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A jury in Gwinnett County, Ga., has awarded $3 million to the widow of an Atlanta police officer who died while having three-way sex, finding that his doctor was negligent in not properly diagnosing and treating his heart condition.

Nancy Midlock, 56, of southwest suburban Shorewood, gets teary recalling a gut-wrenching day and night on the Riviera Maya south of Cancun. It was 2003 and her 8-year-old son, Brent, had disappeared while on a family vacation. He was discovered dead and mangled after being sucked into a pool drain pipe. A trip to Mexico can go from heaven to horrendous in a moment, grieving parents of vacationers say. Last week, Midlock was among those lobbying in Washington who have lost children in vacation accidents. They urged Congress to pass a bill that would let those traveling internationally know dangers...

Major disasters like terrorist attacks and mass epidemics raise confounding issues for rescuers, doctors and government officials. But they also pose bewildering legal questions, including some that may be painful to consider, like how the courts would decide who gets life-saving medicine if there are more victims than supplies. But courts, like fire departments and homicide detectives, exist in part for gruesome what-ifs. So this month, an official state legal manual was published in New York to serve as a guide for judges and lawyers who could face grim questions in another terrorist attack, a major radiological or chemical contamination...

CHICAGO (CN) - After a white employee for the city park district reported a possible incident of child abuse involving a black child and his aunt, her employer committed race discrimination by firing her, the 7th Circuit found.

FRESNO, California (KFSN) -- Earlier this week ABC30 showed you video of a woman who mistakenly fell into the fountain at a Pennsylvania mall, because she was distracted by text messaging. Well now that woman is suing the mall for not helping her. The video has received more than 1.5 million views since it went viral on YouTube last week. The woman in the video, Cathy Cruz Marrero, doesn't think the video is very funny. She claims she could have gotten seriously hurt and that the security guards should have helped instead of laugh. "I'm just like dumbfounded. And all...

<p>DOVER, N.H. — A New Hampshire high school student shocked so severely in shop class that his heart stopped beating is suing his teacher, the school district and the city of Dover.</p> <p>Kyle Dubois and his parents claim teacher Thomas Kelley did not warn Dubois and other students of the dangers of the electrical demonstration cords in their electrical trades class.</p>

In a case that takes parent-child squabbles to a new level, a Connecticut woman has won a lawsuit against her father after he refused to pay for her senior year of college. Following her parents' 2004 divorce, Dana Soderberg — then an art major at Southern Connecticut State University — procured a written agreement from her father that he would finance her education until she was 25. Her father counter-sued, saying his daughter broke the contract by failing to apply for student loans and providing him with receipts. A judge sided with the daughter, awarding her $47,000.

California’s state legislature approved a $20 million settlement for kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard Thursday, The Sacramento Bee reported. Dugard was kidnapped as an 11-year-old near her home in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., in 1991 and held captive for 18 years by Phillip Garrido and his wife Nancy. She was kept in a secret backyard prison and bore two of Garrido’s children before being discovered in August 2009. Dugard, now 29, and her family filed claims against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in February alleging it failed to monitor Garrido, a convicted sex offender.

<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) — David Carradine's widow filed a wrongful death lawsuit Thursday against a French company handling the actor's last film, claiming it failed to provide proper services to protect him.</p> <p>The lawsuit is against MK2 S.A., a French company responsible for the production of the movie "Stretch."</p>

Perhaps some of you might think of Rosenberg as just a perambulating chaser. Yet she and her lawyers reason that Google's walking directions were "careless, reckless, and negligent providing of unsafe directions." Now this is the point at which your complex minds become engaged and my rather simpler version becomes divorced. You see, if you ask Google Maps for walking directions on your laptop you get a very clear warning--yes, on one of those lovely beigey-yellow backgrounds--that reads: "Walking Direction are in Beta. Use caution--This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths." The question is, does this warning appear...

A woman is suing Google for more than US$100,000 after following directions on Google Maps and being hit by a car. Lauren Rosenberg, from Utah, using her Blackberry phone, followed the site's directions onto Deer Park Drive, which turned out to be a rural highway with no footpath. Instead of looking for an alternative route, Rosenberg tried to follow the road for the half-mile Google Maps had suggested, but was hit by a passing vehicle. "As a direct and proximate cause of defendant Google's careless, reckless and negligent providing of unsafe directions, plaintiff Lauren Rosenberg was led onto a dangerous...

In 2008, a city planner filed a lawsuit claiming a co-worker's perfume made it challenging for her to do her job. Susan McBride filed her lawsuit under the American with Disabilities Act, because she said he co-workers' fragrances made it hard for her to breath. She was awarded $100,000. "One of the things the city is going to have to figure out is how they enforce the policy they've agreed to," said attorney John Holmquist. "The city is going to have to get involved in hygiene, I'd guess you'd say, which no employer wants to get involved in." A notice...

ZURICH—Last month, Antoine Goetschel went to court here in defense of an unusual client: a 22-pound pike that had fought a fisherman for 10 minutes before surrendering. Mr. Goetschel is the official animal lawyer for the Swiss canton of Zurich, a sort of public defender who represents the interests of pets, farm animals and wildlife. He wound up with the pike as a client when animal-welfare groups filed a complaint alleging animal cruelty in the fish's epic battle with an amateur angler. The case emerged after a local newspaper photo showed the fisherman proudly showing off the four-foot-long fish—a scene...

ANTIOCH, Calif. – Jaycee Dugard and her family have taken the first step to sue the state of California for lapses officials made while she and her daughters were allegedly held captive by a convicted sex offender. Dugard, her two daughters and her mother, Terry Probyn, have each filed claim forms against the Department of Corrections, Rachel Wall, a spokeswoman for the state's Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board, said Friday. Dugard's spokeswoman, Nancy Seltzer, said the family members haven't decided whether they'll file a lawsuit.

A panel of three federal judges is holding a trial to determine whether to free 52,000 of California's 172,000 prison inmates to alleviate overcrowding. You might be asking yourself: Who elected these guys to run California? One of the three, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson, already determined in 2005 that California's prison health care system is so bad that it's unconstitutional. He put the system in receivership, and appointed law Professor Clark Kelso to oversee prison health care. Now Kelso is demanding $8 billion to renovate the system - even though the state spends about $14,000 on health care per...

Heather Squires was the designated driver. Never exactly a fun thing, but a college buddy of her husband's was driving up from Tucson to celebrate his acceptance into law school. So when her husband, Jason, asked, Heather said yes. It's not safe to be the designated driver these days, either. At Chuy's in Tempe, Heather's brother and her husband and the soon-to-be-law-school student knocked off four pitchers of beer. Everybody was having a great time. Around 9:30 p.m., they decided to head home. So they piled into Jason Squires' new pickup truck. As planned, Heather drove. They didn't get very...

Against the storm-ravaged backdrop of a New Orleans district, John Edwards will this week become the first Democrat heavyweight to announce his 2008 White House run.The declaration by Mr Edwards, a former senator and his party's vice-presidential candidate in 2004, will kick off a season of official announcements in coming weeks by the major contenders for the Democrat and Republican nominations. The choice of New Orleans, where life is barely back to normal 16 months after Hurricane Katrina, is a clear signal that some Democrats will seek to tar rival Republicans with what many see as the Bush administration's inept...

Children have a natural need to run around and scream. I first learned this truth on the playground of the Experimental Elementary School at Salisbury State Teachers College in Salisbury, Maryland. But I didn’t know I knew it until a generation later, when my own children were the same age. Now comes news that school administrators in Attleboro, Massachusetts, have outlawed the game of tag because “children might get hurt and sue the school”. What’s next? Outlawing cookies because they have sharp edges? Children are bundles of energy. That’s why recess was invented. To get the urchins sitting quietly and...

MILWAUKEE -- A Janesville man who admitted breaking into a home is suing the homeowner who shot him. Kurt Prochaska, 39, was on probation last fall when he admitted he broke in to a home and was shot by the homeowner, but that's not stopping him from going after cash through the courts. Late last year, the Rainiero family awoke to find Prochaska in their home. Michael Rainiero, a doctor, ordered Prochaska to leave. He didn't and was shot in the back. Nearly a year later, Rainiero's attorney said it's far from over because Prochaska is suing him from beind...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A nanny who was arrested after police viewed hidden camera video recordings that appeared to show her shaking a 5-month-old baby is suing the recording system's manufacturer. Claudia Muro, 32, alleges that distorted camera footage wrongfully led to her arrest and imprisonment. She was arrested in October 2003 and spent two years awaiting trial before prosecutors dropped the case because of concerns about the tape. The footage was broadcast on television around the country. The lawsuit was filed against Boca Raton-based Tyco Fire & Security, according to a report in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The lawsuit...