Articles Posted in Strange Court Filings

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Yeah, firing a bottle rocket out of your butt is never a good idea. And it’s even worse if it fails to launch! From the recently filed West Virginia case of Helmburg v. The Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity and Travis Hughes:

Defendant Hughes was highly intoxicated … and decided in his drunken stupor that it would be a good idea to shoot a bottle rocket out of his anus on the ATO deck …

Plaintiff and his girlfriend were also present on the ATO deck.

Defendant Hughes placed a bottle rocket in his anus, ignited the fuse, but instead of launching, the bottle rock blew up in Defendant’s rectum, and this startled plaintiff and caused him to jump back, at which time he fell off of the ATO deck, and he became lodged between the deck and an air conditioner unit adjacent to the deck.

So, you might be wondering, what legal duties does the plaintiff allege were breached by ATO?

ATO owed plaintiff a duty … to supervise its guests and its own fraternity members, such as Defendant Hughes, and other under age persons, from consuming alcohol on its premises, which leads to stupid and dangerous activities, such as shooting bottle rockets out of one’s own anus.

What about Mr. Hughes?

Defendant Hughes also owed plaintiff and others on the ATO deck a duty of care not to drink under age, or to file bottle rockets out of his anus.

And here’s a count for both defendants:

Plaintiff asserts that the activity of underage drinking and firing bottle rockets out of one’s own anus constitutes an “ultra-hazardous” activity which exposes both of these defendants to strict liability.

A painful night, all around.

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So, you’re telling me that if metal is exposed to the sun, it’ll get hot? NFW! Who would have thought that? Not this woman, who had some wire in her bathing suit (guess where) and got burned. As reported by The New York Post:

A Long Island sun worshipper landed in the hospital with third-degree burns on her bust after the underwire in her two-piece bathing suit became superheated, she said.

Underwire? Oh, so that’s how come this suit makes me feel so much younger! Who knew?!

The black Coco Reef swimsuit had been sitting in her drawer for a while before Robin Corrente, 50, of Yaphank, got the chance to try it out.

She wore it on a 90-degree afternoon in August 2008 to soak up some rays in her yard. “After about an hour, I was hurting,” Corrente said. “I went up to take a shower and I realized . . . I had a lot of blisters.”

A trip to the hospital confirmed she had serious burns, and doctors had to remove a piece of flesh “the size of a dime” from her right breast.

Yikes. That had to hurt. Now she’s trying to take down the very folks who helped, um, prop her up.

Corrente is suing Coco Reef manufacturer Swimwear Anywhere in Manhattan Supreme Court. Swimwear Anywhere declined to comment.

And if you think The Juice is rooting against Ms. Corrente, think again. Although she could have thought of the scenario of the wire heating up during sunbathing, certainly the manufacturer should have foreseen it. Here’s the source.

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You can allege anything. The question is, can you prove it? Check out the allegations in a lawsuit currently pending in Fairfax County (Virginia) Circuit Court, as reported in The Washington Post:

Paragraph 10. “At the time of the collision, Defendant was going 85 miles per hour.”

Paragraph 12. “At the time of the collision, Defendant was having sex with a female.”

Paragraph13. “At the time of the collision, Defendant was driving admittedly drunk.”

Paragraph 14. “At the time of the accident, Defendant was partially or totally in the backseat of the car.”

So those are the allegations. Said the defendant’s lawyer …

… there was “no statement by anyone that they were driving on the Beltway having sex” and “no facts on it.”

The Post also reports that …

Records show the defendant, from Woodbridge, was convicted in Fairfax district court of drunken driving near Telegraph Road in May 2010. But now he denies he was driving. (What?) He was coming from his 21st birthday party in Baltimore, court records state. The woman involved has been dismissed from the case. There was someone ELSE in the car too, and HE denies driving as well.

Should be quite the trial. (It’ll take place next week.) Here’s the source.

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If you’re serving 15 years in prison, how better to spend your time than trying to get yourself out of prison? This gent came up with an interesting theory that, though it hasn’t yet succeeded, it at least passed one court’s smell test. As reported in The South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

During trial, the judge’s German shepherd whined, barked and put his paws up on the swinging door between her and the rest of the courtroom, a defendant said in his appeal for a new trial.

So?

Philip Leigh, 52, argued that because his legs were shackled, the jury may have thought the dog was there to protect Broward Circuit Judge Susan Lebow.

Leigh, now serving a 15-year sentence in a Lake City prison for cocaine trafficking, says his … attorney should have objected to the shackles and the shepherd during the July 2005 trial.

The Fourth District Court of Appeal on Wednesday [sent] the case back for a hearing. There may still be a new trial, or not.

Who would’ve thought it’d get that far? Here’s the source.

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judge%20leave%20out%20of%20courtroom%20gavel%20funny.gif Regular Juice readers may recall that this will not be the first post involving a Motion to Continue a trial due to … a football game! I’m sure it won’t be the last, unfortunately.

And just in case you think that maybe The Juice just doesn’t like football … He was spotted at 3 Super Bowls over the years, coincidentally all involving the Redskins … Furthermore, he was spotted at almost every home Redskins game from 1967 until that painful day in December 1996 (notwithstanding the thrashing of the Cowboys) when the curtains closed at RFK.

Having established his bona fides, let’s just say it’s not a motion The Juice would ever file (not that there’s anything wrong with it …) Think the judge granted it? Yup, he did. Click here to read the Motion.

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Clearly, the attorney asking the question needs to get out more. Not so for the responding attorney. From an actual case…

NTERROGATORY NO. 16: Please describe how “beer pong” is played, including the needed equipment and/or materials.

RESPONSE TO INTERROGATORY NO. 16: Defendants object to this Request as vague, ambiguous, overly broad, unduly burdensome, and not reasonably calculated to lead to discovery of admissible evidence. Subject to and without waiving the foregoing objections, Defendants state that the term “beer pong” appears to refer or relate to at least two different activities, each of which require different equipment and/or materials, and both of which are subject to substantially varying “house rules,” depending on the players and/or location of the specific instance of the activity.

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I know you’re probably wondering, how could a sexual harassment claim arise from a cocktail waitress’s employment at a strip club? Well, suspend your disbelief, and take my word for it. Or click here to read about it in the Gothamist.

Anyway, that’s not the point of the post. The point of the post is the caption of the Complaint:

LOURDES GARCIA, on behalf of herself and hose similarly situated, PLAINTIFFS [emphasis added]

So, just in case you missed it, the law firm for the strip club cocktail waitress referred to its client and her peers as “hose.” Sure, you can quibble and say that it’s spelled “hoes” or “hos,” to which The Juice says, close enough! And as pointed out by Ravi Sharma, who gets props for bringing this to The Juice’s attention:

… it is even more fishy that in the first line instead of using “those” they state “all others.”

If they has just used “all others” in the caption, it would not be susceptible to the unfortunate and plausibly deniable typo being missed (as “hose” is correctly spelled) by the spell checker.

Why didn’t they use “all others” in both places?

You can see the first page of the Complaint here.

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The magazine, that is, not the dwelling. Unfortunately for Jorge Niebla, his current dwelling is a prison cell. And he’s having a real hard time getting his Penthouse subscription. So, feeling aggrieved, and having plenty of time on his hands, he sued. Per the New York Post:

A Florida prison inmate is suing the nudie magazine because it refused to send a subscription to him behind bars.

Jorge Niebla, who is serving 13 life sentences for kidnapping and armed robbery, filed the two-page suit in handwritten block letters to Manhattan Federal Court.

“[I] would like to purchase the magazine … but staff are being predjudice and don’t have respect for my basic rights,” Niebla wrote in the bizarre filing.

Penthouse couldn’t be reached for comment.

A judge last week ordered Niebla to fill out a form to get a waiver of the $350 filing fee.

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judge%20leave%20out%20of%20courtroom%20gavel%20funny.gif Regular Juice readers may recall that this will not be the first post involving a Motion to Continue a trial due to … a football game! I’m sure it won’t be the last, unfortunately.

And just in case you think that maybe The Juice just doesn’t like football … He was spotted at 3 Super Bowls over the years, coincidentally all involving the Redskins … Furthermore, he was spotted at almost every home Redskins game from 1967 until that painful day in December 1996 (notwithstanding the thrashing of the Cowboys) when the curtains at RFK closed.

Having established his bona fides, let’s just say it’s not a motion The Juice would ever file (not that there’s anything wrong with it …) Word is that the judge was inclined to grant it (and may have done so already). Click here to read the Motion.