Kathy E <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: One note I usually put these out weekly, but I was pretty busy the last couple of weeks and I have been holding them, so I'm going to put out all of them today, sorry for the overload. ============ LEAD STORIES * The Lingering Influence of Mike Tyson: In West Monroe, La., in February, a 35-year-old mother allegedly bit a teacher, a teacher's aide, and the principal during a parent-teacher conference. And in January, a couple filed assault charges on behalf of their son against his Clay County (Ky.) High School basketball coach, Bobby Keith, for allegedly biting the kid during a game. And in January, the Nebraska Court of Appeals ruled that teeth are not a "dangerous weapon" under state law and thus that bites should be punished as minor assaults. * The London Daily Telegraph reported in January on the thriving addiction clinics of Dr. Robert Lefever, who specializes in helping people who are obsessed with helping other people. Among the 500 patients a year he sees in London and Kent are a number of women who compulsively marry alcoholics so they can cure them. Another recent patient was hospitalized for exhaustion after caretaking an overweight woman, including obsessively rolling her in her wheelchair to many places she did not want to go. * Timothy Lobdell, 20, escaped from the Fairbanks (Alaska) Correctional Center in January but was picked up the next day after several people identified him. Lobdell, who was awaiting sentencing for assaulting a police officer, made a decision a couple of years ago that limits his flexibility as an escapee: He has an expletive (the specific word was not revealed in newspaper accounts) tattooed in inch-high letters on his left cheek. THE LITIGIOUS SOCIETY * Bowler Sheila Torimino filed a $50,000 lawsuit against Montclaire Bowl in Edwardsville, Ill., in December after a piece of popcorn that was stuck to her shoe caused her to lose her balance during her approach, sending her sprawling on the lane just behind her ball. She claimed Montclaire Bowl should have posted warnings about popcorn on the floor. * In November, Vickie Dugan, fired as women's softball coach at Oregon State University, won $1 million from a jury in her sex discrimination lawsuit. She showed that she was paid less than the men's softball coach and argued as irrelevant her won-lost record (9-112 in conference games, 0-24 her last season) and the fact that two mostly-female search teams had recommended she be replaced. * In December, Kingston, Ontario, inmate Patrick McGuire, 58, won about $52,000[US] from the prison for a 1988 injury that occurred when a bale of hay fell on him during a work detail. He was in prison for murdering his wife. * A Hindu man, Mukesh K. Rai, filed a lawsuit in Ventura, Calif., in January against Taco Bell for causing him to do "the equivalent of eating his ancestors," said his lawyer, by negligently substituting a beef burrito for a bean burrito. Rai thus required medical attention, he said, was forced to miss work, and will have to travel to India for "purification." Taco Bell offered to calm the anguished Rai by exchanging the beef burrito for a bean one but, according to Rai, refused to refund him the price difference between the two. * The family of Karen Seaton, who died in 1995 when she fell off a barstool and hit her head at Wild Willie's in Sioux Falls, S. D., with a .441 blood-alcohol reading, filed a lawsuit in January against the bar for having served her too much to drink. * In September, Mr. Anoki P. Sultan filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., against Roman Catholic Archbishop James Hickey, claiming that the Church was responsible for the devil's taking over his body in 1983. Sultan said that would account for his being out of work so much, dropping out of college, seeking mental-health treatment, smoking cigarettes, speaking in tongues, and engaging in homosexual acts. He sought either $100 million or an exorcism. (The lawsuit was dismissed.) WEIRD SCIENCE * Physicians reported in a December issue of the British medical journal The Lancet on a 44-year-old woman who had been treated for a bout of spontaneous orgasms. The incidents occurred approximately every two weeks, lasted for about a minute, and, according to the physicians, "were neither particularly pleasurable nor satisfying because they were out of her control." Doctors detected an abnormality on the right side of her brain and treated her with an epilepsy medicine. * In a September issue of New Scientist magazine, researchers in Germany wrote that a type of hermaphroditic flatworm mates through what they call "penis fencing." In the presence of another, a worm lashes out with its penis to attempt to inject sperm, but the potential mate might have similar ideas itself, and in bouts that last up to an hour, each attempts to inseminate the other. Often both worms are left severely punctured. * University of Texas psychologist David Buss told reporters in September that his interviews of 107 couples reveal that certain behaviors are highly correlated with a tendency toward infidelity. Among them: arriving late for dinners or meetings, spending much time looking in the mirror, forgetting to thank friends for favors, laughing at injured animals, running up debts, and walking out of a room without turning off the light. * A British research team, writing in the December issue of Nature Genetics, identified a gene disorder that makes some people smell like rotting fish, almost without regard to their eating or hygiene habits. Most people produce a certain enzyme to absorb a particularly smelly protein made by bacteria in the stomach, but those who can't produce the enzyme see the protein seep out through their breath or perspiration. Said a researcher on a Canadian team also studying the problem, "These are severely isolated, depressed, and lonely people." SPORTS NEWS * In January, before a soccer game in Istanbul, Turkey, against visiting Bursaspor, police arrested 114 fans and confiscated 121 cleavers and scimitars, which was a good thing because the home team lost, 3-2. And in November, with a minute left in Yugoslavia's national championship basketball game before 7,000 fans in Belgrade, someone fired a tracer rocket that hit acting mayor Milan Bozic, causing severe burns and setting off a melee. RECURRING THEMES * Latest prices charged by parents to sell their kids (Covington, La., January, $7,400; Orlando, Fla., January, $1,000); latest game of automobile chicken that ended in a tie (Michigan Center, Mich., January, three hospitalized, one in critical condition); latest attempted robbery in which the unarmed perp simulates a gun with his thumb and forefinger but doesn't have his hand in his pocket at the time (La Ronge, Saskatchewan, December, not surprisingly, coming away with no money). -- Kathy E "I can only please one person a day, today is NOT your day, and tomorrow isn't looking too good for you either" http://members.delphi.com/kathylaw/ Law & Issues Mailing List http://pw1.netcom.com/~kathye/rodeo.html - Cowboy Histories http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2990/law.htm Crime photo's Subscribe/Unsubscribe, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the body of the message enter: subscribe/unsubscribe law-issues
