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Carol Anne Gotbaum, 45, was on her way to alcohol rehabilitation in Tucson when she was arrested after causing a disturbance during a stopover at Sky Harbor. Authorities said Carol Gotbaum, who had become upset over missing her connecting flight, was shackled and left in an airport holding room and found unconscious minutes later. Noah Gotbaum, a member of a prominent New York City family, had called the airport three times that afternoon, telling officials he was concerned about his wife's whereabouts because she was depressed and suicidal. Gotbaum's Arrest Records of the time of the calls indicate she was...

The family of a 16-year-old boy shot and killed in his Sebastopol home by Sonoma County sheriff's deputies has filed a wrongful-death claim against the county. The claim, a precursor to a lawsuit, says Jeremiah Chass was shot eight times by deputies who responded to a call from his home on the 1400 block of High School Road about 8:40 a.m. March 12. Jeremiah, a junior at Analy High School, did not pose a threat to Deputies John Misita and Jim Ryan but instead was "in acute mental distress," said the claim filed Wednesday by Walnut Creek attorney Andrew Schwartz...

BARTOW, Fla. — A jury awarded $25.8 million Friday to the family of a cancer patient who was given a wrong prescription, had a stroke and died several years later, lawyers said.Beth Hippely was prescribed Warfarin, a blood thinner, in 2002 to treat breast cancer. The prescription filled at a Walgreen pharmacy was 10 times what her doctor prescribed, court documents said. The Polk County Circuit Court jury found the prescription error caused a cerebral hemorrhage resulting in permanent bodily injury, disability and physical pain. The mother of three died in January at the age of 46. A 19-year-old pharmacy...

ATLANTA -- UPDATE: Federal prosecutors have recommended sentences of 121 months for Junnier and 151 months for Smith. D.A. Paul Howard has indicated he would go along with the federal prosecutors recommendation. A formal sentencing hearing will be held at a later date. Two police officers pleaded guilty today to federal and state charges in the shooting death of a 92-year-old Atlanta woman during a botched drug raid last fall. A third officer still faces charges in the woman's death. Forty-year-old Gregg Junnier, who retired from the Atlanta police force in January, and 35-year-old Officer J.R. Smith pleaded guilty to...

Police squad cars all across America bear the slogan, “There’s no excuse for domestic violence.” Yet there is one situation in which the media and the public seem to feel that domestic violence is sometimes excusable — when the perpetrator is a woman, and the victim is a man. Imagine a woman trapped in a loveless marriage with a jealous, potentially violent husband whom she believes may be cheating on her. She stays in the marriage because she fears she could be separated from her children should they divorce, and finds understanding, companionship and passion in a relationship with a...

Questionable directions given by online mapping services could have contributed to the death of James Kim, who perished while trying to save his stranded family. Kim, 35, was driving home from a vacation with his wife, Kati, and daughters, four-year-old Penelope and seven-month-old Sabine, on November 25 when he took a wrong turn and they became lost in the wilderness in Oregon, in north-west US. Kim left his family on Saturday to find help, but never returned. When searchers found his lifeless body yesterday, he had already walked 13 kilometres through rugged terrain, wearing only light clothing. But Kim -...

Sept. 25, 2006 — It sounds like a plot straight out of a soap opera: A nurse crosses paths with a former schoolmate in a recovery room, and the patient winds up dead. Was it an accident or was an old high school grudge a motive for murder? Right now, investigators in Charlotte, N.C., think it may be the latter. Looking at Olympic High School yearbooks from 1972 and 1973, it would appear that Sandra Baker and Sally Jordan had everything going for them. Both were extremely pretty and moved in the same circles. They even reportedly dated the same...

Detroit Police Investigate DETROIT -- A 6-year-old boy's 911 call for help was thought to be a prank, but the call was real and the boy's mother died, according to WDIV-TV in Detroit. Robert Turner called 911 to get help for his mother, Sherel Turner, 46, whom he found lying unconscious on the kitchen floor of their Detroit apartment in February, the station reported. "Then I had felt her tummy. She wasn't breathing. Then I had called 911," said Robert. "I told them to send an emergency truck right now." 911 Operator: "911. What's the problem?" Robert: "My mom has...

The Austin school district will pay $165,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of a slain Reagan High student. The settlement, which does not include admission of wrongdoing by the district, ends a federal discrimination lawsuit brought by the estate of Ortralla Mosley, who was fatally stabbed by her former boyfriend, Marcus McTear, at Reagan in 2003. The plaintiffs had sought $13 million in the lawsuit, which was dismissed Tuesday. The Austin American-Statesman obtained details about the settlement agreement under the Texas Public Information Act. Under the terms that the school board approved Feb. 20, Mosley's mother, Carolyn...

days-old human embryo preserved outside the womb isn't a person under the Arizona law that allows lawsuits for wrongful deaths, the Arizona Court of Appeals has ruled. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit filed by a Phoenix-area couple against the Mayo Clinic, accusing it of losing or destroying some of their fertilized eggs. The couple had asked the Court of Appeals to expand the definition of "person" under the wrongful-death statute to include embryos with the potential to be viable, but the court declined, saying it's a matter for the Legislature to decide. A 20-year-old Arizona Supreme Court ruling on...

PHILADELPHIA - A lawsuit filed by Teresa Heinz Kerry after her first husband, U.S. Sen. John Heinz, died in a midair collision in 1991 was settled for $15 million, according to newly unsealed court records. Last year, attorneys for The Philadelphia Inquirer sought to unseal the settlement papers when U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., ran for president; Kerry married Heinz's widow in 1995. At first, attorneys for the Heinz estate tried to prevent the Montgomery County Court records from being unsealed, citing the family's need for security and privacy. In October 2004, Montgomery County Judge Paul Tressler unsealed portions of...

BOSTON (AP) - The family of the late paleontologist and evolutionary scientist Stephen Jay Gould sued two Boston hospitals and three doctors Friday, alleging the famed author would still be alive if they had properly diagnosed his cancer four years ago. The doctors all failed to recognize a 1-centimeter lesion on a chest X-ray taken of the Harvard professor in February 2001, according to Alex MacDonald, the lawyer for Gould's survivors. Thirteen months later, when another chest X-ray was taken, the lesion had grown to 3 centimeters and the cancer had spread to Gould's brain, lungs, liver and spleen, MacDonald...

ALERT: FLORIDA GOV. JEB BUSH WILL BE ON FOX NEWS CHANNEL TODAY AT 4:00 PM EST. I wonder if he's going to be asked questions about Terri Schiavo! If so, it's about time.

Jackson, MS (LifeNews.com) -- The Mississippi Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that an unborn child is a person and wrongful death lawsuits may be filed on her behalf. Tracy Tucker pursued a wrongful death lawsuit when a mistake by doctors caused her to have a miscarriage in 1997. The unborn child was 19 weeks old at the time. At the time, the law only allowed such suits when the unborn child was post-viability. The 6-2 ruling expands the definition of a "person" in wrongful death cases to include all unborn children. Justice Jim Smith, writing for the court, said the...

After only about an hour and 45 minutes of deliberation, a jury found today that a man serving a 98-year term for murder had fatally shot a Rahway, N.J., police officer nearly 45 years ago. The jury awarded the officer's family $9.5 million in damages. After the decision, Elizabeth Bernoskie, the 72-year-old widow of the officer, Charles Bernoskie, exchanged hugs of jubilation with her six grown children and several of her 16 grandchildren. Family members said they were overjoyed that someone had finally been found legally responsible for a murder that had lingered unresolved for nearly half a century. The...

The family of a woman who was raped and killed by an unsupervised and violent sex offender settled a wrongful-death suit for $3.1 million yesterday. The state agreed to pay $2.6 million and King County $500,000 to the family of Deborah Funk, a 40-year-old mother of three who was raped and slain in her Federal Way home April 14, 2000. Roy Elexis Webbe, 34, a paranoid schizophrenic, was convicted of her murder in January this year and sentenced to life in prison after numerous court hearings that focused on his competency to stand trial. One jury deadlocked on the...

<p>PHILADELPHIA -- The Constitution does not require the government to provide competent rescue services for citizens, a federal appeals court has ruled.</p> <p>A three-judge panel decided last week against Charmaine Brown and Oral Douglas, whose 1-year-old son died in 1998 after choking on a grape. Their civil rights lawsuit charged that Shacquiel A. Douglas died because emergency workers arrived too late and were not trained properly.</p>