A Stitch in Haste

Some miscellaneous misplacements, misapplications and misunderstandings.

ITEM: We all know about the seemingly endless "finger in the viscous food substance" sagas. But did you know this?

To a dessert shop customer, the severed fingertip found in a pint of frozen custard could be worth big dollars in a potential lawsuit. To the shop worker who lost it, the value is far more than monetary.

But Clarence Stowers still has the digit, refusing to return the evidence so it could be reattached. And now it's too late for doctors to do anything for 23-year-old Brandon Fizer.
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He refused to give it to the shop's owner, and refused to give it to a doctor who was treating Fizer, who accidentally stuck his hand in a mixing machine and had his right index finger lopped off at the first knuckle.

Medical experts say an attempt to reattach a severed finger can generally be made within six hours. But according to the shop's management, Stowers wouldn't give it back when he was in the store 30 minutes after the accident.

MY TAKE: It used to be rude to give someone the finger; now it's rude not to give it to them! I also think an "activist judge" might have come in useful right about then. (Hat tip to Overlawyered.)

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ITEM: Well, that's one way to fight obesity --

Workers at DaimlerChrysler's Indiana Transmission Plant I and Plant II better allow more time to walk in from the parking lot if they drive Fords or General Motors vehicles.

A new policy that takes effect Monday designates about 80 percent of employee parking spaces for Chrysler vehicles only and forces workers to park much further away if they drive a car or truck made by a competing manufacturer.
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Workers have been told that non-Chrysler vehicles parked in the reserved areas will be towed to Indianapolis at a cost of $200, the Kokomo Tribune reported Sunday.
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"It's not about American made or union made, it's about our company," [one employee] said. "Drive what you build if you want your company to survive."

MY TAKE: Um, how about "Keep prices low if you want people to drive what you build"? Not exactly a compelling union slogan, I know. In any case, as I blogged previously, parking lots are private property and should be respected as such.

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ITEM: Remember the Star Trek episode with the planet full of kids? "Study, study, study, or bonk-bonk on the head!" Well, how's this for science fiction --

A decision to take Advanced Placement biology instead of gym will cost a Bow High School senior her diploma, but it won't keep her from going to college in the fall.

Though Isabel Gottlieb is a good student, a trumpet player in the school band and holds varsity letters in three sports, she discovered last fall she was one gym class shy of having enough credits to graduate next month.

She asked for a waiver, but the school wouldn't budge, telling her instead she had to drop a class to take gym.

"Why would I drop an AP biology class to take P.E.?" the 18-year-old said. "It's just not on my priority list."
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At the Seattle high school Gottlieb attended before moving to Bow before her junior year, gym requirements often were waived for students in varsity sports. But those waivers aren't something Bow High School is willing to accept.

MY TAKE: Ah, public school bureaucracies – where would we be without them? (Answer: Somewhere better than we are now.) Anyway, it seems to me that an estoppel argument might work here. It was the school's responsibility to make sure the student had the proper coursework; if they screwed up, then why should she be penalized? And they had a year to find the mistake. Hopefully some headline-grabbing hack politician will intervene.

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ITEM: Who needs the Internet to violate one's cyber-privacy?

Last June Susan went to the Circuit City store in Boulder to buy a new computer. She asked to have the files from her old computer saved to a disk. "Let's just say I had many years of private writings, papers, personal information, pictures," Susan said.

Circuit City employees copied those private writings and papers onto a floor model computer then onto a disk. But they never removed Susan's personal files from that floor model computer. A few days later, that computer was sold.

"That evening I got a call from a strange man that I do not know who told me he purchased a desktop floor model computer which contained all of my personal information," Susan said.
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Susan said it got worse. She said she questioned Circuit City and was told it was her fault for having those personal files on her computer and for expecting Circuit City to protect her privacy. That's when she filed suit.
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In court documents, the company admits to a mistake with Susan's information but also believes they were under no legal obligation to protect her privacy since she did not specifically ask for protection.

MY TAKE: So if I walk into a Circuit City (fat chance) and buy a defective computer, am I not entitled to a refund, since I did not "specifically ask" for a working machine? Do we now need to "specifically ask" whether a store's employees are morons? (Actually, when it comes to Circuit City, there really is no need to ask that question – it's self-apparent.) (Hat tip to Privacy Spot.)

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ITEM: See gay sex, win $25,000?

A high-end Chelsea gym has been slapped with a $25,000 lawsuit claiming that gay sex is rampant in the locker room and that the club's staff has been unable to stop the steamy high jinks.

Carlos Sosa, 34, of Manhattan says he expected the posh David Barton Gym on West 23rd Street to be the normal exercise center its management says it is.

But he says he was shocked to see men performing sex acts on each other in the shower, ogling him in the locker room and leering at him as he changed clothes.
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A lawyer for David Barton, Tom Shanahan, blasted the suit as "frivolous and without merit" and said his client runs a clean establishment.
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Sosa is seeking his membership fee back, and $25,000 for emotional distress.

MY TAKE: Gays in a Chelsea gym? Shock and awe! And do I get $25,000 every time I see heterosexual intercourse? HBO would owe me a lot of money. Assuming the incidents even happened, then sue over the membership fee if you want, but seeing two guys "doing it" in a gym shower, while probably offensive to most, is only "emotionally distressful" if you have issues that a reasonable Chelsea resident, even a straight resident, ought not to have. If you want gay-free gyms, you might want to look outside Chelsea.