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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. A Mescalero Apache family in southern New Mexico has sued the producers of Steven Spielberg's television miniseries, "Into the West," claiming a set stylist cut an 8-year-old girl's hair without regard for tribal customs. "It's part of our culture not to cut a girl's hair until her Coming of Age ceremony," the girl's father, Danny Ponce, said Friday in a telephone interview. "The only ones allowed to do that are the parents. Nobody asked for permission." Ponce filed suit in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque on March 6, naming Turner Films Inc. and the unknown stylist as defendants....

NEW YORK - A former boxer who says he sustained permanent brain damage in a 2000 bout against Arturo Gatti is now suing, saying Gatti weighed too much for the fight. Joey Gamache, 39, and his wife filed a lawsuit in federal court Feb. 21 alleging breach of contract over the Feb. 26, 2000 bout at Madison Square Garden. Gatti won the fight. By contract, both fighters had to weigh 141 pounds by at least eight hours before the bout started, according to the suit filed by lawyer Keith Sullivan. Gatti made weight the day before the fight, but the...

GET READY for the next mass-tort crusade: protecting our kids from the ravages of Big Cola. According to reports, a group of lawyers is gearing up to file lawsuits that will seek to blame Coke, Pepsi and others for obesity, tooth decay and other childhood health ailments. An article in the Boston Globe Magazine has called it part of a "national legal movement to make soft drinks the next tobacco." Instead of tar and nicotine, we'll be hearing about corn sweeteners and caffeine; maybe Dr. Pepper can stand in as the new Joe Camel. Ridiculous? More like inevitable. For some...

$50 million lawsuit is being filed against Hoboken and its police department by the parents of a 16-year-old boy who drowned in the Hudson River shortly after escaping from Hoboken Police Headquarters. "He was in the custody of the police department, he was a juvenile and it was their responsibility to maintain his safety and under very suspicious and nefarious circumstances he allegedly escaped and drowned in the Hudson River," attorney Robert Bianchi said. "To this day, a year later, no one from law enforcement has had the courtesy to contact the mother or her attorney to let them know...

OLYMPIA – Three years after getting drunk, blowing through a stop sign and triggering a wreck that left her passenger critically injured, a former Idaho resident has filed a $1.5 million claim against Washington's Pend Oreille County for not detaining her before she caused the crash. In her claim, Ashlen Lee says that on June 12, 2002, a county sheriff's deputy stopped her truck around 3:30 a.m. and could see that she had been drinking. But after quizzing her, the deputy let the 17-year-old drive away. The officer said he'd give them a warning," said Lee's attorney, W. Russell Van...

They might have been congratulated for their "green" efforts in an area of heavy air pollution. Instead a group of French cleaning ladies who organised a car-sharing scheme to get to work are being taken to court by a coach company which accuses them of "an act of unfair and parasitical competition". The women, who live in Moselle and work five days a week at EU offices in Luxembourg, are being taken to court by Transports Schiocchet Excursions, which runs a service along the route. It wants the women to be fined and their cars confiscated. Two years ago a...

STUART, Fla. (Court TV) — A car crash that left two teens dead and another in prison continues to afflict this small coastal town nearly three years after the fatal accident. Stephen Bromstrup, 16, allegedly downed several beers that he sneaked into a June 17, 2002, pool party that Barbara and John O'Brien threw for their 14-year-old daughter. After the party, Bromstrup and two friends, Daniel Downes and Matthew Gordon, climbed into a 1988 Pontiac Firebird and took off through the O'Briens' upscale neighborhood, according to police. Prosecutors say Bromstrup raced through a stop sign at 70 miles an hour...

Gladewater Bank Robber Sues Police An East Texas man who was shot while attempting a bank robbery in 2003, is now suing the city where he was shot, in the attempt. Police in Gladewater say 44 year old, Charles Clinton Baugher was shot in May of 2003 after police chased down the van he and his son were in. Baugher attempted to rob Gladewater National Bank, and received gunshots wounds to the head and left shoulder. He plead guilty to second degree felony robbery. In a lawsuit filed in Tyler, Baugher is suing Gladewater police officers for excessive force saying...

WILMINGTON, N.C. - A man who ordered a pint of frozen chocolate custard in a dessert shop got a nasty surprise inside — a piece of severed finger lost by an employee in an accident. Unlike a recent incident at a Wendy's restaurant in California, no questions of truth have been raised about the finger found in a package from Kohl's Frozen Custard. State officials went to the shop Monday, and the owner confirmed one of his employees lost part of a finger in an accident with a food-processing machine. Wilmington television station WWAY reported that Clarence Stowers found the...

Every product has illegitimate uses and undesirable consequences, but even lawsuits have had their limits. In 2002 in the U.S., car accidents killed 45,380 people and injured another 3 million, 838 children under the age of 15 drowned, 474 children died from residential fires, and 130 children died in bicycle accidents. Fortunately, local governments haven’t started recouping medical costs or police salaries by suing auto or bicycle companies, pool builders or makers of home heaters. All sorts of products, including cars and computers, are also used in the commission of crimes. But again, no one yet seriously proposes that these...

A woman who bit down on a partial finger served in a bowl of chili at a Wendy's restaurant in California said she was disgusted by the experience while her attorney has filed a claim with the franchise owner. Anna Ayala, 39, of Las Vegas, was dining at the Wendy's in San Jose, Calif., on March 22 when officials said she scooped up the inch-and-a-half long fingertip in a mouthful of chili. "Just knowing that there was a human remain in my mouth ... it is disgusting. It is tearing me apart inside," Ayala told ABC's "Good Morning America" on...

MEMPHIS, TN - A Tennessee jury has awarded punitive damages of more than $48 million to the family of two Tennessee women killed in a 2002 crash near Corning, Arkansas. The woman was driving a Dodge Caravan, and her family sued the DaimlerChrysler Corporation, which made the vehicle. The judgement came in the second phase of a trial in which the family of Vickie Mohr and her mother, Maurine Heathscott, claimed the vehicle was unreasonably dangerous. The 38-year-old Mohr, of Cedar Grove, Tennessee, and 76-year-old Heathscott, of Lexington, Tennessee, were killed in a three-vehicle accident on July 5, 2002. The...

WASHINGTON, Feb 24 (Reuters) - A consumer group sued the federal government on Thursday, saying that salt is killing tens of thousands of Americans and that regulators have done too little to control salt in food. Despite advisories to take it easy on sodium, Americans are now consuming about 4,000 milligrams a day -- nearly double the recommended limit to keep blood pressure under control, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said. So the CSPI renewed a lawsuit first filed in 1983 to ask federal courts to force the Food and Drug Administration to declare sodium a food...

As a general rule, suing a seven-year-old won't score you any points with St. Peter. But Mary Ellen Michaels and her lawyer, Judson Hawkins, already have guaranteed reservations at the Burning Lake of Fire Spa & Resort. Our saga began when Michaels was rollerblading down a Metroparks bike path in Strongsville last spring. She came upon a seven-year-old riding a bike. Behind the boy was his grandma, who was watching him while his parents were on a trip to New Orleans. Michaels yelled at the boy to get out of the way. The kid stopped his bike, giving Michaels barely...

Tsunami victims to sue French hotel chain Accor, Thai govt, US authorities VIENNA (AFX) - A group of Austrian and German victims of the Asian tsunami disaster are to file a lawsuit demanding that Thailand, French hotel chain Accor (Paris: FR0000120404 - news) and US forecasters prove they reacted adequately to the disaster, their lawyers said. The suit, naming Accor and the US-run tsunami early warning system in the Pacific as well as Thai authorities, will be filed in a New York district court this week, the lawyers said in Vienna.

VIENNA (AFX) - A group of Austrian and German victims of the Asian tsunami disaster are to file a lawsuit demanding that Thailand, French hotel chain Accor (Paris: FR0000120404 - news) and US forecasters prove they reacted adequately to the disaster, their lawyers said. The suit, naming Accor and the US-run tsunami early warning system in the Pacific as well as Thai authorities, will be filed in a New York district court this week, the lawyers said in Vienna. 'We found that serious lapses were committed,' said Herwig Hasslacher, one of the three lawyers for the group. They said the...

Unlike the FAKE cases that have been highly circulated online for the last several years (see http://www.StellaAwards.com/bogus.html for details), the following cases have been researched from public sources and are confirmed TRUE by the ONLY legitimate source for the Stella Awards: www.StellaAwards.com . To confirm this copy is legitimate, see http://www.StellaAwards.com/2004.html You may forward this issue, so long as you send it in its entirety. MEDIA OUTLETS: See http://www.thisistrue.com/2004.html *BEFORE* running the awards! (That page will have any updates and corrections, too.) -v- #6: The Tribune Co. of Chicago, Ill. The newspaper chain owns several newspapers, as well as the...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — A teenager is suing her school district for barring her from the prom last spring because she was wearing a dress styled as a large Confederate battle flag. The lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court claims the Greenup County district and administrators violated Jacqueline Duty's First Amendment right to free speech and her right to celebrate her heritage at predominantly white Russell High School's prom May 1. She also is suing for defamation, false imprisonment and assault. "Her only dance for her senior prom was on the sidewalk to a song playing on the radio,"...

SCV supports Jaqueline Duty Confederate Prom Dress Lawsuit to be filed in Federal court in Lexington, KY Press Release - December 17, 2004 - For Immediate Release This past May Jacqueline Duty, an attractive honor student in Russell, Kentucky, prepared to attend prom night wearing a special dress she had designed herself. It was a classically cut strapless sheath, ankle-length with a shallow slit on one side, and sewn completely out of beaded sequins. And it tastefully incorporated a symbol of her Southern heritage; a Confederate Battle Flag turned upwards so that the starry blue arms of the St. Andrew’s...

Woman struck by train sues Norfolk Southern PITTSBURGH, Pa. - A Jeannette, Pa., woman who was injured after being struck by a train while walking along railroad tracks sued Norfolk Southern last Thursday for failing to warn pedestrians that trains travel on tracks, according to a story on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review website. According to the suit, Patricia M. Frankhouser is seeking an unspecified amount in excess of $30,000 from the railroad for a January 6 incident that left her with a broken finger, cuts on her hand, and pain. Greensburg, Pa. attorney Harry F. Smail, Jr., who represents Frankhouser, was...