Not My Fault!
Paul Andrew Jackson was awarded about $31,000 (U.S.) in March in his lawsuit against the provincial Roads and Traffic Authority after hurting his back at a bicycle bridge near Wollongong, Australia. Jackson, a 35-year-old surfer, had stepped over a guardrail in the dark to relieve himself but underestimated the drop-off (after a self-reported six-beer night), falling 40 feet down and momentarily knocking himself unconscious. [Sunday Times (Perth), 3-4-02]
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a few of those giant cans of Foster’s in one night, and let me tell you, they will knock you on your butt!
Unclear on the Concept
In a joint federal-state child-protection announcement in December, the German government proposed that online pornography Web sites could transmit only between the hours of 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. (which, for example, is 5 p.m. to midnight in New York and 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. in California). [Financial Times Deutschland, 11-29-01]
Well, I feel safer already! Don’t you!
Latest Cutting-Edge Research
The journal Experimental Biology and Medicine reported that regulating men's hand temperature has no effect on the temperature of the rectum but that regulating scrotal temperature does. [Experimental Biology and Medicine, Volume 227, pages 105-107 (2002)]
What the…?
And an August Journal of Sex Research report by two Georgia State University professors concluded that people who desire sex but are not having it are grumpier than those who are having it or who don't want it. [Fox News, 8-30-01]
Well DUH!
The Litigious Society Kaziah Hancock and Cindy Stewart won almost $300,000 in damages in January from a breakaway Mormon sect in Manti, Utah, based on their lawsuit for fraud claiming that self-proclaimed prophet Jim Harmston failed on several promises, including one to produce Jesus Christ himself in the flesh. Hancock said Harmston persuaded her to give 67 acres of land to the church and that the church would give her back a place to live but that after the church made one payment on the new place, Harmston said God told him to stop paying. [Salt Lake Tribune, 1-29-02]
In March, a Canadian federal judge refused to quash convicted murderer David Wild's $2 million (U.S.) lawsuit against the Mission Medium Security Institution in British Columbia. Wild claims the guards aren't quiet enough when they do nighttime bed checks and thus make getting a good night's sleep impossible, causing Wild headaches, loss of balance, blurred vision, irritability and depression, and leave him too weary to play in the prison's soccer tournament. [National Post, 3-12-02]
You just can’t make this stuff up!