Eideard

A North Carolina couple is suing AirTran Airways, alleging that cockroaches crawled out of air vents and overhead carry-on bins during a flight from Charlotte to Houston in September.

Attorney Harry Marsh and his fiancé Kaitlin Rush say the insects appeared soon after takeoff, and when Marsh pointed them out to flight attendants, they did nothing to help…

The couple accuses AirTran of negligence and recklessness, infliction of emotional distress, nuisance, false imprisonment and unfair and deceptive trade practices, and is suing for more than $100,000 plus the price of their tickets…

Harry Marsh and his fiancé Kaitlin Rush say the cockroaches made them sick…

CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin predicted the case would never go to trial.

“This is a case that’s going to settle. Bottom line, I foresee a lot of free flights for this couple if they want to get back on AirTran,” Hostin said.

“It’s certainly not a pretty picture. The roaches were out long enough for them to take video and photographs, so that’s exhibit A.”

Sunny Hostin is right. Cockroaches on a plane appearing above a lawyer with a camera. AirTrans is doomed.

Dooomed!

A fraction of a penny is amounting to one big headache for 99 Cents Only Stores.

Two years ago, the City of Commerce retailer — faced with rising inflation and higher costs — raised the top price of its goods to 99.99 cents from 99 cents. Company executives thought it was a clever way to increase sales while staying loyal to the chain’s love for the number 99.

But the move seems to be riling some customers who say they weren’t aware of the nearly one-cent increase and felt duped into believing they were still paying 99 cents “only.” Because U.S. currency makes it impossible to pay 99.99 cents for an item, shoppers are essentially paying $1 plus tax at the cash register.

Now the company faces two class-action lawsuits that were filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court this month. The complaints allege unfair and deceptive business practices and misleading advertising.

“If they call themselves 99 Cents Only, it should be 99 cents,” said Dan Callahan, an Orange County lawyer…

The lawsuits are asking for unspecified monetary compensation and contend that 99 Cents Only should have been more clear in its advertising. A judge will decide whether the cases can proceed as class-action suits.

You know, I realize my penchant for rare – but distinctive – thoughts of violence are somewhat offputting. But, I think there should be at least a limited hunting season on some lawyers.

Just let each of us choose whichever one we’d like stuffed and mounted.

Israel has been gripped by a guessing game over the identity of a mysterious prisoner being held in such secrecy that even his guards do not know his name.

The elusive “Mr X” is being held for unspecified crimes and confined in total seclusion within a private wing of the maximum-security Ayalon prison.

No one knew of his existence until the shroud of secrecy was briefly lifted after a story appeared on the website of Israel’s leading Hebrew-language newspaper Yediot Ahronot.

Quoting unidentified officials within the Israeli penitentiary service, it disclosed that Mr X was being held in Unit 15, a wing of Ayalon prison that contains a single cell.

He is not though to receive any visitors and his wing is cut off from the rest of the prison by double iron doors. So hermetic are the conditions in which he is held that other prisoners can neither see nor hear him.

“He is simply a person without a name and without an identity who has been placed in total and utter isolation from the outside world,” a prison official was quoted as saying.

Within hours, the story had vanished from the newspaper’s website, allegedly after Israel’s domestic intelligence service won a gagging order banning all media coverage of the case…

But one Israeli security expert said that the secrecy suggested espionage rather than terrorism is likely to lie at the heart of the mystery.

In 1983, Marcus Klingberg, a leading Israeli scientist, was jailed for 20 years for passing secrets about the country’s biological warfare programme to the Soviets. But it was only after he had been in prison for a decade that Israelis heard for the first time about Klingberg’s existence, arrest and conviction.

Always heartwarming to learn of the standards developed by our loyal allies in the War on Terror. Even as our own government is perfectly capable of adopting every aspect of fascist megalomaniac rule.

Fellow freedom-fighters.

Ginger McGuire, 36, is suing for false imprisonment, infliction of emotional distress and negligence, her attorney Geoffrey Fieger said.

Mrs McGuire fell asleep on a late-night United Express flight from Washington, DC, to Philadelphia. She failed to wake up after the 50-passenger plane touched down at 12:27 am local time and everyone else disembarked.

A cleaning crew eventually roused her, but she was kept locked in the plane until federal officers were satisfied that she was not a terrorist.

Mr Fieger is a high-profile attorney…

Mrs. McGuire is a ninny.

The airline will probably get ripped-off for complying with TSA regulations.

“Zoe” opening up to the Press
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

French carmaker Renault is facing a [miniscule] backlash over plans to christen a new model Zoe.

Parisian Zoe Renault, 23, has hired lawyers to insist that Renault scrap its branding.

“I could not bear to hear: ‘Zoe’s broken down’ or ‘We need to get Zoe overhauled‘,” she told Le Parisien newspaper.

Renault is facing other petitions from women called Zoe. A Renault spokesman said Zoe was not a “definitive choice”.

The all-electric Renault Zoe ZE (zero emission) is set for launch in 2012. Zoe – which means “life” in Greek – was apparently chosen to underline the car’s environmental credentials.

Zoe Renault – who has no apparent family link to the company – said in an interview with Le Parisien that she could not bear to be associated with a car for the rest of her life, and all the inevitable sarcastic gibes.

Her lawyer David Koubbi, who specialises in the protection of first names and is representing other Zoes, said he had sent a letter to Renault’s chief executive arguing that the plans were an attack on the rights of his clients.

If the company does not change its plans, Mr Koubbi said he would take the case to court.

Cripes. A lawyer whose specialty is the protection of first names?

Sound like the practice of law in France attracts as many unproductive parasites as does the U.S. bar.

A firefighter has been arrested after a farmer was crushed to death by stampeding cows that may have been spooked by a fire engine’s siren and flashing lights, it emerged today.

Harold Lee, of Robins Farm, in Burtle, near Bridgwater, Somerset, was fatally injured when he was trampled by his own herd last August.

His family have alleged the animals were distressed by the emergency lights and sounds of the fire engine that was heading to a nearby emergency.

Lee, who was 75, died in hospital five days after he was left with severe head and chest injuries.

Police launched an inquiry and after six months officers confirmed a 49-year old-man from Somerset has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter by negligence…

A spokesman for the Devon and Somerset fire and rescue service refused to comment about the arrest. Earlier the service has said the crew was on its way to a traffic collision.

This is so stupid it isn’t even worthy of an attempt at a joke. The farmer’s death isn’t funny. Neither is the absurdity of filing charges against a first-responder driving an emergency vehicle.

Just not in my fracking lifetime!

Click on Tweet to feel suitably warned

Thanks, Mr. Justin

The tribunals used for putting suspects on trial at Guantanamo Bay are a “stain on America’s military”, a former military prosecutor has told the BBC in his first interview since resigning.

For Lt Col Darrel Vandeveld, a devout Catholic, the twin responsibilities of religious faith and military duty led to a profound moral crisis…

“I know so many fighting men and women who are stained by the taint of Guantanamo, so I’m here to tell the truth about Guantanamo and how a few people have sullied the American military and the constitution,” he told me during an interview in his home town of Erie, Pennsylvania.

A reservist, Darrel Vandeveld was called up as a military lawyer after 9/11 and served in Iraq, Bosnia and Africa.

In 2007, he became a prosecutor for the military commissions which tried terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, a role he took enthusiastically…

“I had zero doubts. I was a true believer.”

Interesting article about conscience, about injustice, about a nation that places itself above international law.

No one claims any inherent right of terrorists to be absolved of responsibility for their acts. But, the rule of law is supposed to distinguish modern democracies and republics from dictatorship.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

Huseyin Kalkan, leader of the city of Batman in southeastern Turkey, plans to sue Christopher Nolan, director of the latest Batman movie “The Dark Knight,” for taking its name without consultation.

“The royalty of the name ‘Batman’ belongs to us… There is only one Batman in the world, ” Hurriyet Daily News.com reported Kalkan as telling the Dogan news agency. “The American producers used the name of our city without informing us.”

Kalkan, who represents the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, added that he decided to take action after someone suggested that the cash-strapped community needed more funds. “We found this criticism right and started to look for legal possibilities of a case like that…”

Warner Bros said that it was only aware of the action through the media and had yet to be presented with any legal papers.

The mayor should move his whole town to California and get a lawyer from San Francisco. He’d fit right in.

An Italian woman who worked as a part-time judge as well as a lawyer was substituted by her identical twin sister in court so she would not lose out on legal fees when she had two simultaneous engagements.

The 54-year-old twins from northern Italy have now been charged with fraud and will go on trial in January, Corriere della Sera, reported on its website.

One of the twins, identified only as Gabriella, worked primarily as a lawyer but also as an honorary judge, a part-time, paid position that entails helping full-time judges when their case load is heavy.

When Gabriella was called to be a substitute judge she sent her sister twin Patrizia to stand in for her at an existing engagement as a defense lawyer elsewhere in the Milan area.

The problem was that sister Patrizia was not a lawyer like sister Gabriella but charged the clients anyway.

You mean they weren’t politicians, as well?