Stupid Law Tricks

A spate of recently-dismissed lawsuits has partially restored my faith in the integrity of the justice system.

Recently, 40-year old Rhonda Nichols was seized by a powerful feeling of injustice when a bird flew into her head at a local Lowe's Garden Center. Since she presumably could not take her frustrations out on the hapless denizen of the air, she did the next best thing:

...Rhonda Nichols is suing the Lowe's Home Center in Alton, saying she was seriously injured when a bird flew into her head at the outside gardening area. She wants more than $50,000:

According to the suit, filed by the St. Louis firm of Anderson & Associates, the store "allowed wild birds to enter the Gardening area in which customers travel ... (and) that said wild birds created a dangerous condition."

Nichols claims the bird caused injuries to her head, brain, neck, muscles, bones, nerves, discs, ligaments, as well leading to the loss of neurological functions and cognitive skills.

Why are we not surprised? This condition often seems to lead to the filing of frivolous lawsuits.

...The suit said the incident occurred "on or about April 15, 2003." Bobbi Rose, an assistant manager at Lowe's, said the store had no record of any human-bird collisions on that date.

No word on whether the management of Lowes, Inc. tracks human-mammal, human-reptile, or human-insect collisions, but we'll keep you posted. In a traveshamockery of justice, a so-called 'judge' applied a so-called "reasonable plaintiff" rule, thereby depriving Ms. Nichols of Cosmic Justice in what turned out to be a tragically unequal human-bird contest.

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If you live in one of the enlightened Blue States, you are no doubt aware that only disgusting atavistic, snake-handling freaks (and George W. Bush, but that may be redundant) still believe in a Divine Being Who Shapes Our Ends, rough hew them how we will. Despite this well-known maxim, one benevolent crusader who only tried to protect the unwitting (or unwitted) from primitive cults like the Catholic Church was rudely smacked down in court just recently... ed ancora volta, with feeling:

Cascioli filed a criminal complaint against Righi, his old schoolmate, in 2002 after Righi wrote in a parish bulletin that Jesus did indeed exist, and that he was born of a couple named Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem and lived in Nazareth.

Cascioli claimed that Righi's assertion violated two laws: so-called "abuse of popular belief" in which someone fraudulently deceives people; and "impersonation," in which someone gains by attributing a false name to someone.

Righi, 76, had emphasised substantial historical evidence - both Christian and non-Christian - of Jesus' existence. Cascioli was not available for comment on Friday.

He had said in the past that he had little expectation that the case would succeed in overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Italy, and that he planned to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights (Justice Moammar Gaddhafi, presiding).

We expect Sr. Cascioli may have more success in that vastly more enlightened venue.