That's Why I Always Offer To Take Them Home

A stripper is suing the club where she (presumably) used to work. She's claiming it is the club's fault that she got drunk and crashed her car, according to this report in the Birmingham News:

The suit alleges that managers at the strip club allowed her to leave work drunk one night last fall. She wrecked her car, resulting in serious injury, according to the suit filed last week.

Dancers receive a percentage of drink sales and make pretty good money doing so, according to the suit. On Oct. 17, [Stripper Patsy] Hamaker's sales were successful enough that she left work "in a highly intoxicated state," according to her suit.

"Defendants ... allowed a dangerous condition to exist by allowing said plaintiff to leave its establishment in such an intoxicated state while under said defendants' supervision and control," the suit says.

Management's negligence by allowing her to drive home drunk "was a proximate cause" of Hamaker's injuries, the suit says.

Well, the dummy could have ordered a coke or an iced tea or something else instead. It all costs about the same in those clubs. I mean, that's what I'm told, according to people who have been there ...

Goin' to the Chapel ...

Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman says he favors gay marriage but is nevertheless disturbed by the California Supreme Court ruling:

At stake was not whether gay couples may acquire the rights and duties of marriage in a state-sanctioned framework. As the court acknowledged, they can already do so under the domestic partnership law. But it's not enough for them to get the substance of marriage. The court said they must also get the same terminology.

It reached this conclusion through a lot of philosophizing about "the right of same-sex couples to have their official family relationship accorded the same dignity, respect and stature as that accorded to other officially recognized family relationships." But the state constitution (like the federal one) does not traffic in mushy terms like "dignity" and "stature." When a court puts such heavy reliance on amorphous concepts, it telegraphs that it will not be tied down by the actual words of the state charter.

For further proof, consider that while the California constitution forbids discrimination on the basis of "sex, race, creed, color, or national or ethnic origin," it does not forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The justices somehow found something in the document that the authors thought they omitted.

Read the whole thing here and discuss.

The An(n)als of Medical Law

Headline of the day: "NY jury rejects man's lawsuit about unwanted rectal exam."

The story is fairly simple: a guy was hit on his head by a wooden beam, so the emergency room doctors decided it was time to get all up in that ass. The New York Supreme Court said yesterday, "Yeah, that's cool":

[Attorney Gerard] Marrone said his client, 38, was injured while working at a construction site in midtown Manhattan on May 20, 2003. At NewYork-Presbyterian, he said, [client Brian] Persaud got eight stitches for a cut over his eyebrow.

Meanwhile, Marrone said, Persaud denied emergency room staffers' request to examine his rectum. The lawyer said doctors told him the exam was a way of determining whether the accident caused spinal damage.

When Persaud resisted, the staffers held him down while he begged, "Please don't do that," Marrone said. Persaud hit a doctor while flailing around, so the staffers gave him a powerful sedative and performed the rectal exam, he said.

Hospital witnesses testified at trial that the exam was never completed, but Marrone said that when Persaud woke up he was handcuffed to a bed and had an oxygen tube down his throat and lubricant in his rectum.

Even worse, the doctors never called him after that. Read the whole story here.

Hat tip: Dave Barry.

Michigan Not Allowed to Penalize College Students for Making Correct Decisions

Good news for civil liberties and underage drunks in Michigan who choose to walk instead of drive.

LANSING, Mich. -- A federal judge has ruled that forcing a non-driver in Michigan to submit to a preliminary breath test without a search warrant is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge David Lawson in Detroit issued an injunction Wednesday blocking enforcement of a state law that penalizes pedestrians under 21 who refuse to submit to such a test.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which had sued on behalf of four college students, says Michigan is the only state in the country that requires a pedestrian to submit to a breath test without a warrant.

If a group like MADD believed in what their acronym stood for; they would have been fighting this law tooth and nail. Just a thought. Full article here.

4th Amendment Looks Around Says, "Hey, I'm Still Here!"

Maryland's highest court threw out the drug conviction of a 27-year-old Northwest Baltimore man today, saying that city police did not have proper cause to stop the man's car and subsequently find marijuana.

In a 4-to-3 decision, the Court of Appeals ruled that "police did not have an articulable reasonable suspicion to stop [Lamont Anthony] Lewis based upon the fact that he 'almost' hit a police car."

Read the whole thing here; it just might brighten your day.

Smoking Restrictions: The New Way to Get Rid of People You Don't Like

Interesting article in the Kingston Whig-Standard, an Ontario paper, covering another disturbing case of a tenant attempting to have a smoker in a unit near her evicted. I blogged on an example of this from Australia a few weeks ago and was met mostly with, "I dunno, seems like a reasonable way to deal with the negative effects of smoking on non-smokers." Sure. Cause it has nothing to do with forcing your own likes, dislikes and morals on everyone else. Just property rights and health concerns.

A potentially precedent-setting case that could make smoking in rental housing grounds for eviction began in Kingston yesterday.

Montreal Street resident Sharna Sugarman appeared before the Landlord and Tenant Board – formerly the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal – to complain that smoke from the apartment directly underneath hers seeps into her unit and is making her and her six-year-old daughter sick.

[...]

In his opening remarks, Done made it clear that he will argue it is a landlord’s duty to ensure tenants are not exposed to such substances as cigarette smoke when they are not smokers themselves.

“Drifting second-hand smoke is hazardous to people’s health generally and to children’s health specifically,” he said.

“The only way to stop the danger from the smoke is to stop the smoke.”

I think -- as you will see below -- that this particular case, is much more of a personal vendetta against the landlords and the smoking tenant as opposed to a politically motivated suit. However, what the lawyer said is important, because that is the outcome that anti-smoking groups desire. They will only be happy when no one is smoking, whether it be in their homes, cars, or on the city sidewalk. More below.

The hearing also raised issues of personal credibility, as Toms put forward a tenant on the other side of the duplex who said she had smoked in Sugarman’s apartment and Sugarman raised no objection when she visited her own apartment and was exposed to smoke.

Sugarman denied the allegations under oath with the same vehemence with which they were made.

There is a short but bitter history between the two that includes calls to police and the Children’s Aid Society, plus a court-ordered peace bond between the two and a court date looming.

Go read the full article here.

I Think You'reWe're Suppose Supposed to Find Him Clever...

Milbank writes his Washington Sketch column on the oral arguments in the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus Case." I haven't followed it much, mostly because it's been well covered just about everywhere else on the web; but like Cicero and his two-faced pig, I just wanted an excuse to post the always amusing picture of Milbank dressed like an idiot while on that other idiot's MSNBC show.

Disclaimer: The picture is everywhere, but in this instance I grabbed it from extrememortman.com.

You Might Have to Read This Twice

From Florida no-less:

John Coffin won't spend any more time in jail for beating up two sheriff's deputies inside his house, striking one in the head with a Taser gun he took from the other.

[...]

But Coffin, 56, had a right to defend his family and property because the deputies had no right to be in Coffin's house in the first place, De Furia said.

"Law enforcement was responsible for the chain of events here," De Furia said. "I think in situations like this, officers become so frustrated they go beyond what the law allows them to do."

The fight started when Coffin heard his wife screaming in pain, went into the garage and saw two deputies arresting her on the floor.

The deputies were trying to serve Coffin with civil papers that had been given five days earlier. They had entered the garage even though they did not have a search warrant or arrest warrant.

Great result. Read the whole thing here. Thanks to my Dad for the tip.

Washington State Court Says Innocent Must Be Proven Guilty

Good news for opponents of forced treatment, fans of the Constitution, etc.

Judges can't order people facing drunken-driving charges to undergo alcohol-use evaluations, get treatment or start going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in order to stay out of jail, the state Court of Appeals ruled this week.

Forcing people to talk to an alcohol counselor about their drinking habits and their alleged crime -- before they've been found guilty of anything -- violates their right to remain silent and raises other legal problems, the court said.

The cost of attending meetings was another issue the court looked at here. No word whether they delved at all into the religious or cultlike nature of AA itself. Whatever the court's reasoning, it's nice to see they got where they did.

More here from the P-I. Thanks to P-Dawdy for the tip.