Results tagged “lawsuits”

Local kook Stanley Hilton is suing San Francisco International Airport for $15 million for creating noise and smog that led to his divorce. He's also suing the real estate agent for selling him the San Mateo county house in 2003 for $1.4 million, saying that everything went down hill after he and his wife moved there. Hilton is representing himself in the case, and despite being an experienced trial lawyer, he was "deemed ineligible" to practice law back in August, right around the time he sued a building for $20 million after he got stuck in an elevator. Needless to say, 85% of NBC Bay Area readers are laughing at him.

Be careful what you say about corporations and public entities on Twitter, dear readers! This is not your personal IM and someone might just try to sue your ass. Case in point: a Chicago woman who is being sued by Horizon Group Management, a real estate management company over a tweet she twittered regarding the company's alleged love of moldy apartments. They believe her little <140 character complaint is worth $50K, but we kind of doubt a judge will agree... especially a judge who doesn't really grasp this whole twit business. This all follows on the much more amusing tale of Courtney Love getting sued for defamation over her repeated Twitter rants about clothing designer Dawn Simorangkir, who she claimed was gouging her with bills for custom clothing that sucked.

Bon voyag-ee, Cosco Busan! And don't come back! The leaky Cosco Busan ship that contaminated our beautiful bay with oil is expected to get clearance to get the heck outta Frisco, setting sail at noon today to head back to South Korea.

-- Girl fight! [KGO]

Since February, that's $670,381.39. It's been a busy month for lawyers: Muni's conceding $131,695.06 (about the cost of a bribe to Ted Stevens, or one foot of collapsed-bridge repairs, or a single union employee, or an English teacher in Seoul, or your very own hair salon) in settlements for August in nine separate cases.

June is busting out all over! With lawsuits, we mean. Added to the total from a few weeks ago, we're up to $456,565.92 in Muni claims since February. Wow, that's a lot of money. Sure would've gone a long way toward hiring a few more drivers, or repairing a few more buses, or buying a few more NextMuni signs. Oh well.

Some fights seem really really important to the folks involved, and utterly mystifying to everyone else. You know like when you see two pigeons fighting over a hamburger bun, and you can't decide which one to root for because it seems like they both want the same thing and they'd just be better off sharing? Or another example: the unnecessary feud going on at the Cable Car Museum.

The nicer the weather gets, the busier we get across the Ist-A-Verse. But we like being busy. Here's a peek at what we've been up to since last week!

What was long rumored is now true as the Beatles and Apple settled their trademark issues over the apple trademark. They are now both expected to sue Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin. What this means is that Beatles songs could be showing up on iTunes any minute now. Bloggers everywhere like this deal because when you give them a cute, Brangelina like nickname, it's still Apple.

The battle over that athletic center at Berkeley took another turn as a camp out in the oaks that was set up to support all protestors up in the trees was rousted by the cops this morning. According to reports, around 6 or so, the cops came to chase everyone away and then came in and swept up all the camping equipment and supplies, supposedly including people's laptops. Now that's just mean.

You know that totally obvious idea of creating some sort of general pass that works on the plethora of public transportation options? And you know how it's so obvious that you want to bang your head against the table that it hasn't happened yet. Well, it's happening, finally. Or at least a trial run of it.

One good thing about being the area known as having the most-liberal, terrorist loving court system is that we get all the fun lawsuits happening here. Which would describe a lawsuit filed a couple of days ago against the Federal Government at the US District in San Francisco for slacking on a global warming report.

That eavesdropping case we've been following took another step to eventually seeing the light of as an appeals court has decided to review the decision by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker that the lawsuit should move forward despite the whining of the Federal Government. The eavesdropping case, for those who don't remember, was brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against the Government and AT&T for reading things they shouldn't be reading. Of what, we don't know but its super serious and of utmost importance to the War on Terror. And porn. We're sure somewhere they're checking out porn.

Yeah, we know, totally obvious title for the post -- they can't all be winners, okay?

We want to take this opportunity to make an early toast to Mr. Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of the single most important item in the history of mankind.

Okay, here's an update on that lawsuit against AT&T and the Federal Government for illegally snooping on people's phone calls and e-mails. Basically, there are about seventeen similar lawsuits out there in the midst of the legal world and because they're all sort of similar-- whiny Al Queda supporters suing the telecoms and government for doing something unconstitutional, they've been mashed together into one big lawsuit sandwich. That sandwich will be heard in San Francisco's very own Federal Court by one U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker. The reasoning is because out of all the various suits out there, the AT&T one is the most advanced. Bully to the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation and how awesome would it be if they started their own University just so people could say they go to EFF U?) and the ACLU for being on the ball.

The Gavster reemerged from hobnobbing with Scientologists to announce that he was going to try and have a court rule whether or not a 1997 measure calling for the building of a new Candlestick park and other development still holds. The measure was passed back then, but was put on hold after Eddie DeBartolo got in trouble with the Feds and after people realized that the measure was just as sucky as most people thought. If it can be sent to court and if the court says "yay", speculation is that the city will start building the sucker, despite the fact the measure is almost ten years old and, as everyone seems to be pointing out, goes against the normal process of city governance.

Well, if you were looking for material to parody lefty activists, look no further than the recent strife over at KPFA's offices in Berkeley. Want your lawsuits, your conspiracy theories, your anonymous mudslinging and accusations of being a goverment and/or corporate coup by agent provocateurs hell bent on destroying the station? How about if we told you there's alleged sexual harassment, thrown chairs and threats to go mano-a-mano? Oh yes, it's a sordid mess indeed.

Note to Selves: next time we try and get one of our buddies elected to run a commission, don't attack an entire sex. Two weeks after the infamous meeting of the Building Inspector Commission in which Gavin's candidate Amy Lee was attacked for being female and pregnant, the Commission voted 4-3 to install Lee as the Head of the Department of Building Inspectors. The 3 ½ hour hearing was as fun as the previous one as it included members of the commission attacking each other, women's rights groups testifying in defense of Lee, and a whole parade of women testifying that the RBA really does love their women. The whole thing moved Monique Moyer, the head of the Port Department, to say that the hearing "has made a farce of our great city and of our departments." Made a farce? This city has passed farce years ago. We’re post-farce. Anyhoo, at the end of the hearing, defeated head of the Residential Building Association, Joe O'Donoghue, told the Commission "you're all just a bunch of political hacks, but not very bright ones at that." O'Donoghue also vowed to continue the fight by filing lawsuits against the Commission.

Things just keep getting worse and worse for Ms. Anna Ayala, the woman who purportedly bit into a fingertip in her Wendy's chili last month. So not only was her house raided, it also turns out she has a long history of filing lawsuits, including suits for food poisoning, claims that tires fell off her car, and a claim for sexual harassment against a former employer. This of course led to some skepticism when she brought out her 13 year old daughter wearing a sling and started ranting about police brutality (though we hope the daughter's arm feels better soon and all that). And today! Well, so not only has she decided to drop her claims against Wendy's entirely, her lawyer also quit. The lawyer, however, denies that his quitting has anything to do with this latest incident in Pahrump, NV, broken by the SJ Merc News. What incident, you ask? Well, in Pahrump, about an hour away from Vegas, where Ms. Ayala lives, a woman was attacked by a mountain lion. What part of the woman was attacked, you ask? Funny -- the lady's fingertip was bitten off, and later returned to her in a cup of ice. The picture of that fingertip looks suspiciously similar to the fingertip found in the chili. The fingertipless woman has not returned calls to the police. Picture of the Wendy's in question from KGO 7

Although it’s been awhile since we’ve had non-cubicle related jobs, we often occasionally look back not so fondly at our manual labor type jobs. One of the things we remember was how the highlight of the day usually centered around lunch break. Not necessarily because we were hungry, but because it gave us a brief respite from the soul-crunching, mind-numbing dreariness of the job (as opposed to the soul-crunching, mind-numbing dreariness of our office job). Little did we know that instead of basking in the half-an-hour long lunch break we received, we should have felt oppressed by the heavy-hand of the Government, forcing us to take lunch-breaks when we might not have wanted to. Thanks to a new mandate from the Governator changing the rules on when a worker can take lunch, the working class will now be freed from oppressive half-an-hour breaks.

Well, we can only hope that someone with an appropriately ethical track record will take the helm. Oh, what's that? Who's taking over? The former president of the RIAA? The woman who oversaw the start of lawsuits against filesharers? Oh. Never mind.

Previously on Proposition It, we learned how Proposition 65 begat Proposition 1A, how Prop 60 begat Prop 60A and Prop. 62. We also learned that there’s a really cranky lawyer in Mountain View. In today’s installment, we take on frivolous lawsuits, unique tax schemes, and hi-tech gadgetry. Not to mention those crazy Indian Gambling bills.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory how whenever one of the kids got the Golden Ticket, that creepy Slugworth guy with the scar would quickly grab them and whisper sweet nothings in their ear to tempt them into telling him all of Wonka’s secrets? Why do we have the feeling that something like that totally happens everytime Barry hits one, except with Jacoby and/or Meyers doing the Slugworth thing? Anyways, on Tuesday, Timothy Murphy, filed a restraining order with the State Court of California claiming that Williams “stole” the ball from him. Cause these lawsuits always go well for everyone. In the brief, Murphy’s lawyers state that "immediately after the 700 home run ball fell to the area of plaintiff's feet, plaintiff established possession, dominion and control over the ball by sitting on it and securing it with his right leg." In other words, Murphy sat on the ball, only to have Williams reach under his ass to grab it. For this, Murphy wants Williams to return the ball as well as “punitive damages” incurred by the reaching under of his ass. Williams however has always claimed that he was just wandering back from the bathroom when the ball just innocently rolled his way. Meanwhile Florida digs itself out from yet another hurricane, Iraq grows ever more dangerous, and AIDS continues to ravage Africa.

New overtime lawas and how they might affect YOU.