Any way you cut this, or try and justify the need for it, or pretend to care and make PR announcements that cite new sensitivity training for law enforcement officials, New York City’s odious stop-and-frisk policies are unconstitutional, racist and a violation of a person’s civil rights. It’s just that simple. I’m surprised more top New York civil justice lawyers aren’t filing law suits by the hundreds for victims of this abusive program.
The New York Daily News reported today that Mayor Bloomberg continued to defend the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policies one day after his top cop sat through a City Council grilling and revealed for the first time plans to make changes to the controversial program.
Bloomberg said the revisions that NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly revealed Thursday, including more training for cops and closer scrutiny from supervisors, were underway before a judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit against the police this week.
If this story in The New York Daily News today wasn’t so sad, it would almost be funny. Imagine the field day any top New York personal injury lawyer would have if we had golf courses like this in the USA.
“Welcome to the most extreme golf in the world,” says the European Union ambassador to Afghanistan, as half-a-dozen heavily armed bodyguards fan out around him and scan the Kabul Golf Club course.
But Vygaudas Usackas is not talking about security threats facing golfers in a war zone — he’s talking about the course.
It is one big hazard, with unfair fairways of rock and thistles, sand-and-oil “greens” and the chance of falling into a ditch making even the most wicked of traditional sand traps and water hazards seem benign.
The fairways can barely be distinguished from the rough and are scarred by ditches every 20 yards or so in preparation for a sprinkler system and dreams of covering the course in grass — but it has been like that for a year.
The greens are grey, made from sand and waste oil in an effort to provide a smooth surface. And the holes are, as Usackas says, “like everything here — relative”. Some have cups, others are just scratched depressions in the sand.
The course was built some 60 years ago during the rule of the then-king, Zahir Shah, but has been destroyed by 30 years of war: a line of rusting Soviet tanks from the 1980s can still be seen on a nearby hill.
Deminers cleared the course, but as an extra precaution Afzal set several thousand sheep roaming over it for five days — they set off no mines and all survived.
On the golf course, if you’re playing with the ambassador, that means the age-old instruction for playing a shot — “Don’t lift your head” — takes on a new meaning.
The New York Daily News reporter today that a second masseur is accusing John Travolta of rubbing him in a very wrong way — and going berserk when he didn’t get what he wanted.
Is it really, I mean really a surprise to anyone that the looney Travolta with his Scientology superstitions and so patently gay performances over the years (think Saturday Night Live, and Grease) has a wild side when it comes to men? The actor should easily be able to wiggle his way out of this — second — one. Failing getting an assault charge, which will no doubt be the outcome, perhaps his victims should hire the best personal injury lawyer they can find and go after the mega-watt star in civil court.
There are times when the make, model and price of a car has absolutely nothing to offer when the driver is out of his mind and driving like a mad man. In this case, it could have been a Chevy or a Ford, and not the BMW, that did all this terrible damage. And, I’m sure the value of the car will have no bearing on the size of the settlement some top New York auto accident lawyer will surely get for family of this poor man.
The New York Daily News reported that that a BMW barreling down a Brooklyn road at 90 mph smashed head-on into a minivan and killed a Pakistani immigrant who dreamed of becoming a doctor.
The dead man, 23, was driving his Ford Winstar north on Ocean Parkway in Sheepshead Bay near Avenue X about 11:45 p.m. Saturday. At the same time, Beka Skhirtladze, 26, lost control of his 560-horsepower BMW M6, spun out and crossed over into Iqbal’s lane.
Skhirtladze — going at triple the limit in the 30 mph zone — was hit with criminally negligent homicide, vehicular manslaughter, reckless endangerment and reckless driving charges for speeding and reckless driving.
The New York Daily News reported today that a 23 year-old man was crushed to death by a recycling truck early Friday morning on a Manhattan street.
The victim, who hasn’t been identified, was apparently trying to cross 10th Ave. near 45th St. outside of the crosswalk around 3 a.m. when he was hit by a private sanitation truck.
The man died at the scene.
The driver of the recycling truck remained at the scene, and police said that they don’t expect any charges to be filed against him.
The truck driver, visibly shaken, said the man came out of nowhere. “I didn’t even see him,” said the driver, who did not want to be identified. “He just went right under the rear tires.”
A worker who was riding on the rear of the truck also didn’t realize they had hit the man. “I didn’t feel anything. We pulled over and I just looked back after we stopped and saw him laying there,” said the worker, who also didn’t want to be identified.
“This is not something you ever want to see. That could have been one of us,” added the worker.
Accidents happen. As horrible as this one sounds, it doesn’t strike me as a situation that should ever see the inside of a courtroom.
There are some things that can make most any food taste better. One of those things is butter. The other is clearly bacon. I can’t have the stuff in my house and not eat it.
First, there was bacon is salads. Then, there was bacon in ice cream. Now, there is bacon in bookstores.
And, then came increases in obesity rates, diabetes, cholesterol levels, heart disease and death.
According to the New York Daily News today, Books of Wonder, the Chelsea bookstore that bills itself as the “largest and oldest children’s bookstore and the city’s leading specialist in children’s literature,” can now lay claim to another distinction: It is playing host to the Baconery, a previously online-only outfit that specializes in bacon-themed sweets. Its unambiguous creed is “Everything tastes better with bacon.”
This is a marriage made in lard. And, products liability lawsuits waiting to happen. Remember the woman who died last week from drinking to much coke?
While Books of Wonder already has a cafe that supplies, among other delicacies, treats from uptown’s Alice’s Tea Cup, it is now entering a whole new world of grease.
The store’s marketing manager says the Baconery will concoct bacon brownies, chocolate coconut bacon and white chocolate bacon pretzel rods. Some of the gut-busting, artery-clogging fare also will be laced with peanut butter, marshmallow, banana (yikes a health food) all mashed between two slices of bread. A delicacy euphemistically called the Have Some More Cholesterol. Perhaps they need another treat called, Who Your Trial Lawyer?
The News asked Drucker if, given America’s childhood obesity epidemic, he thought it was fitting for a children’s bookstore to be serving bacon treats? To which he replied, “It’s more of an adult thing,” as he pointed out that religious restrictions prevent him from eating pork.
An accident on the Bronx River Parkway in Westchester, NY claimed more lives this week because the damn roadway is too narrow, to windy and confusing to navigate, especially at night. Several years ago an accident on this death trap resulted in 6 deaths. The accident last week killed 7. It took 13 lives before something is being done about it.
The New York Daily News reported today that transportation officials announced Wednesday that concrete barriers will be installed on Bronx River Parkway viaducts to prevent a replay of last week’s accident. My questions is, why did it take this long to put up some stupid barriers after the first accident? Wouldn’t this fact make be fodder for a strong negligence case against the government by the families of those killed in last week’s accident? I’d like to hear comments from some New York personal injury lawyers who read this blog.
According to the report in the News, the 2-foot, 8-inch concrete slabs will be placed on the righthand side of the travel lanes to block a vehicle from continuing on toward the existing fence and vaulting off the elevated roadway.
The barriers — an interim safety measure — will be the same as the concrete median that separates northbound and southbound traffic lanes on the parkway.
Work began Wednesday morning.
According to an article in the New York Daily News today, a lawyer called the treacherous southbound stretch of Bronx River Parkway a death trap waiting to happen. Seven people died on the dreaded parkway on Sunday. He blamed authorities for not widening it. I’ve been on that highway many times and it’s treacherous. There is no shoulder on long stretches of it. It’s very, very windy and in some places the exits are precariously placed in such a way as to confuse drivers. You sometime can’t tell which way is straight.
The state government has been warned many times about the dangers of the BRP,” Richard Gurfein, a top New York accident lawyer said.
The state was sued on behalf of some of the six people killed in a horrific 2006 accident near the Bronx Zoo between exits 5 and 6 of the BRP — the same location as Sunday’s catastrophe.
In both cases — and in other accidents there over the years — cars have hit the median and gone out of control.
It will remain a mystery to me how people continue to eat the garbage they serve in these fast food joints. Seriously, the customers have to be brain dead? Or are they just too impossibly stupid for words. Have they not read all the stories about mad cow disease, salmonella, pink slime, antibiotic-laced livestock, inhumane living conditions and treatment of animals, and on and on. What will it take to ween people off this putrid, calorie and fat-laden diet indicative of virtually everything there is that’s bad about food. Will it take 100, or a 1000, or 10,000, or 100,000 or millions more negligence lawsuits to finally put a stop to these rat-infested grunge holes?
And, sadly, as it turns out, the reach of their infection-laden fare stretches far beyond the boarders of the U.S.A.
The New York Daily News reported today that an Australian judge has ordered KFC to pay 8 million Australian dollars ($8.3 million) to the family of a Sydney girl left brain damaged after eating one of the fast food giant’s chicken wraps. Brain dead from eating a fucking chicken wrap? And, I’d be willing to bet that the store opened it’s doors back up the following morning and is still serving the fucking things.
Monika Samaan’s family sued KFC, claiming the then-7-year-old girl contracted salmonella poisoning from a KFC chicken wrap in 2005. Samaan was in a coma for months and left with brain damage. I hope like hell they can at least shut one of these hell holes down.
New South Wales Supreme Court Justice Stephen Rothman ruled last week that KFC was responsible for the food poisoning. On Friday, he ordered KFC to pay AU$8 million damages plus legal costs.
KFC denied responsibility and said it would appeal.
Samaan’s lawyer, George Vlahakis, said the family was relieved the court battle was over, but is upset about KFC’s plans to appeal.
Devastated relatives of two fallen hardhats raged against a Manhattan judge Thursday after he cleared crane czar James Lomma in the workers’ deaths. But the judges ruling should have to bearing on the rights of the families of the deceased workers to file civil charges against the construction magnate, should it?
“This judge took a knife to our family’s heart,” said Xhevahire Sinanaj, whose cousin Ramadan Kurtaj was one of the victims. “We are beyond outraged.”
According to The New York Daily News, the mother of the other dead worker, Donald Leo, said Judge Daniel Conviser “failed every single crane operator today.”
“My son is not back today and I miss him,” Marie Leo said. “He died and more people will continue to die because of this judge.”
Lomma walked out of Manhattan Supreme Court with a smile on his face.
Conviser had warned both sides earlier that he would not explain his verdict and he stuck to that promise as he cleared Lomma of six criminal counts that could have sent the multimillionaire to prison for up to 15 years.
Leo’s parents shook their heads angrily as Conviser pronounced the words “not guilty” six times.
Lomma, 66, who had sat stone-faced through much of the two-month trial, stood up when Conviser finished and hugged his legal team. Then he flashed his pearly whites.
