The Heartland Institute

Continental Airlines is being sued by a passenger complaining tornados and thunderstorms made her flight turbulent. She claims she’s suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and fear of flying. She alleges the ride was so rough she thought the plane was losing power and falling out of the sky. She aspired to work for ...

A Texas woman says she was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment after her arrest by being forced to listen to talk-show host Rush Limbaugh in the squad car. The woman says she was arrested by a sheriff’s deputy for driving on the shoulder of a highway, but claims she had merely stopped because her auto engine ...

A self-described “pinball wizard” has filed a total of 11 complaints against the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas stemming from a single incident at the pinball arcade there. The plaintiff says the machine on which he was playing Xenon malfunctioned. A scuffle with the owner ensued, and the police were summoned. The “pinball ...

A British Columbia man is being sued for support by the mother who abandoned him as a teenager. The suit has dragged on for 11 years. A provincial law allows parents to sue their adult children for support if parents are dependent due to “age, illness, infirmity or economic circumstances.” The mother, 73, wants $750 ...

A Nebraska school has rejected a Parent-Teacher Organization’s offer to donate and install a small waterfall as part of new landscaping at the school. The waterfall was installed last year and temporarily powered with an extension cord to an outside electrical outlet during a school open house. The school maintenance department ...

A Long Island catering hall has no duty to protect patrons from a surprise attack at a Halloween party by a man dressed as a ninja. The ruling said the attack was not foreseeable and the catering hall was not negligent in failing to predict it and protect patrons. The plaintiff claimed four of his fingers were injured ...

A Brooklyn court has tossed out a case against a Long Island hospital where nurses temporarily and accidently switched newborn babies. The nurses placed one newborn in a bassinet near the wrong mother’s bed and gave that mother’s baby to another mother for breastfeeding. The mistake was corrected in a few hours. The mother ...

An Idaho college student and her parents are suing a University of Idaho fraternity, her sorority, university officials, and others for failing to prevent her from drinking too much alcohol and falling out of a window during a party at the fraternity house. The complaint alleges the student and her date were lying on ...

Police in Tennessee have warned the mother of a ten-year-old daughter the mother will face child neglect charges if she allows her daughter to continue to ride her bicycle to and from school, a ten-minute trip. The mother complained to police higher-ups, who confirmed she would be arrested for violating child neglect laws ...

A Pennsylvania judge who has handed out thousands of hollowed-out acorns to people in or around his courtroom, each stuffed with an unwrapped condom, will not be disciplined for conduct bringing the judiciary into “disrepute” or for undermining “the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” The state judicial discipline ...

An inmate in the Macomb County jail (near Detroit) is suing the state for imposing cruel and unusual punishment because jail rules don’t allow him to have pornography. The inmate alleges he is afflicted with “chronic masturbation syndrome,” caused by jail conditions, and that porn deprivation is being used as “psychological ...

City officials in Alexandria, Virginia ordered a homeowner who illegally removed a chain-link fence in her front yard to put it back because it’s historic. “While many feel that [chain-link] fences have negative connotations,” a city official said, “this material has played an important role in the development of mid-century ...

Under Obamacare, one federal agency will be rewarding health care providers if they merge to form networks to coordinate patient care. The feds at that agency believe such mergers will make health care better and cheaper. Meanwhile, another federal agency will be suing health care providers if they merge to form networks ...

In a recent ruling that the Commonwealth of Virginia lacks standing to challenge the individual mandate provision of Obamacare, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit made a “rookie” factual error serious enough to call for invalidation of its entire decision. Virginia had enacted a state statute ...

In a classic case of lawyers protecting their own, a federal circuit court of appeals ruled recently a lawyer who takes a catnap in court isn’t “ineffective” unless he sleeps through “a substantial portion” of the trial. A defendant’s criminal conviction can be overturned if a court finds there was “ineffective assistance ...

“After conquering Silicon Valley” during a 15-year high-tech career, a former software engineer went to law school and took a job with a big New York City firm. He lasted less than a year. First, he refused to do mundane legal work routinely assigned to first-year lawyers. Then, with time on his hands even though he ...

An Australian court had to grapple with a weighty legal issue recently: Is a homemade motorized beer cooler a “motor vehicle?” A 23-year-old Australian man was caught driving his motorized beer cooler while drunk. When he appeared in court, he challenged the charges, arguing the beer cooler is not a “motor vehicle” under ...

The Gould, Arkansas city council has banned a citizens group from “doing business” there and has further decreed “no new organizations shall be allowed to exist in the City of Gould without approval from a majority of the City Council.” The council banned the Gould Citizens Advisory Council from the city because it was ...

The Redneck Olympics was held early this month in Hebron, Maine for the 15th year in a row. But there may not be one next year. The U.S. Olympic Committee is threatening to sue the Redneck Olympics’ organizer over use of the word “Olympics,” to which the committee claims it has exclusive rights under federal law. Such ...

A Kentucky circuit court judge was pretty happy when a case set to go to trial before him settled. How happy? Here’s what the judge wrote: “Such news … made this Court happier than a tick on a fat dog because it is otherwise busier than a one legged cat in a sand box and, quite frankly, would have rather jumped ...