped his foot, crossed his arms over his chest, and said with a poked out lip, Hey! That’s not what I said. You lied! I said that the technology was shaky and unproven not that it zapped out the nutrition. I’m gonna tell on you. Now all the scientists hate me and nobody wants to play with me and it’s all your fault. I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! And then flung himself to the floor before filing a million dollar lawsuit for libel and defamation. (Disclaimer: this is in no way a direct quote or reaction from Paul Brodeur. Mr. Brodeur, please do not sue me. I do not have a million dollars to give you.)

My final thoughts: really, Brodeur, really? Just … why?

Courtesy of Giphy.

So there you have it. The what-how-why stories from the legal world. I just don’t even know what else to say.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Have an Irrational Hatred of Your Microwave? This Bad Lawsuit’s For You appeared first on Law Street.

Tomorrow is Halloween. It is the time of year when black cats and haunted houses start popping up all over the place, terrifying young children and adults alike. Do not let these fake terrors alarm you: Halloween is not any scarier than any other day of the year. This isn’t because ghosts, demons, and zombies do not exist, though, but rather because they are real – and they can pop up any day of the year. That’s right – you should never stop fearing!

So you don’t believe me, skeptic? Then let me tell you stories about eight “mythical” creatures and how they ended up in courtrooms around the world.

Fright Right: Vampire

Courtesy of Tumblr.

Courtney Royal, aka Vampish (sic) Black Sheep League of Doom Gardamun Family Circle Master Vampire High Priest (as he is known on court documents), is not pleased with a Texas jail that is refusing to accommodate his religion: Vampirism. Vampire High Priest is serving a lifetime sentence (which, since vampires are part of the undead, means he should technically already be free but let’s just ignore that for now) so it is extra important he is granted the right to be a vampire. After all, he needs blood to survive.

Since vampires are not a recognized religion in Texas prisons, Vampire High Priest had to file a suit for religious accommodation and $150,000 for pain and suffering. He might have to take a bite of a couple of fellow inmates for that blood supply, though, because his case was dismissed as frivolous (disclaimer: I am in no way suggesting he should bite his fellow inmates. Cannibalism is never the answer).

P.S., this was my favorite vampire case, but it was nowhere near the only vampire case. This is apparently a pretty thriving practice.

Para-aroma Activity: Demons

Courtesy of Giphy.

A house full of prank-loving demons would be bad on its own. But then you add in the fact that they are apparently very flatulent demons and all of a sudden it’s like you are stuck forever with the world’s worst roommates. (By the way, “fart demons,” as they are called, are now my favorite type of demons – to write about – they do not seem like something I would enjoy seeing…or rather smelling.)

A Romanian man, Madalin Ciculescu, sued a church, four priests, and a bishop because they did not exorcise his house of the odorous, trickster demons – though they told him they did. Ciculescu asked the men of the cloth to come in to his house after his TV kept switching off and on, a possessed hair dryer had a black shadow come out whenever it was turned on, and truly horrendous foul smells were all around the house (without even a “My bad,” to make the offense less rude).

The church claimed in court that it had properly exorcised the house and anything he saw or heard (or smelled) after (that word feels important to me) the exorcism were products of his imagination – or maybe just an elaborate way to get out of saying excuse me. The court agreed.

Hoax Story: Ghost

Courtesy of Giphy.

I could tell you about the guy who was fined in Portsmouth for standing in a graveyard and pretending to be a ghost by flapping his arms and saying “wooooh,” but that would be too easy. So instead, I am going to scare you with the “Tale of the Ghost Employees.”

Erwin Zambrano Moya is suing the Subway sandwich shop franchisee for whom he worked for employing ghost workers. Now, before you say Moya is a crazy person, let me state this up front: Moya is not the person who is crazy in this story. That honor belongs to his boss who circumvented paying overtime by paying a worker for up to 40 hours and then paying any other hours they worked to a “ghost” employee on the payroll who happened to have the same bank account or mailing address.  Both Moya and “Ever Ventura” (among others) got paychecks for hours Moya worked. After a couple of years of this, Moya and Ventura (who was probably paying taxes but was never actually receiving a paycheck) got fed up and Moya took it upon himself, his ghosts, his coworkers, and his coworkers’ ghosts to start a class action lawsuit in civil court. I have an eerie feeling he just might win.

Attack of the Religious Tomatoes: Monster

Courtesy of Giphy.

I’ve got to tell you. Prison is just no place for people with non-mainstream “religions.” If I didn’t convince you of this with the vampire case, maybe this one will do it. It is a cruel world when inmates cannot practice their constitutional-given right to be a Rastafarian from behind jail bars. Oh, wait. They can. My mistake; that was a typo. Let me try again: it is a cruel world when inmates cannot practice their constitutional-given right to be a Pastafarian from behind jail bars.

What, you ask, is Pastafarianism? Well, it is the self-proclaimed parody religion that claims the Spaghetti Monster created the world and that pirates were its early followers. The Oregon man who created the religion as a protest to teaching intelligent design in schools (demanding his faith in the monster be taught in school with the other religions) claims to have touched the lives of millions with his “noodly appendage.”

You can recognize a Pastafarian from the colander they wear on their head. Unless, of course, they are in the Nebraska State Penitentiary for attempted assault after chasing a couple with a hatchet. In that case, they might find out that the prison system discriminates against them for trying to live a humble life and follow the teaching of the Spaghetti Monster – saying they do not accommodate satirical religions. They might then have their colander taken away from them. Then they might sue for $5 million. Just ask Stephen Cavanaugh. Because everything I just said is true about him.

QuIT: Clowns (and not even the California machete wielding ones)

Courtesy of Giphy.

When you enter a haunted house, you expect to be assaulted. In fact, you most likely paid for that very thrill. However, I am willing to bet that when you signed up for the affront, you did not mean to allow clowns with sex toys to be the ones that did it.

If you attended the Massacre Haunted House in Illinois this year, though, you might have been out of luck in the ‘not being harassed by perverted clowns’ department. This is the case with Regina Janito, her 17-year-old daughter, and three other minors. When they got into the parking lot of the haunted house, they were met by two male clowns holding sex toys; one of whom allegedly poked the 17-year-old with the toy and made lewd comments, while the other supposedly mimed sex acts with the toy. It may not surprise you to learn that Janito has decided to sue.

In my opinion, there is not much scarier than creepy clowns, but sexual-deviant, creepy clowns are one of the few things that make the cut. I feel for you, Janito.

Little Sicky: Satan

Courtesy of Giphy.

Caius Veiovis, a Satanist and vampire (what did I tell you about these vampires) in Massachusetts with horn implants, green bones tattooed on his fingers, and 666 etched into his forehead, was recently sentenced to three consecutive life sentences for the kidnapping, murder, and dismemberment of three men. Upon hearing the verdict, he told the members of the jury that he would see them all in hell. So, have fun with that, his fellow inmates.

Plight of the Living Dead: Zombie

Courtesy of Giphy.

Donald Miller Jr. found out something interesting about himself in court last year: he is not one of the living. Miller died in 1994, but years later he returned from the unknown. Which is more than three years after he died, and three years is the statute of limitation for resurrections; thus, he is not alive; however, he is also clearly not dead. So, the only other option is that he is one of the undead. In other words, he must be a zombie.

Confused? Let me give you some more information. In the 1980s, Miller, an alcoholic, disappeared. In 1994, he was declared dead by a court and his ex-wife began to collect his social security benefits for herself and their two children. Then, one day out of the blue, Miller showed up and asked the court for his social security number and license back. He basically said, “Sorry. Didn’t realize this would be a big deal, but I lost my job, owed a lot of money, and thought it would be best to disappear for a while. But I’m back, so everything is cool. Just declare me living again, please.”

This was not as easy as one might think, though. First, the ex-wife said she couldn’t repay the social security benefits she had been receiving, and then the court said it didn’t really matter if she could pay because a death ruling cannot be overturned after three years. Actual quote from the judge: “I don’t know where that leaves [Miller], but [he’s] still deceased as far as the law is concerned.”

Watch out Ohio, the walking dead is in your midst.

The Unfair Witch Project: Witches

Courtesy of Tumblr.

Helen Ukpadio, aka Lady Apostle, is threatening to sue for defamation. And really, I cannot blame her. You see, the British Humanist Association and the Witchcraft and Human Rights Information Network made complaints that she was claiming children who cry or get sick at night are Satan possessed. These claims were part of documents that led to her being barred from the UK. However, the problem is Apostle has never once claimed this. It is an absolutely ludicrous claim intended to make her look bad. She does not believe that Satan is possessing children. She believes black, red, and vampire (there is that word again…) witchcraft spirits are possessing children and making them cry. Way different!

Apostle is a former witch herself, so she ought to be able to recognize witches. However, she is probably not as much of a Satan expert, so she would not presume to recognize his possessions. If she sues, she claims it will be for half a million pounds (about $806,000).

So, you see? When you are walking around this Halloween and you see a frightening costume, you don’t have to be scared. It is the monster lurking underneath the costume that might come after you. Good luck! Bwahahahaha…

Courtesy of Giphy.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Court of 1000 Corpses: 8 Times Halloween Horrors Were Real appeared first on Law Street.

Lacy lingerie and conversations about porn. They sound like the start to a good book or late night HBO programming. In fact, though, these are real world issues taking place in court rooms near you.

Pink Panties Prank

Courtesy of GIPHY.

As the saying goes, sometimes when life doesn’t go the way you want it to go, it is time to put on your big girl panties … because if you don’t, and you go to the same hospital as Andrew Walls, you might get stuck wearing someone else’s.

When you go to the hospital to have a colonoscopy, you are probably not in the best mood. And if you are, why? That’s weird. Anyway, let’s assume that everybody goes into this procedure without a smile. Well, wouldn’t you then like it if a hospital worker tried to cheer you up when the procedure was over?

Imagine this: you wake up from anesthesia, nervous about your results and mad that this is how you are using your day off. Add to that that you actually work at this surgery center so you might be a little embarrassed and nervous that co-workers saw you naked or might learn the verdict before you. Wouldn’t you laugh if you realized somebody had placed pink, lace panties on your unconscious body? (Disclosure: I probably actually would laugh at that, but then again, I am pretty weird.)

In the above scenario, did you laugh like me or were you outraged? If you were the latter, then you will feel Andrew Wall’s pain when I tell you that my above hypothetical was his reality. In 2012, Wall really did go to a surgery center where he was at that time employed, had a colonoscopy, and woke up wearing lady lingerie. What would you do in this situation? If you are like Wall, you would sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

I don’t know if he’ll win, but I feel confident saying that if he goes to court and shows off the evidence, he’ll probably look good while trying.

 Privacy and the (Non)Porn Star

Courtesy of Tumblr.

Justice Stewart famously said, “I know it when I see it” about pornographic materials. Well, apparently he should teach classes in recognizing smut because if those lessons were available, radio station owner Entercom Kansas City may not have lost a million dollars.

Afentra and Danny Boi had a morning radio show called “Afentra’s Big Fat Morning Buzz.” One day, the pair decided to host an impromptu ‘name that possible porn star’ contest with an unintentional million dollar prize. Listeners of the show were asked to text in the name of a supposed local porn star. Ashley Patton’s name got submitted twice. What more proof would you need to talk bad about somebody on air than that? Well, the DJs decided they should probably find at least a little more before they dragged her name through the mud. So they did a Google search.

If you Google ‘Ashley Patton, porn star,’ at least pre-this story, you would apparently not come up with anything, but you would get a Google suggestion asking if you meant Ashley Payton. A Payton search will pull up a lot of stuff Justice Stewart would have recognized. And since Payton and Patton are really, really similar, they must be the same people, right?

So now, with proof in hand, the radio hosts took to the air with the story “Ashley Patton is a Porn Star” and stated her former high school —  there was even a play-by-play of the Google Results with no mention of the name change. They then posted her name on their website as part of a list of suspected local porn stars. They did admit the list was “unofficial,” but said it with an implied wink. The show was then made available as a podcast.

As it turns out, Payton and Patton are actually two very different people. And Patton did not appreciate the comparison. She called the radio station to complain; and the Program Director, Scott Geiger, answered the call. She told him what happened, and he, previously unaware of the segment, asked her the very obvious question: “Well, are you?” and when she said no, he followed up with the most logical next question: “How do you know that you’re not a porn star?” (Apparently Geiger had not been a Justice Stewart fan and didn’t realize it’s actually hard to accidentally become a porn star.)

Eventually the list was changed and the podcast was removed, but it was too late. Patton brought a lawsuit for false light invasion of privacy and negligent supervision. Which is how she became the winner of a one million dollar prize that the radio show neither planned on giving nor wanted to award.

You could search online or watch subscription stations after ten if you want to find some risqué material, but why bother? If you want the really dirty materials, just head on down to court.

—

Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashes) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time.

Featured image courtesy of [Mike Small via Flickr]

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Lace and Lawsuits: The Scandalous World of Court Cases appeared first on Law Street.

Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce

Special orders don’t upset us.

All we ask is that you let you let us

Serve it your way.*

Courtesy of memecenter.

(*Unless your way involves hot onion rings. In which case, all bets are off.)

I hate when I order food and don’t get exactly what I want. When my order gets messed up, though, I will complain about it relentlessly to everyone I am with and possibly later that night to people I call for the sole purpose of complaining, but I rarely actually go back and say something to the waitress or server. People get onto me for this, and tell me to ‘just say something; you’re paying to get what you want, not what they serve you; it’s not a big deal to let them know; they don’t care; it won’t upset them, etc.’ Previously, I had no excuses for my cowardly behavior, but previously, I had not heard the story of the cold onion rings. And that story justifies every time I’ve ever not complained about my order. Which makes it a pretty good story.

One day, Robert Deyapp walked into a New Mexico Burger King for what, I assume, he assumed was a normal trip to a fast food chain. He placed his order and excitedly went to eat his lunch. To his horror, he quickly discovered that his onion rings were cold. This was unacceptable! He did what anybody unhappy with their purchase would do (except, of course, for me) and went to the counter to ask for hot onion rings.

At the counter things did get heated, but unfortunately for Deyapp, none of those things were the onion rings. When he complained to manager Francisco Berrera and asked for a refund, instead of a simple “I’m sorry, sir, let us take care of that for you,” Berrera took a different approach. He lunged across the counter and attacked Deyapp with a stungun and switchblade.

As you probably know, BK’s motto used to be “Have it your way.” That has since been changed, most recently to “Be your way,” which is perhaps Berrera’s best defense: he was trying to be a solid example of the Burger King message, and since he seems to be a quick-tempered, violent man, he was “being his way” when he beat up a customer. Surely BK would have to respect that, right?

Despite his solitary pursuit to be a good BK representative, Berrera later pled no contest to aggravated assault, and Deyapp is currently suing the burger franchise. Because it is pending litigation, Burger King has not publicly responded to any questions on this matter; however, I have a couple of theories as to what happened in New Mexico that fated day that would show the burger franchise was not breaking any of its promises.

Courtesy of Giphy.

1. Going back to that same jingle at the top that BK was known for, it is pretty clear that the lyrics say “special orders don’t upset us.” Hot onion rings are a regular order. Burger King never suggests that regular orders don’t upset them. If you place a regular order, then, it is fair to say that by doing so, you are leaving yourself open to an attack.
2. Have you heard about secret menus? They are all the rage. You can order specials that aren’t on the menu by finding out about them online. At McDonalds, you could order a McGangbang: a double cheeseburger and a spicy chicken sandwich, which you would then combine with the chicken in between the two patties, a.k.a., the McGangbang. Perhaps at Burger King a secret menu item just happens to be called the “My onion rings are cold,” and is code for “please attak me with a stun gun and switchblade.” In which case, Deyapp was literally asking for it. That’s the problem with those secret menus, though, you always risk the chance that somebody might order something on accident and then you’ll get sued because they were attacked without consent. Trends today!

Whatever the reason for the attack, I am using it as proof to my loved ones that you should never complain about your food. Unless, of course, Deyapp wins a whole lot. In which case, I will complain so much at so many restaurants that people will be dying to hit me. I can take a punch for a big cash payout.

—

Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashes) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time.

Featured image courtesy of [Phillip Wong via Flckr]

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Spar Broiled: Cold Burger King Onion Rings Lead to Attack and Lawsuit appeared first on Law Street.

When I was young, my mom took my (even younger) sisters and me to a “Legalize Marijuana” festival. To be fair, she only did this because she thought it was the circus. How, you ask, could she possibly make this mistake? Well, it was very easy.

We were visiting my aunt at Florida State University (FSU). FSU has a clown school because, well, why wouldn’t it? (They probably prefer the term collegiate circus, but they are not writing this, I am.) Anyway, my aunt was attending the circus on the day we were visiting, and we were supposed to meet her there. She gave my mom directions that included something along the lines of “turn left at the stop sign, and when you see the big tent, you will be there.” My mom did get to that stop sign, but what my aunt had not predicted was that there would also be a big tent to the right of the stop sign. And as the tent to the right was visible from the sign but the tent to the left was not, my mom drew the conclusion that my aunt had given bad directions.

My aunt had not given bad directions. Which is how my mom and her three fairly young daughters ended up at a pot fair.

Let me tell you the conclusions a young girl at an event like this draws:

• Stoners are chill.
• College seems fun.
• All this was going on, and it wasn’t even 4/20.
• And I don’t care that those signs say no actual marijuana is present, there was definitely a lot of toking going on that day.

(My terminology on this topic may not actually have been that developed at this time, but you get the gist.)

Courtesy of Tumblr.

Does any of this have a point? Yes, of course it does. Because as it turns out, the FSU “Legalize Marijuana” fair is not the only fair in the country that – despite what their signs say – has marijuana on site. Take, for example, the Denver County fair where seven attendees entered a Pot Pavilion and were allegedly sickened, and at least one was hospitalized, after taking pot-laced candy that was sold as potless candy.

Though they were in the pot tent in a state where pot is legal, the victims actually did have every reason to believe that the only high they were about to get would be sugar-induced. Consider the following:

• The fair’s website clearly stated that there would be no pot anywhere on the vicinities.
• At least one drugged man, not buying the assertions of the website, claimed that he asked the vendor if the candy was laced and was repeatedly told no.

Being assured that what they just bought could legally be taken out of the state, each did what any sane person having just come into possession of chocolate would do: they ate it. And that is how they learned that vendors in pot tents are dirty liars. Allegedly.

Courtesy of Tumblr.

Shortly after eating the pot chocolate (like hot chocolate, except with drugs), the victims began getting sick. Two tested positive for THC-overdose. Reported symptoms included: vomiting, the feeling of “having a heart attack,” and of course the rage that comes from realizing you were just drugged against your will.

A class action suit has been filed against the manufacturer and the vendor.

The fact that we cannot eat candy without worrying about being poisoned with pot disturbs me (and that is not a joke). But I came up with a great solution (which is kind of a joke): let’s bring back food testers like royalty used to have. Those were the people who had to take a bite of the king’s food before he ate it. If it didn’t kill them, the king was free to eat (I’m not a poison expert, or anything, but aren’t there poisons that don’t kick in immediately? How long did they have to wait to get the green light to eat? I can’t imagine kings wanted to sit around while their food got cold. But I’m getting off topic…).

So anyway, we should definitely bring those back. I say we all have someone take a bite out of our food to make sure it is pot free. It will create more jobs, which will fuel the economy; and I predict it could become a competitive field. After all, I’ve been to a marijuana festival, so I can safely say that there are a lot of chill people out there who would be willing to help out humanity in this noble endeavor.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Fairs Going to Pot: 7 Sue After Unknowingly Buying Marijuana Chocolate appeared first on Law Street.

Every time I see a law enforcement officer in public — mall cop, fashion police, regular 5-0 — I have the irrational fear that they are out to get me. (This is especially true of the fashion police, but my fear of them might not be that irrational as anyone who has seen my clothing choices could attest.) I’m never doing anything I’m not supposed to be doing (or at the very least, I’m never doing anything I’m going to admit to you), but that doesn’t matter: I am sure I am about to be thrown in handcuffs and taken downtown. Little did I know, instead of fearing this, I should have been hoping for it. Just ask Elizabeth Daly or Mickey Lynn Goodson.

What’s The Legal Water-Drinking Age?

Underage college student Elizabeth Daly went to a grocery store and bought cookie dough and “sparkling water,” so she claims. And let me tell you, I would have been suspicious if I heard this story, too. Who buys cookie dough and water together? That is clearly a cover up. You drink milk with cookies — nothing else. Clearly the cookies were supposed to make her look innocent while she snuck out a whole lot of liquor in cleverly marked sparkling water bottles. She even went so far as to pretend to be buying these items for a philanthropy event run by her sorority. Yeah right, sister, sounds a little too good to be true if you ask me. And I’m not the only one who thinks this way.

As Daly left the store, plainclothes officers surrounded her SUV and banged on her windows — one trying to break a window while another drew a gun. Daly sped off, even grazing two officers on her way out. Feigning innocence yet again, she called 911 and reported the men as if she was not aware that they were cops. When she was told who they were, she returned to the scene of the crime and was arrested for eluding police and assaulting officers. (As it turned out, the case of beer she bought while underage — the event that caused the stop — was actually the case of sparkling water that Dalyt claimed it to be. So they couldn’t really charge her with that.)

Courtesy of Tumblr

Daly spent the night and part of the next day in jail. She also had to post bail, hire a lawyer, and miss school and social events. Her record was eventually expunged and all charges dropped, but it was too late for forgiveness at that point. Daly sued for $40 million. She settled for $212,500 though — which will buy a lot of cookies and water for her next event.

Of Mucus and Meth

When you are already feeling sick and mucusy, the last thing you want is to be arrested at your local Winn-Dixie for possessing controlled substances. I mean, it isn’t really fair. I know, personally, when my head is all stuffed up, the last thing I can think about is keeping my meth lab running. Perhaps Mickey Lynn Goodson looks smarter than me, though.

I can’t say what exactly about her was suspicious looking, but I can tell you what happened to her after she bought two pharmacist-recommended boxes of Sudafed. She was, of course, promptly arrested.

As many people know, Sudafed clears up your congestion, relieves sinus pressure, and helps build your booming meth business. Goodson claims that she bought the drugs for purely health-related reasons. But let’s face it. If I wanted to make meth, bought Sudafed for my basement lab, and then got caught, my first instinct might be to lie as well.

Courtesy of Quick Meme.

This must have been what the arresting officer was thinking too. Because after he stopped her and took her Sudafed, told her she had to wait for more officers, searched her car with the other deputies, took her to the sheriff’s office, asked to search her home, told her “Oh, I’ll get a search warrant,” held her for hours, arrested her on her own front porch, questioned her about what she had gotten rid of, and booked and charged her with possession of a controlled substance, he still wanted to find out more.

To further this goal, he really did go out and get that search warrant he promised Goodson and her husband he would get. How, you ask, did he show probable cause? Well, he informed the magistrate about all of Goodson’s false and misleading statements and evidence.

As it turns out, Goodson might not have been a meth maker after all. All charges were dropped against her. And she only had to put up with all that nonsense for 15 months so she really has no right to complain — I’ve had sinus infections that lasted longer than that (they don’t go away without Sudafed and I’m too scared to buy some). Still, though, complain she will…by suing in a Tallahassee court. Who wants to take my bet that she will win something here?

The moral of today’s post is that when you buy something — anything, no matter how innocent looking you think it might be — act really suspicious and maybe some bumbling officer will mistake you for a bad guy and make an arrest thus insuring all your debts are paid off and your next vacation is paid for. After all, it worked for Daly and Goodson, and they weren’t even trying!

—

Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashes) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time.

Featured image courtesy of [epSos .de via Flickr]

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Careful When Buying Water and Cold Meds, You Might Just Get Arrested appeared first on Law Street.

Did you know Nike made those glass platform shoes with the fish in them sported by pimps everywhere? That gives a whole new meaning to its logo “Just Do It,” doesn’t it?

Courtesy of abrinsky via Flickr.

OK, OK. Nike might not make shoes exactly like that, but it does make shoes. And some pimps wear them. And one pimp used them to beat up a John for not paying. And that same pimp got sentenced to 100 years in prison. So clearly it is all Nike’s fault.

This story is basically the big pimpin’ version of that poem about the lack of a nail destroying a kingdom:

For want of a warning the shoe was used;

Through use of the shoe a man was abused;

For abuse of the man a pimp was accused;

For accuse of the man, Nike was sued;

And all for a want of a warning.

I actually own some Nikes, though admittedly not as pimped out as Sirgiorgio Clardy‘s (since everything Clardy owns becomes pimped out by nature of his job title), so I can attest to this for all you non-Nike owners: those shoes DO NOT come with a warning saying if you stomp somebody’s face in with them, they might cause damage.

That’s just irresponsible. But maybe it’ll learn its lesson soon because if Clardy gets his way, Nike is going to have to cough up $100 million for lack of foresight.

This all began when a client refused to pay Clardy’s…employee…for services performed, which as everybody who knows anything about anything knows is not the way to gain a pimp’s favor. In a simple lesson on respect and paying your debts, Clardy stomped the man’s face in hard enough that the guy had to have plastic surgery; ‘cause I don’t know what you heard about Clardy, but you can’t steal a dollar outta he; no cash, no pay, you best believe that he’s a Nike-wearin’ p.i.m.p. (And I bet you thought that my poem was gonna be the only remix I created today.)

In court, Clardy was found guilty of wielding a dangerous weapon among other charges and that’s what got him the big sentence. The only problem was Nike never told Clardy that his pimped up kicks were dangerous weapons. If it had, I’m sure we can all agree that he probably would have used a safer method to get payment from the guy. Perhaps a good old fashioned tickle or pillow fight?

Courtesy of Giphy.

Because Nike’s failure to properly warn was clearly the real cause of Clardy being sentenced to 100 years of hard time, it is obvious that it owes the man something. Which brings us to the suit (and it’s an over-the-top, flashy, color-drenched suit complete with a cane and fedora. And of course a pair of shoes that look so good it hurts).

Courtesy of Giphy.

Clardy wrote a three-page complaint asking — no, he’s a pimp, he doesn’t ask, he tells — demanding $100 million from the shoemaker. (And if I were Nike, I might just give it to him. He has a track record of not handling people very well who don’t give him his money, and there I’d be sitting in a warehouse full of dangerous weapons.) Nike must be tougher than me, though, because instead of getting out its wallet, it pimp slapped Clardy with a response calling the suit groundless and denying liability.

Pimpin’ ain’t easy, but I guess filing a lawsuit is. Especially when you’ve got 100 years to kill.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp: Nikes Don’t Come With Weapon Warnings appeared first on Law Street.

Rachel Ann Nunes may not have made it to your personal library (or maybe she did — I don’t know what you read), but she apparently made it to Tiffani Rushton’s. Nunes is the author of, among other books, a Christian novel entitled A Bid for Love. Third grade teacher (that is pretty irrelevant to the story, but somehow makes what I am about to say that much worse) Rushton read the book and had a thought.

“What,” I assume she asked herself, “could make this Christian novel even better?” And then, light bulb! She knew the answer!

Graphic sex scenes!

Because, of course, every book is made better with graphic sex scenes.

Now that she had her million dollar idea, she just ran with it. She wrote The Auction Deal – an e-book that, from what I gather, is basically just A Bid for Love with the aforementioned sex. Unfortunately for her, Nunes somehow got a hold of the novel and was not left as satisfied as all that sex was supposed to make her.

Courtesy of Tumblr.

So, she sued Rushton claiming plagiarism.

Perhaps Rushton had an agenda here. She is, after all, a third grade teacher. And the best way to remember things is if you have a real world example, right? So, maybe ‘plagiarize’ was going to make the weekly vocabulary list and Rushton had the perfect example sentence for her students…

“For word three: plagiarize. It means to act like somebody else’s ideas are your ideas. For example, when Ms. Rushton added detailed sex scenes to someone else’s story and then said she wrote the whole book, she plagiarized, which is why she probably will lose a whole lot of money in court.”

I bet a lot of students will get that one right come test day, so Ms. Rushton might just deserve teacher of the month.

Assuming education was not her main goal, though, did she really plagiarize? I wanted to see just exactly how closely these books were related. To that end, I went to my favorite store, Amazon, to look up the descriptions of these books. Here is what I found –

A Bid for Love:

Cassi is the head buyer for a prestigious art gallery in California. Jared is a buyer for an exclusive New York gallery. Sparks fly as the two come head to head in a bidding war for a hideous but very expensive Indian Buddha. Cassi and Jared are both determined to win the statue, but others also want the Buddha—at any cost. Thugs, art forgers, the FBI, or Jared’s beautiful and alluring boss . . . who will end up with the statue? During a string of hair-raising exploits, Cassi and Jared are forced to develop a tentative friendship that deepens into romance. Will they survive long enough to see it through? Best-selling author Rachel Ann Nunes has crafted a wonderfully intriguing and romantic drama in this fast-moving novel, bringing two idealistic people together from opposite edges of the continent and allowing them, in their own way, to find an unexpected connection to their Christian faith and each other. In the end, their very lives depend on the trust they’ve developed. If you love romance and excitement, you’ll be captivated by A Bid for Love.

The Auction Deal:

Huh. A search for this book (and Tiffani Rushton) just brings back results for A Bid for Love. Okay. So that doesn’t help. Because I have nothing to give you from Amazon, and I am much too lazy to see if other sources have a description, I am forced to write my own idea of what this book is about (completely out of my head and with no help from any other source):

Cassi Ella is the head buyer for a prestigious art gallery in California. Jared Lance is a buyer for an exclusive New York Chicago gallery. Sparks fly as the two come head to head in a bidding war for a hideous but very expensive Indian Buddha. Cassi and Jared Ella and Lance are both determined to win the statue, but others also want the Buddha—at any cost. Thugs, art forgers, the FBI, or JaredLance’s beautiful and alluring boss . . . who will end up with the statue? During a string of hair-raising exploits, Cassi and Jared Ella and Lance are forced to develop a tentative friendship that deepens into romance. Will they survive long enough to see it through? Best-selling author Rachel Ann Nunes Tiffani Rushton has crafted a wonderfully intriguing and romantic drama in this fast-moving novel, bringing two idealistic people together from opposite edges of the continent and allowing them, in their own way, to find an unexpected connection to their Christian faith and each other by having hot graphic sex. In the end, their very lives depend on the trust they’ve developed. If you love romance and excitement, you’ll be captivated by A Bid for Love The Auction Deal. 

Hmm. I don’t know if I am convinced these sound that much alike. I guess we will all have to wait with bated breath for the sinewy, devil-may-care judge to slowly but powerfully pound his long gavel…

Courtesy of Tumblr.

…and give us his ruling.

(Here is a real summary of Rushton’s book from Goodreads. As you will note, the full title appears to be NOT A BOOK: The Auction Deal.)

—

Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashes) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time.

Feature Image courtesy of [Stephen Coles via Flickr]

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Naughty School Teacher: Plagiarism Can Get Steamy appeared first on Law Street.

I don’t know about you, but I had a great Labor Day. My sister Ariel flew up for the weekend, and we stuffed our days full of fun activities like seeing Book of Mormon on Broadway and going to a Yankees vs. Red Sox Game. We laughed, cheered, and created the “Adventures of Stick Figure Amber” – where I drew our annoyingly absentee sister into every single picture and gave her some wacky adventures of her own in an effort to pretend she was there.

Perhaps the highlight of this trip was what we did on Saturday and Sunday: attend Jay Z’s “Made in America” music festival in Philadelphia. We saw tons of great acts – one being Kanye West. (We also saw that in our advanced old age of early-to-late twenties, we were perhaps already too old for this type of event. I’ve never wanted to say “Do your parents know you are here?” more than when I saw all those pre-teens dressed in practically nothing openly drinking and doing drugs. Kids today! But that is straying from the point…)

As Ariel and I danced (rather I jumped up and down like an idiot while Ariel stood still glaring at me with disdain) and people-watched, we had no idea what shameful secrets were brewing just underneath the surface. (That might be an overly dramatic opening to what I am about to write.)

The lawsuit about which I am going to tell you is not really all that funny or even out of the ordinary; however, it is really exciting because it kind of, sort of, on a tangent, not really but I’m counting it deals with an event that I was attending. And that makes it interesting to me if to no one else.

Courtesy of gifsoup.

Did you know that “Made in America” the music festival was named after a Jay Z and Kanye song with the same name? Brooklyn rapper Joel McDonald didn’t. Or rather, he knew it was named after a song with the same title, but he was under the impression that it was his song, not the rap legend duo’s. He came to this conclusion based on the fact that he sang and sold on iTunes this song in 2009, but it was done by Jay Z and West in 2011 — with no mention of McDonald there.

Let’s compare…

McDonald’s song:

Jay Z and Kanye’s song:

Are they the same? McDonald hopes people will think they are close enough, because to celebrate the third annual “Made in America” festival, now located in Los Angeles as well, McDonald sued for $3 million for copyright infringement in Manhattan Supreme Court.

What do you think: Will Jay Z soon be in a little less of an empire state of mind or will McDonald find out that New York isn’t the concrete jungle were dreams are made for everyone? Was Kanye acting more stupidly or did McDonald say something when he gon’ end up apologin’? Will Jay Z…I could go on with these all day.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Lawsuits and Copyright Infringement Made in America appeared first on Law Street.

When I was 21 about to graduate from college, my cousin Katie, six at the time, promised me that she would come live with me when I got a job and be my maid because she really, really liked using her play broom and mop to clean. As a future law student, I realized something about this statement:

1. Katie told me she would do this (offer).
2. I said, ‘sounds good’ (acceptance).
3. My place would be clean, and without a maid it definitely wouldn’t be, and Katie would be able to fulfill her love of cleaning while simultaneously having a place to live (consideration).
4. We were both more than likely on the same page (mutuality).

Clearly, this was a legally enforceable oral contract. Sweet!

So, a few years later I moved to New Jersey to start my independent, adult life and told her she was required to come with me. Imagine my surprise when she, now nine, told me she no longer liked cleaning, and plus her parents probably wouldn’t let her come with me because they would miss her too much.

Courtesy of Tumblr.

I knew a breach when I saw one, and I told her I might have to sue; however, more pressing matters existed at the time, and I kind of forgot. But I was reminded of this story recently when I read an article about Jesse Dimmick.

Dimmick faced the same dilemma that I did with Katie: he made a very clear oral contract with a couple, and they just went and breached it. Unlike me, though, Dimmick had the strength and character to actually fight for his rights and sue.

Here is the story: Dimmick and an accomplice went to the Aurora motel in Colorado and met Michael Curtis; the men were all big druggies. The duo stabbed Curtis to death, stole his drugs and wallet, and ran away (Dimmick pled guilty to this so I feel free to leave off the “allegedly” here). The accomplice was then caught and arrested at another motel. This made Dimmick think that the cops might want to arrest him too, and he knew he had to do something to protect himself.

So he went to Kansas where he found some friends: Jared and Lindsay Rowley. He didn’t know the couple before he entered their house uninvited and held them at knifepoint, but something like that shouldn’t stand in the way of potential companionship.

To celebrate the newly formed friendship, the couple offered the fugitive food, drink, and a blanket. They then watched movies together until Dimmick fell asleep. This is where this story takes a turn for the worst: the Rowleys turned out to be very bad hosts. When their new pal fell asleep, they had the audacity to run to the cops and give away his location. The police came barging in to wake up the sleepy murderer from his much-needed nap, shooting him in the process.

Not even done with their betrayal, this horrible couple actually sued Dimmick for home invasion and stress! But don’t worry, Dimmick realized that the Rowleys were in the wrong and decided to make sure they never treated any other fugitive on the run from the law in a similar manner: he countersued.

Dimmick had realized the same thing that I had realized with Katie:

1. He told the couple that he would give them an undisclosed amount of money if they hid him (offer).
2. He said they agreed to the offer (acceptance).
3. He would have a safe haven to protect him since he “feared for his life,” and they would get money (consideration).
4. I’m sure both parties knew what they were doing here (mutuality).

Clearly, this was a legally enforceable oral contract. And Dimmick wanted $235,000 for this egregious act. After all, not only did they breach the contract, but that breach caused the poor man to get shot.

Strangely, the court decided to dismiss this lawsuit despite the strong case Dimmick presented. Then, to pour gas on the fire, Dimmick was first convicted of two counts of kidnapping and sentenced to eleven years then convicted of murder and given another 37 years.

I just don’t understand the court system. When a man with a clearly valid case like this one cannot win, what is the point in even trying? Horrible as this is to say, with this line of inappropriate judicial highhandedness, there is a chance I wouldn’t have even won my case against Katie despite the fact that I was clearly right.

I sympathize with Dimmick. It is hard to trust anyone these days, and the only solution seems to be to get everything in writing and probably also have it notarized. Next time Katie offers to work for me, I’ll have learned my lesson. I hope for his sake Dimmick will too. If some other inmate offers him protection for certain “other favors,” Dimmick should break out the pen and paper: I’d hate for him to lose another case orally.

Courtesy of GIPHY.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Free Advice: Oral Contracts Don’t Apply When You’re Held at Knifepoint appeared first on Law Street.

Though I have spent the last few years living in the great state of New Jersey, in all reality I am a Southerner – as my dropped g’s and pronunciation of the number ten will attest. Next week, I will be getting’ over my homesickness with a quick trip below the Mason-Dixon Line – and hopefully when I return north I won’t have reverted back to my indecipherable twang – come on, ya’ll, I am to understandable.

As the North’s Southern representative, I’d like to start this post by answerin’ a few questions I’ve genuinely gotten over the years:

• No. I’ve never had road kill.
• Yes. Pen and pin are pronounced the exact same way – and don’t try to tellin’ me different.
• No. I’ve never been cow tippin’.
• Yes. SEC football is the best. Roll Tide!

Courtesy of Gifsoup.

Now that we have that all cleared up, I’ve got a doozy of a lawsuit for ya this week. In anticipation of my return to the Southland, I’m gonna get us all in a Dixie state of mind. Does what I’m about to say surprise anyone? Us Southerners get ourselves involved in some pretty weird situations. And what that leads to oft times is some pretty weird lawsuits. So sit back with a glass of tea (there ain’t no need to get more specific than “tea” – real tea is cold and contains a pound of sugar per gallon), and listen while I tell ya’ll about one of my favorites.

My college roommate was from Moultrie, Georgia. My mom has many a time had to go to Moultrie for work. Both my sisters went to college in a town not far from Moultrie. So believe me when I tell you that I have a real strong investment in keeping Moultrie safe. But if the local police force keeps spendin’ all their time firin’ people cause they’re white, then when’s any patrollin’ gonna get done?

When you go around suin’ your former employer because you say they forced you to resign cause you were white, you’d best have a real good case. So I’m sure Andrew Underwood came to court with a heap of a lot of evidence against the police department. On the other hand, maybe he didn’t respond to “specific record citations to the statement of undisputed material facts provided by the City of Moultrie and the MPD” thus allowing any of those facts the court thinks supported by evidence to be admissible.

Okay. Maybe the stuff claimed by the department wasn’t all that bad. Maybe they had such a bad claim, that Underwood didn’t even need to bother answerin’ them. Let’s just look at what the MPD said led up to the resignation, and then make up our minds.

Here is a list of things Moultrie claims make forced resignation justifiable:

•  Leavin’ your police car running, with the windows down, unattended;
• Exitin’ your police car before putting it in park;
• Runnin’ your police car through a red light;
• Forgettin’ to tell dispatch where you are;
• Causin’ an accident in your police car while talkin’ on a cell phone;
• Mysteriously damagin’ the rear bumper of your car and not being able to explain how it happened;
• Accidently shootin’ yourself with your police firearm;
• Losin’ a notebook full of incident reports, a pager, a gas card, and a $100 counterfeit bill;
• Leavin’ your shotgun on the steps of the police department;
• Not knowin’ how that knife in your trunk got there or if it was evidence; and
• Arrestin’ the wrong person.

Courtesy of GIPHY.

And let me tell you what, I left some of the claims out just for the sake of time. After readin’ all that, I guess I’d have to say that there is a good chance that Mr. Underwood simply forgot to respond to the department’s claims against him. But still, this doesn’t prove anythin’. They still coulda had a real problem with him bein’ white and just used all the above as an excuse.

After all, why did they do nothin’ about all this, which took place over a number of years, and then suddenly force him to resign? Oh…they had implemented a series of disciplinary tactics increasin’ in severity that ultimately led to the forced resignation? Huh. Mr. Underwood, I’m runnin’ out of ways to help you here.

Alright, I’ve got one more for you…would they have done the same thing if, say, Mr. Underwood had been African-American? Oh…they actually had an African-American female with a similar track record AND an African-American male with a substantially less embarrasin’ track record (who’s hirin’ the Moultrie police officers, by the way?) who were both treated in a like manner? I’m afraid you’re on your own on this one, Buddy.

The court and I agree: Mr. Underwood, you lose this one. But bless your heart for tryin’.

—

Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashes) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time.

Featured Image courtesy of [The Bees Knees Daly via Flickr]

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post White Cop, Bad Cop: Idiot Is Not a Protected Southern Class appeared first on Law Street.

Law school can seem scary. And boring. And hard. And when you realize you not only willingly entered this scary, boring, hard institution, but you forked over a whole lot of money to do so, you might begin to ask yourself, “What in the world is the matter with me?” So, for all you 1Ls who have just started or who are about to start, I just want to let you know that mixed in with the all the serious, dry information you are going to read, which may or may not be useful in your future careers, there are some weird, ridiculous cases you will study that are going to offer you some much needed comic relief.

To prove my point, I am going to tell you about some of the more fun cases that stood out so much that I still remember them this long after I graduated. Not only that, but I managed to wade through my murky memory to come up with a case from five of the basic 1L courses…yes, even contracts. I’ll give you plots, but I’m not giving away endings here. There are no spoiler alerts — I don’t want any angry professors coming after me because students weren’t coming to class since I already taught them everything they needed to know.

The Haunted Property

In Stambovsky v. Ackley, 169 A.D.,2d 254, we learn that, yes, ghosts are real…or, well, at least, that a house can be legally haunted. This all began when Jeffrey Stambovsky tried to buy a house from Helen Ackley. Well, I guess it really started before he tried to buy a house from Helen Ackley. Like, say, when she started advertising the house as haunted. And I’m not talking about that one time she told a friend over coffee, I’m talking about real press advertising. That’s right, she put her ghost story in print — in both the local paper and in Reader’s Digest. She did not, however, tell the ghost story in the description of the house, or in the contract, or in any verbal communications that she or her realtor had with Mr. Stanbovsky.  And let me tell you, when Stanbovsky found out he had just purchased a bunch of poltergeists, he was less than pleased. In fact, he was so mad he wanted to get out of the contract (so see, really you’re getting two entertaining contract stories here).

Courtesy of tumblr.

Of course, Ms. Ackley tried say the ghosts had moved out — or didn’t exist — or were just a figment of her imagination. In other words, she was all like, “Are you crazy? Of course this house isn’t haunted! Where ever did you come up with such an idea?” (not a direct quote). But the court disagreed. They basically told her, “You can’t go around telling the press you’ve got a ghost, and then all of a sudden claim you don’t just to make a sale. You’ve got a haunted house, so don’t try to deny it.” (Again, not a direct quote.) But here is a direct quote for you: “…as a matter of law, the house is haunted.” Weird, right? But, does the fact that the house is haunted mean that Ackley was required to disclose this?

Moral Contracts

There is nothing worse than having a family member promise you something only to have him later say, “Haha, sucker, April Fool’s.” In the pivotal case of Hamer v. Sidway, 124 N.Y. 538, William E. Story II found this out the hard way. William E. Story the original, and also the uncle of II, told his nephew that all he had to do to get $5,000 (which is basically a whole lot of money seeing as how this case is really old) was to keep away from tobacco, alcohol, swearing, and playing billiards and cards for money — so basically don’t have fun — until he turned 21.

II really wanted that money, so he accepted and completed the challenge. When he turned 21, he asked for his money and was told the uncle wanted to hold onto it until the nephew was a little older, but he would get it with interest. So the uncle held onto it and held onto it until eventually he died still holding onto it. II transferred his interest to his wife who transferred her interest to someone else who said to the estate something like, “Hey, where’s my money?” They answered by basically saying, “What? You thought that was a real contract? Hahahahahaha…” with the laughter continuing for a while. This, of course, led to the interest holder going to court. But of course I’m not telling you the result of the court case here.

It’s Raining Cows and Torts

Whenever I am having a bad day, I just say “Well, at least a cow hasn’t fallen on my head today.” Because, let’s be honest, nothing that happened to me is as bad as that. On April 15, 1954 Fannie Guthrie could legitimately claim that she had a bad day because she couldn’t say that a cow hadn’t fallen on her head. In Guthrie v. Powell, 178 Kan. 589, Torts students learn about a fun little legal term: res ipsa loquitur. I’m not going to go into the legalese of that, but what I will tell you is this: if someone is on the first floor of a building where a public sale is taking place, has permission to be there, and is just generally minding her own business when unexpectedly (because there is no way to expect this) a six-hundred pound steer located on the second floor falls through the ceiling and lands on said someone, that person likely will sue using the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur.

I told my sister about this case, and she asked me a very logical question, one that most people would ask when hearing about a steer landing on a lady: “Oh no! Was the steer hurt?”

Courtesy of gifsoup.

Is Sexual Healing a Criminal (Law) Offense?

Since you all are going to law school, and not medical school, you may not yet know the following wisdom I am about to impart on you: if a “doctor” calls you out of the blue and tells you that you have a fatal disease that can only be cured by an expensive, painful surgery or by having sex with a donor inoculated with the vaccine, do not go have sex with that donor. There is actually no disease for which this is a recognized cure, I’m sorry to tell you. Unfortunately for Ms. R, she did not have me to guide her, and so she, not being a doctor and not being insured, felt she had no choice but to pay this donor to inject her. Turns out, this was all a fraud, so she called rape. But did the judge rule in her favor? Find out in Boro v. Superior Court, 163 Cal. App. 3d 1224.

Satan, Standing, and Civil Procedures

Satan and his staff are all pretty evil. So, it should be a safe bet to say that if you sue the devil, you are going to win (in court — I’m not speculating on what will happen to you when he gets you out from underneath the long arm of the law). However, in order to sue him, you have to be able to find him, because how else are you going to serve him his papers? Short of sending a poor clerk to the pits of hell, what should be done to make Satan pay for his crimes? Well, you can find out how to sue Satan in United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff, 54 F.R.D. 282, where Mayo claimed that the devil had, among other things, deprived him of some constitutional rights. (Or you can find out that you can’t sue Satan because of the very fact that they couldn’t serve process on Satan, but since I promised no spoilers, I won’t tell you which happened here.)

Courtesy of GIPHY.

So see? Law school isn’t always daunting and scary. Unless, of course, you’re scared of Satan, ghosts, and flying cows.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Weird, True, and Freaky: Law School Edition appeared first on Law Street.

“Change is the law of life,” John F. Kennedy said. And assuming this to be true, 76-year-old Andres Carrasco and his attorney should have been expecting what just happened to them. When Carrasco received a settlement against his former insurance company, I can only assume he was more than pleased (though I don’t know the exact amount of the settlement, so maybe he wasn’t as pleased as I might think.) At any rate, what I do know is that this man was going to get more than $20,000. And boy did he get it!

Change Would Do You Good

After receiving a check for part, Carrasco’s lawyer, Antonio Gallo, was surprised to have eight people deliver 17 buckets worth of change to his lobby. (Probably what happened was the insurance company was at home the night before watching a re-run of Parks and Rec’s “End of the World” and got mixed up with Andy Dwyer’s declaration of “Nickels! I want nickels! A billion nickels!” for something Mr. Gallo had said earlier that day. Honest mistake.)

Courtesy of GIPHY.

As Gallo has apparently never won that competition where you guess how many jelly beans are in a jar, he refused to accept the delivery on the grounds that he couldn’t ascertain whether the full payment was there. Not to be deterred, the deliverers apparently still left the coins and bolted, ensuring Mr. Carrasco and future Carrasco generations would be equipped to go through tolls or hit the laundry mat for generations to come.

Gallo has asked that the insurance company, which must have a really big swear jar it was trying to empty, send a check and pick up its coin buckets — though if I were him, I would first sort through the bucket of pennies to see if there are any lucky ones in there. If not, they will be forced to count the change — so hopefully they don’t have one of those annoying people who start saying numbers  while you are counting to mess you up…I’d hate for them to have counted out to 15 or 16 thousand dollars or so only to have to start all over. If the money is short, they will have to go back to court to get the rest, as well as the coin counting costs.

Weird as this payment is, the really weird part is that it isn’t as weird as you might think. The insurance company that paid Mr. Carrasco (Adriana’s Insurance for those wishing to avoid a similar fate) was not the first or even the second to literally nickel and dime someone. Take, just as one example, Brian Kiros who once got so mad at his bill for back taxes that he drove to ten different banks to collect more than 30,000 pennies — and then spent hours unrolling said pennies to really make the government pay.

Money (That’s What I Want)

Other than just the pure annoyance of coin payments, I do see another potential pitfall. What if someone were to do something like, say, for example, sue for every penny on the earth? Then, everybody who just got more pennies than they know what to do with could be in jeopardy of losing the money they just worked so hard to receive and count and carry to the bank and stress about.

That’s just silly, though. Since nobody would ever sue for every penny in the world, penny payees have nothing to worry about, right? Wait. Somebody is suing for all the world’s pennies?

Okay, okay. That isn’t fair. He isn’t specifically asking for every penny in the world, as the media is incorrectly reporting. That would be ludicrous. So, I guess all the penny holders are safe. All Mr. Anton Purisma is really asking for is for 2 undecillion dollars (that’s $2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) or, in other words, more money than currently exists in the world. So basically, if he wins, we better all start emptying out our pockets because this man isn’t just after our pennies.

Courtesy of GIPHY.

Now obviously, to be worthy of all the money in the world plus a whole lot more, the suit is going to be one that is so horrible and makes us feel so bad for Mr. Purisma, that we are all going to get a collection going to just get him through the lawsuit and none of us will have any problem handing over our life’s savings. Well, the man isn’t suing just one person or for just one incident. So, let’s examine some of the more atrocious acts performed on this man that makes him deserve this settlement:

• A rabid dog bit his finger;
• A Chinese couple took a picture of him without permission; and
• LaGuardia airport always overcharges him for coffee.

All of these events added to “civil rights violations, personal injury, discrimination on national origin, retaliation, harassment, fraud, attempted murder, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and conspiracy to defraud.” So, yeah. I think he deserves a huge payment for his stress.

Mr. Purisma, who has sued many, many times before, represented himself (because, well, duh. Who else was going to take the case? I mean, a lawyer who works on a commission might make half an undecillion dollars or something, but then they’d just have to give it right back to Mr. Purisma since he won way more than actually exists in the entire universe — assuming any extraterrestrials out there have separate forms of currency and probably even if they have the same currency — and he’d probably want to pay his lawyer with the portion of the award that doesn’t actually exist). But proving once again the injustice of our judicial system, the court dropped the case without even giving Mr. Purisma his day in court or a jury of his peers…as if they think the case is frivolous or something.

The real losers in this story are Mr. Carrasco and his like. They needed Mr. Purisma to win so that they wouldn’t have to visit a CoinStar. But while I truly feel for Mr. Purisma, I do have some bills due and it might have been awkward if I had to call them up with that lame, overused excuse that “this guy took all my money when he won all the world’s coinage so I won’t be able to pay you this month.” I don’t think they’ll accept that again.

—

Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashes) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time.

Featured Image Courtesy of [filigran via Flickr]

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Sue Big, Win Chump Change appeared first on Law Street.

Recently, Weird Al Yankovic used his song “Word Crimes” to teach us all how to not make idiots of ourselves when using grammar, but it seems as if not everyone was listening. One man’s lack of attention to basic middle school language rules has created what could literally be a word crime (and Mr. Yankovic, if you somehow read this, I mean literally in its proper definition, so please don’t “smack a crowbar upside [my] stupid head.”)

Before I get into the possible crime, though, it’s time for another overdue language lesson. Homo is derived from the Latin for human, and is used in the genus classification seen in the term for the modern human, Homo sapiens. That’s right: we’re all homos. It’s also used as a Greek prefix that means “same,” as in homosexual, meaning someone who is attracted to a person of the same sex.

Another example of the homo prefix is seen in the word homophone, which refers to words that have the same sound but do not have the same meaning.

Courtesy of Funnyjunk.

Examples of homophones can be seen in the following table.

Homo-sounding Words

Urban Dictionary Definitions

My Clever Examples

Ferry

To transport internationally, or across water.

I’d love people to ferry copies of this post to other lands.

Fairy

A gay man who acts more stereotypically feminine than most straight women.

That fairy convinced me to support gay rights with his fine use of diction.

Gaze

In blog terminology, to glare with silent disapproval at a troll who has intentionally attempted to derail a topic.

If people have off-topic comments to this post, all I need to do is type “GAZE“.

Gays

A homosexual male or female.

I backed the gays at the pride parade because they used proper syntax.

Quean

The proper term for a homosexual ‘queen’ (from Elizabethan English: a male or female who sells himself for sex.) (I could have also chosen “very homosexual jeans” here.)

Yon quean not only wore a superlative gown, he also had perfect nomenclature (said in a pompous voice.)

Queen

A flamboyant homosexual, usually male, always fabulous.

That queen rocked his dress and sounded smart while doing it (said in a fabulous voice while snapping in a z formation.)

Basically, what you should learn from the above is that when someone writes about homophones, it probably has nothing to do specifically with homosexuals (except when my examples are used.) But try telling that to Clarke Woodger.

Woodger allegedly decided that one of the employees at the Norman Global Language Centre, a place teaching English as a Second Language (ESL), was out of line for writing a blog post on the very controversial world of similar-sounding words.

The employer seems to be of the opinion that ESL learners might be able to recognize the term homo, but only in the one context. Since it would be inconceivable that an ESL learning center could teach anyone that a word might have an alternate meaning, Woodger thought it best to just not ever use the word homo in any context ever. Because, you know, you don’t want anyone to mistakenly link you to the gay agenda – though the idiot agenda is perfectly acceptable.

Courtesy of Quick Meme.

Woodger purportedly demonstrated the above opinion when he fired an employee for writing an illicit homo-centric grammar post. Tim Torkildson, the dirty-minded teacher who wrote the post in question, claimed that as he was being fired, he was told the “blog about homophones was the last straw” and that the school was now “going to be associated with homosexuality.”

To be fair, I should mention that Woodger did rationally defend himself. According to him, the reason he acted the way he did was that people at this level of English learning “may see the ‘homo’ side and think it has something to do with gay sex.” Good point, Mr. Woodger, you’ve one me to you’re side – whoops, I meant you’ve won me to your side. If only there was some way to learn the difference between those same-sounding words.

Courtesy of Cheezburger.

I hope we all agree that, assuming this actually happened, Woodger is a dam unreel fool of a mail who aired in his judgment, kneads to take a chill pill, and should develop some tacked. Or something like that. But is what he did a word crime in its most literal sense?

It depends on the state and whether this fits under that state’s employment at-will exceptions. This particular story took place in Utah, where a man may marry as many people as he wants so long as all the people he wants to marry are female. In Utah, employment discrimination against LGBT individuals is not yet prohibited. That being said, I’d have to say that this means that any LGBT supporter, whether that support is intentional or just through an inappropriate grammar lesson, would also not be protected.

Drat! It appears as if it is unlikely that a word crime was committed here; however, if this had happened in a more liberal state, let’s say California, it probably would have been. So, I stand by my claim that it is literally possible to commit a word crime.

Maybe one day we will live in a land where these offensive grammar violations are banned everywhere. Until that day, let us fight against blatant homophonia by teaching future generations tolerance for the English language and all of its variable meanings.

(You earn bonus points if you see all the many, many homophones scattered throughout this epic tale.)

—

Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashes) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time.

Featured image courtesy of [Katy via Flickr].

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Heterophones…Because Homophones Are Just Too Suggestive appeared first on Law Street.

Corporations are legal people, right? They can commit crimes, they can sue other people, and they can vote…at least with their checkbooks. So why aren’t animals people? They can walk and have feelings and be family members; plus, they are just so cute when dressed in people clothes.

There is a real movement among animal rights groups to make animals people in the eyes of the court. Okay, okay. They don’t actually want them to be people, but they do want them to have legal standing to sue. And since people have taken animals to court before, I think it is only fair to finally give animals the right to retaliate.

People Trying Animals (In Court, Not at the Dinner Table)

Admittedly, the concept of a person suing an animal is an archaic one not used today, as far as I know. But at one point in history, mostly in Europe, it was an actual thing. A serial murderer pig kills a loved one in their sleep? Prosecute. A trained dog robber takes out one of their targets? Put that killer on the stand and condemn him to death. If they are capable of committing the crime, then they should be made to do the time.

Courtesy of I Can Has Cheezburger.

Pretty much, if it could walk, crawl, fly, or swim, it could walk, crawl, fly, or swim itself to court. This includes insects (though that one baffles me the most. When an insect causes me harm, I practice a much quicker, more vigilante sort of justice.) And murder wasn’t even all these villainous animals could be and were charged with. A donkey once allegedly committed bestiality, but apparently she had enough character witnesses, one being the local reverend, to be acquitted (the same could not be said of her human paramour, who was sentenced to death). And sparrows were taken in for being too loud in church (I totally get this one. I have wanted to sue birds who were being too loud outside my bedroom window at ridiculously early hours of the morning on more than one occasion.)

Among other animals tried were those accused of being familiars to local witches, those suspected of being werewolves, and one particularly scary rooster – yes I said rooster, not hen – who laid a Satan-spawned egg containing a cockatrice (which, according to Wikipedia, is basically a two-legged dragon with a rooster’s head.)

Not only are the offenses serious, but so are the punishments when convicted. A pig was once “sentenced to be “mangled and maimed in the head forelegs,” and then – dressed up in a jacket and breeches – to be hung from a gallows in the market.” A sow was similarly convicted and sentenced to be hanged, though without even the dignity of a new set of clothes, which must have been extra humiliating.

On the other hand, the court was nothing if not fair. Sometimes the animals would be acquitted, such as in the case of the kindly donkey. My favorite ruling came when a group of rats failed to make it to court. Luckily, they had a good lawyer who pointed out that, as they were a wandering band, they may not have received their summons, and, even if they had, they may have been too afraid of the local cats. Since court is only a requirement when it could be gone to safely and the townspeople refused to lock up their pets, the case was dropped.

Animals Trying People (In Court, Not in the Woods Behind Your House)

In a more modern and more American context, animals and the court are becoming an issue once again. Only this time, it is the animals’ turn for revenge.

In recent years, it has become a point of question as to whether animals should have the legal standing to sue humans for animal rights violations. For example, should a cow be able to sue its potential slaughterer for not making it unconscious before turning it into dinner? Should Tommy the chimpanzee be able to sue his captor for keeping him imprisoned?

As crazy as being sued by your own pet may be, the other side of the standing is that without allowing animals to sue, there may not be another form of redress for these creatures. To have standing, you have to have an injury. When an animal is injured, a human most likely would not be able to get standing on behalf of the creature as the human was not the one injured. Thus, unless animal rights proponents can think of more creative defenses to stop the harmful actions, there is little that can be done to protect the animal.

The downside of allowing animals to become legal people is that they’d become legal people. Detractors worry that granting animals people status will only blur the line between man and beast. As if they think the right to sue is the last distinction we have to tell the difference between a fellow human and a zebra. If a cat can hire a lawyer and litigate, albeit through the help of a guardian, then what is to stop it from driving a car or applying for the position that you yourself wanted?

Courtesy of GIPHY.

The disparagers also say that this would encourage frivolous lawsuits – something that no true human would ever do. In a more reasonable stance, some animal suit critics are afraid that if animals can sue, they will sue such organizations as medical research labs and zoos, which in turn could shut down places that theoretically could help humans and the animals themselves.

If this debate interests you, I encourage you to do some research. You won’t believe the fascinating things you will find, and, at the very least, you can see some really clever titles. (My favorites are Monkey See, Monkey Sue and So Three Cows Walk Into Court….)

So far, animal suits have not been successful, but what do you think? Should the courts start allowing whales and snails and things with tails to take the stand?  

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Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashes) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time.

Featured image courtesy of [istolethetv via Flickr].

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Standing on Four Legs: Animals and the Judicial System appeared first on Law Street.

I’m a messy eater — ask anyone who knows me. I can make a mess while eating plain bread. So if there is anyone who knows the importance of a steady supply of napkins, it’s me. And also Webster Lucas. Especially Webster Lucas. Because when he asks for napkins, he isn’t playing around.

Lucas recently filed suit against McDonald’s. McDonald’s has been sued many times, so this may not in itself surprise you; however, the claim in the suit just might. Lucas, having received only one napkin with his Quarter Pounder, asked for some additional ones. Instead of getting so many complimentary napkins that he couldn’t possibly use them all, thus ensuring a solid supply of backup napkins for the road as given by every other Mickey D’s, Lucas was told to make do with what he had. So he is now suing for $1.5 million.

Courtesy of Quickmeme.

(I don’t know any napkin synonyms, so please bear with me while I overuse of the word – it is hard to talk about a napkin scandal without constantly saying ‘napkin.’)

The Story

Lucas went to McDonald’s to eat, not to argue about napkins. I know this because when the napkin debacle occurred, he told his server this very thing. (As I usually go to fast food chains with the intention of getting in a fiery debate over a ketchup packet at the very least, I find Lucas’ plan here very strange.) Lucas pointed out that he should have gone to Jack in the Box, where napkins are apparently given in a non-Grinch manner. Unfortunately for him, Lucas did not go to Jack in the Box and he did argue about napkins, so overall the food trip was less than a success.

Lucas, a self-described clean person, realized two things at the beginning of this doomed hamburger visit: 1.) His table was crumb filled, and 2.) He only had one napkin. He wanted that napkin to wipe down the table, but he didn’t want to be left with just his shirt to clean his hands when he actually got to eat, so he went to the counter and asked for more. Employee Angel Arciga refused the request.

Courtesy of Tumblr.

(Quick aside: Was the napkin dispenser empty? Because how else would this happen? I need this to be explained as it’s driving me crazy.)

Lucas should actually be grateful that his problem was only a lack of cleaning material, by the way. In a London KFC, a boy was served a deep-fried paper towel, and I bet he wishes that place had a “wipe your hands on your shirt” policy in place.

After being turned down, Lucas claimed that Arciga began to have an attitude with him. When Lucas asked him why he was being so hostile, the man began to curse and mumble under his breath.

Despite how thankful he should be at not being served napkin for dinner, Lucas asked to talk to the manager and was aghast to learn that he already was. He got Arciga’s name, after a lot of “playing around” about the spelling, and left to go shoot off an email to Arciga’s higher ups about their customer service, or lack thereof.

The general manager of the store responded with a simple apology, a promise to investigate, and an offer of free food – there was no mention of whether free napkins came with the free burgers though, so I do not blame Lucas for being a little leery.

Courtesy of Wifflegif.

Mr. Lucas then talked to Arciga again, who apparently was asleep during customer service training class, and was again offended by his attitude. Because of his mental anguish and the intentional infliction of mental distress, Lucas was unable to work. This means he needed another source of income and getting $1.5 million from McDonald’s seemed a reasonable alternative, or, at the very least, he assumed that with that much money he could just use some measly twenties when his hands got a little greasy. Either way, the situation led to the suit at hand.

The Motive

Part of Lucas’ claim was that napkin-gate was racially motivated. That was his only rationale as to why his request was refused, and as I personally cannot think of many other good reasons, I have to concede that he might be right. (Though my other thought is that perhaps the store was almost or completely out of said napkins and, as the manager, Arciga was incredibly embarrassed at his lack of proper inventory stocking thus making him unable to divulge the shortage to a customer. But that’s just pure speculation on my part.)

Lucas, an African American, was eating at a place “filled with Mexican Americans,” Arciga being one. In fact, Lucas asked if this was all “because [he was] black,” and claimed that Arciga mumbled something under his breath – the only understandable words being “you people.”

Which brings me to a serious point directed to all businesses dealing with customers: take claims of discrimination seriously. It may seem like just a napkin, but one restaurant’s napkin is another man’s $1.5 million lawsuit. So make sure to give proper training, and when a customer complains about service, actually do something about it instead of making vague assurances.

Will McDonald’s have to fork over a million and a half dollars for its napkin drought? I’d say no – though sometimes a ruling will surprise and possibly offend you. However, I feel safe in saying that even if Lucas doesn’t win his suit or doesn’t get as much money as he wanted, the time, bad press, legal fees, and everything else that goes into a legal proceeding makes these the most expensive napkins in the history of the world. Though if we’re including paper towels…

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Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashes) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time.

Featured imaged courtesy of [anaxolootl via Flickr]

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Case of the Million Dollar Napkins appeared first on Law Street.

Since I love baseball and it’s All Star week in the MLB, I decided that this week’s post would be about America’s favorite pastime. I could have gone the route of talking about Andrew Robert Rector, who is suing just about everybody in the baseball world for $10 million because he says announcers trash-talked him when he fell asleep at a Yankees-Red Sox game. Funny as that story is, however, everybody is talking about it. I like to be unique, and I knew there had to be a whole lot of other baseball stories out there. Lucky for you, I found some weird ones.

Just a Little Outside

If you’ve ever watched or gone to a baseball game, you know that there are a lot of balls flying around, as well as broken bat pieces and whole bats soaring through the air. And let’s not forget that a player might fall into the first few rows as he reaches over to make a spectacular catch.

If you are lucky enough to get a good seat at a major league game, you better be on guard. Even the seats warn you: watch out or you just might get hit. The bleachers at little league fields, though, usually don’t come with this warning. Elizabeth Lloyd, a New Jersey resident, probably wishes they did.

A few years ago, she was sitting at a table near a fenced bullpen when the catcher, warming up a pitcher, made an errant throw. The ball left the playing area and hit Lloyd in the face. She reacted in a totally rational manner and decided to sue the 11-year-old boy (13 by the time the suit was filed). I assume she was only trying to teach him the valuable life lesson that some people are horrible and like to do ridiculous, awful things like sue kids. I doubt he has the good sense to appreciate her help, though.

Lloyd is suing for $150,000 for her medical costs alone. Add onto this all of the money she “deserves” for her pain and suffering and what her husband expects for loss of consortium, and I really hope this kid has an extremely good allowance.

The suit claims that the boy’s throw was intentional, Lloyd was “assaulted and battered,” the throw was negligent and careless, and — I’m not making this up — the injury was caused by “inappropriate physical and/or sporting activity.” And I always thought that throwing a ball on a ball field or its practice areas was where you were supposed to play.

On top of all this, Lloyd is demanding a jury trial. I think that’s really ballsy. I certainly wouldn’t want to try to convince a whole group of people that the cute kid who was playing an innocent sport instead of being out causing mayhem in the community should be punished.

I’ve seen enough major league baseball games to know that those million dollar salaries don’t always mean perfect aim and control. I’ve seen errors that would shock even the most sports illiterate. And when these stupid errors occur, I hear announcers make the same type comment over and over.

“It’s like watching a little league game.”

“I haven’t seen that bad an error since little league.”

“He’s the best at his position in the league, but that play was straight out of little league.”

Courtesy of DEADSPIN.

That’s right, people. Little leaguers aren’t yet at that major league level of almost-but-not-quite perfect. They make a lot of errors, such as throwing a ball to a place or toward a person that they didn’t mean to throw it.

There is this thing called the “baseball rule,” which basically says you cannot sue for injuries caused by events that happen on the field because, since you know there is good risk you’ll get injured, you assume the risk when you attend. Shouldn’t this rule apply all the way down to those players who have less talent and skill than the big leaguers? I hope for the sake of this player and his family that this court thinks so.

There’s No Crying in Baseball

The problem with little league sports is that there is a lot of whining and temper tantrums involved. But since it’s a bunch of young kids playing, that is to be expected.

One such temper tantrum took place recently in California. A 14-year-old boy scored the game-winning run and, for some child-like, immature reason, he had the nerve to get excited. In his ridiculous happiness, he threw off his helmet to celebrate with his teammates and rudely threw it in the air — something every no professional player would ever do — admittedly after being told not to.

Courtesy of GIPHY.

As the helmet landed, it hit Alan Beck in the ankle, sending him into a major hissy fit. To be fair, the helmet allegedly tore his Achilles tendon, so I’d probably be a little upset, too; however, I most likely would not sue. I’m not a 14-year-old boy, though. Then again, this suer wasn’t either. He was a little bit older than the rest of the players, which is why he was coaching the team instead of playing on it.

Yep, the coach sued the player for $500,000. According to his lawyer, the coach has a case because “a guy who volunteers his time to coach should not be subjected to someone who throws a helmet in the manner that he did.” What? So what I’m hearing is that a baseball coach shouldn’t be subjected to normal baseball celebrations.

According to CBS Sports, the suit will likely be dropped for the above mentioned baseball rule, but even better, the coach said that he would simply drop the case – if the boy apologized.

The boy did what I would do in the same situation. He said no way! I wouldn’t apologize to a cry baby, either. I do hope, though, that the case is dropped before the family has to dish out any more money defending itself.

If you want to do a little research, there are a lot of these “sue little leaguers for not being perfect” cases out there. I never thought I’d have to say this, but can we all stop suing kids for ridiculous things? And happy second half of the baseball season: may your team win so long as your team is my team!

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Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashes) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time.

Featured Image Courtesy of [Edwin Martinez via Flickr]

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post For the Love of the Game: Lawsuits and Little League appeared first on Law Street.

All anyone seems to talk about recently is the Hobby Lobby case and women’s reproductive rights. I think this is grossly unfair. Yes, I agree that women’s health is important; but in all the hustle and bustle, we have forgotten about the other half of the population and their delicate reproductive systems. So, I’m going to bring those deprived, long-ignored men’s issues to the spotlight and finally give them the attention they deserve.

First, some background information that you just might not know:

• A man’s reproductive health is apparently directly linked to his fragile self-esteem. Take, for example, the policeman who sued rapper Meek Mill. Mill allegedly made derogatory comments in the press about the officer, which the cop claimed resulted in his boys in blue losing the heat they were formally packing. This just goes to show that men need a lot of (ego) stroking to remain functional.
• Long ago in France, women could sue for divorce if their husbands had ED. How, you ask, would they be able to prove this? Well, it turns out women didn’t have to prove anything. In a reversal on the old ‘innocent until proven guilty’ credo, it was the man’s job to prove he didn’t have a problem. In the infamous impotence trials, men might request a Trial by Congress allowing them to prove they could perform in the bedroom by, well, performing in the bedroom…in front of the court.
• In India, impotence was legally classified as mental cruelty. I think we can all agree with that. The frustration and shame that this causes is torturous (I assume), and I can understand why a court would say Mother Nature is a cruel mistress for causing it. Oh, wait…it’s mental cruelty caused by the man to his wife? Well, those poor men – it’s just never about them.

Now that you see that men all around the world and throughout time have been mistreated and hurt by their lack of reproductive support, I’m sure you will agree that women have been given way too much attention in the healthcare arena as of late.

Courtesy of Tumblr.

To help change that, I am going to tell you about a couple of lawsuits that resulted when the healthcare industry failed men and their genital health.

The Short Story

The first suit takes place across the border in Canada where a man was rushed to a Montreal hospital with a “fractured appendage.” Details of how the fracture occurred were not given, but what is known is that the injury happened while the man was performing his husbandly duties.

He went to the hospital with great faith that the experienced doctors would be able to help him. The doctors decided that surgery was needed and promptly acted to bring this man out of his misery.

Sadly for him, the procedure had some unintended effects: it left an ugly scar, it stopped him from having intimate relations with his wife, and, maybe worse than anything else, the doctors, like all my hairstylists, trimmed off more than was requested. He allegedly ended up an inch shorter, and unlike my hair, he can’t just wait two weeks for it to grow back. After all this, his unsatisfied wife left, presumably to find a man more able to meet her sizable needs.

The man is now suing the hospital for its alleged negligence and his “indescribable anguish.” The question now becomes, just how is he going to prove his claims? I hope for his sake he has before and after shots.

The Never-Ending Story

This next suit took place in Delaware where a truck driver needed some help getting his motor started: to get back to business, he jump-started his equipment with penile implant surgery.

After the surgery, the man’s ED was gone so you might think to yourself, “Success! Good for that lucky devil!” Unfortunately, the surgery left him with a new concern: he could shift into high gear but couldn’t get back to neutral.

If you have ever seen a Viagra commercial then you know that if your erection lasts more than four hours, you should probably contact a doctor. This trucker must not be a late-night television watcher, though, because he didn’t contact the hospital until a firm eight months had passed.

That’s right: he had an eight-month erection. That’s real stamina.

The doctors claimed they weren’t entirely at fault because the man should have come to them sooner, like maybe when, after the surgery, his “scrotum swelled to volleyball size.” Anyway, another surgery fixed the current problem and a third surgery fixed the initial problem, but it still left the man with bad memories and a lot of medical bills.

The angry driver did what any man who suffered from eight months of hardship would do: he began a medical malpractice suit alleging negligence on the part of the doctors.

I’m sad to say that once again our legal system failed to protect the sexual health and well-being of our male population: it took less than two hours for a jury of his peers to decide that there was no negligence.

I’m all for civil justice, but I think we cannot reach equality until we consider all people. Stand up for men’s rights today!

Courtesy of Tumblr.

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Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashs) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time.

Featured image courtesy of [Hammerin Man via Flickr]

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Penile Code: The Unappreciated Plight of Men’s Reproductive Health appeared first on Law Street.

What do Illinois nuns and a New Jersey doctor have in common? Obviously the answer must be strip clubs. Strip clubs: some nuns can’t live with them, one doctor can’t live without them…mainly because when he tries to leave, they just lure him back in.

Exotic dancers are the stars of this post because they live wild lives resulting in legal hijinks that will amuse even the most button up among us. (Hopefully this short strip tease has been enough to get you to keep reading.)

Nuns, Noise, Neon Lights

If you’ve ever been to a club (I’m just talking about a regular club right now, we’ll get to the strip part in just a bit), then you know that electro-pop, techno-y dance music is loud. Like, get in your head, you can’t think of anything else and you certainly can’t hold a conversation with someone loud.

Now, close your eyes and picture yourself out on the dance floor, or even right outside the club, pulsating music pounding through your veins. No matter how much you might want to, don’t start to dance. Instead, sit down and say your nightly prayer. Can you do it?

Well, the Missionary Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo Scalabrinians say they have been trying this exercise for quite some time now, and the answer is no, they cannot pray in this environment. Bordering strip joint, Club Allure, was open less than a year before the nuns decided to bring suit alleging that the club broke a state law requiring an adult-entertainment facility to be at least 1,000 feet from a place of worship. And just in case nobody wants to enforce that pesky law, the nuns are also saying this place is just a good old-fashioned public nuisance.

Club Allure claims that there are no police records supporting the sisters’ nuisance claim and that they have done nothing wrong. It is their intent to fight the nuns — I feel wrong even just typing that. So, the debate will move to the courts: are the neon lights, used condoms, and overall debauchery that plague the sisters on the regular – according to their claim – enough to shut down this scintillating business? Or will the sisters have to find a way to love their permanent neighbors?

Love and Loss

Don’t you hate it when strippers drug you and run up charges on your corporate card? Don’t you also hate it when you say you weren’t at the strip club on the nights charges were racked up, and are then told there is video surveillance of you actually being there?

If you hate those things, then you and Dr. Zyad K. Younan have a lot in common. Younan allegedly visited an elite gentleman’s club, Scores, four times in a 10-day period, racking up around $135,000 in food, drink, and…how best to put this…. ‘other’ charges. Only, instead of paying the tab or, if he couldn’t afford to pay, washing dishes in the back room like the rest of us poor slobs who can’t afford our bills, Younan decided to try contesting the charges with an impossibly absurd story. He claimed he didn’t owe the money because he wasn’t there and even if he was, he only spent money after being drugged out of his mind by the women. If this seems to be an elaborate “nana-nana-boo-boo, Scores, I’m not paying, and you can’t make me {sticks out tongue},” then keep reading for the secret, crazy plot twist.

If strip clubs didn’t need to constantly worry about lawsuits from nuns, then maybe Scores would have just let this drop. It turns out, however, that nuns are litigious and apparently so are strip joints. Scores sued Younan for the balance.

Addressing their upcoming suit and Younan’s claims of innocence, club spokesman Stephan Hyman addressed Younan’s drug complaint by asking the very question I wondered myself: If Younan was drugged that first night, then “why did he come back three more times? If he didn’t have a good time the first time, he should have stayed home the next three times.”

It turns out there is a legitimate possible answer: maybe Dr. Younan WAS ACTUALLY TELLING THE TRUTH!

A couple of months after this story placed Younan in an uncomfortable tabloid spotlight, the DEA and the New York police uncovered a ring of stripper-crooks who went to upscale bars and lured unsuspecting men back to strip clubs, Scores being one, spiked their drinks with drugs such as Molly, and then got them to sign off on huge bills in their druggy haze. And guess who their biggest alleged victim was: one Dr. Zyad K. Younan.

While the strippers have all been arraigned, there are no pending charges against the clubs themselves. And, as of a few weeks ago, Scores has not dropped the lawsuit. Will the strippers be convicted? Will Scores be paid? Will the doctor be vindicated? Only time will tell who has the best case: the strippers or the surgeon.

What I know is that, between the fun nun lawsuit and the stripper-con trials, I need someone to tell me why people always want to get out of jury duty. It seems like court would be a fun place to spend the day – as long as you bring a stack of ones.

Courtesy of Giphy

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Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashs) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time.

Featured image courtesy of [Geralt via Pixabay]

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Strip Suits: Exotic Dancers in Court appeared first on Law Street.

Journalist Mignon McLaughlin once said that “a sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles.” However, in the legal world, the inverse is often shown to be true: a sense of humor is only a minor defense against major troubles.

When pleading insanity just seems too mundane, creative criminal defendants come up with some unusual defenses to prove their innocence; but, funny as these may be, do they actually work? Maybe sometimes, but let’s look at two such defenses that most likely will never lead to an innocent verdict.

Fat Men Can’t Murder

In 2006, the ironically named Edward Ates was accused of driving from Florida to New Jersey to kill his son-in-law. Even though the prosecution painted Ates as a competent marksman with some military experience, said he had been doing online research on how to kill, submitted a conversation he had with his sister in which they went over the timeline of events, and had his own sister testify that her brother had her lie to the police about where he was at the time of the murder, his attorney said Ates could not possibly be the killer.

But why?

Well, for one, the damning military experience turned out to be a desk job. Also, apparently people with too much time on their hands often pick up hobbies — up to and including researching methods to commit murder. Oh yeah, and did I mention he was really, really fat? Because that’s important.

You, like the defense, might be asking yourself how a man who weighed 300 pounds at only 5’8” could possibly drive for 21 hours straight, walk up four steps, and still manage to hold a gun straight. My guess is that it was just the adrenaline rush you get in exciting situations; instead of suddenly being able to lift a car off a child, perhaps this guy was able to make a short climb in order to get rid of someone who must have been — assuming guilt here — a real nuisance in his life. The defense, on the other hand, apparently wouldn’t have bought my potential solution. According to them, there was no way this man could have successfully completed such a physically taxing feat, and thus he must be innocent.

As it turns out, the jury at this trial didn’t buy the obesity defense and the fat man was convicted of first degree murder.

(This case actually made it on appeal to New Jersey’s highest court in States vs. Ates, 217 N.J. 253 (2014), but it got there on the merits of whether the admitted evidence of the wiretapped call between Ates and his sister was legal in the state of New Jersey — not on whether obesity is a legitimate legal defense. The high court concluded that the evidence was admissible, and the verdict stands.)

Good Jokes Aren’t Illegal

Did you hear the one about the man who “accidentally” poured gasoline on his nag of a wife and then pulled out a lighter and tried to light it — all while winking at his young son? Do you get the punch line? I don’t, but there must be one somewhere in there or otherwise the defense that this all happened “as a joke” just wouldn’t make sense.

I am the type of person who likes to find humor in life. I am always up for a good joke, whether knock-knock or practical. However, Khemraj Samlall’s recent “prank” just seems to have fallen flat.

This all started when Samlall got home really late, or rather really early, one morning and, as is not surprising, when he arrived, he was a little drunk. His wife was not thrilled. She berated him for his actions; he threatened her with a knife in front of her child, went and got a gas can, doused her in gas (not on purpose according to him), and then pulled out a lighter. Basically, tit for tat.

According to him, this was all done as a joke. Are you laughing as hard as he apparently was? As the events mentioned above only happened recently, there has yet to be a trial, though Samlall has been accused of “aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without the intent to kill.” And while I normally try to keep my legal opinions to myself, I feel pretty confident that I know how this defense will work out for Samlall if he can find an attorney willing to try it: if nobody laughs at your joke, it probably isn’t funny.

Justice Scalia once said, “I don’t want a competent lawyer. I want a lawyer who’s going to get me off.” United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. 140 (2006). However, if your counsel — or intended defense — is neither competent nor likely to work, maybe you should move on to plan B.

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Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashs) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time.

Featured image courtesy of [Divine Harvester via Flickr]

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Dubious Defenses: When Humor and the Court Just Don’t Mix appeared first on Law Street.