Daily Archives: January 24, 2013 - 5 results

A prisoner who called out for his anti-seizure medication for days but was not given them by prison medical providers has won a $12 million jury verdict. Ray Fox was in an Illinois state prison in 2007 when he suffered a brain aneurysm. His mother, Rose, now cares for her 50-year-old son around-the-clock. His family filed a lawsuit claiming that the aneurysm was caused by negligent medical care in prison. “You trust the system to take care of your loved …

  At Lawyers.com we report legal news consumers can use, and sometimes we hear some pretty unbelievable things — including laws that are odd, laughable or downright bizarre.  Editor-in-Chief Larry Bodine offers a sampling. There are lots of crazy state laws, and you’d better know them if you’re taking a bath in Indiana in winter. The same goes if you’re ticked off at a vending machine that stole your money in Kansas, and if you’re caught swearing in public in …

A former Los Angeles police officer has settled a lawsuit against the department for anti-gay discrimination and retaliation for $1.5 million and an agreement to turn in his badge. Sgt. Ronald Crump sued his employer in 2009 after he said he experienced an egregious pattern of harassment and humiliation over a period of six months by his supervisor, Lt. John Romero, and then was transferred when he complained. According to the suit, Romero made constant references to the fact that …

Floating homes that aren’t designed to actually travel across the water should not be classified as boats and don’t have to follow federal admiralty law, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week. The decision means that people across the nation who live on the water don’t have to worry about running afoul of maritime laws, as long as it’s clear that their home isn’t used as a boat. In Lozman v. Riviera Beach, the court said a “reasonable observer” test …

A Marine sergeant who developed post-traumatic stress disorder after some harrowing experiences in Iraq won $3.7 million in his lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for not treating his illness properly and giving him the wrong medications. While conducting door-to-door sweeps of houses in Baghdad, Marine sergeant Stanley Laskowski pushed open the door of an apartment discovering a dying child, covered in blood. He had shot open the lock on the outside of the door, and thought that …