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It began with a plume of brilliant white smoke, billowing silently from the volcano's rugged crater before mushrooming into an ominous black cloud. By the time their tour guide had yelled at them to take cover it was too late for newlyweds Matthew and Lauren Urey. The couple from Richmond, Virginia, were soon engulfed in a suffocating fog of molten ash, scorching their flesh, pummeling them with debris and plunging their dream honeymoon into a living hell.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The United States Postal Service (USPS) refused to cover the cost of repairs after a working mail carrier jumped on the back of an east side resident’s truck while fleeing from a neighbor’s unleashed dogs. The incident occurred Sept. 9, 2019 in the 700 block of Melvenia Street, according to Marcus French, the owner of the Dodge Ram 1500. French provided copies of repair estimates for dents and paint damage he alleged were caused by the mail carrier, totaling approximately $4,500. Footage from home security cameras obtained by News 8 shows the frenzied chase from at least...

The plaintiff filed suit in a California court in early December in regards to a road accident that occurred on Christmas Eve in 2014. The driver was " distracted while using the 'FaceTime' application on an iPhone 6 Plus during the operation of his motor vehicle," and hit the back of a stationary vehicle while going 65 miles per hour, per the court documents obtained by AppleInsider.SNIP Apple was sued for not implementing a technology that could have prevented the driver from using the app while driving. The Cupertino-based company applied for the patent on the technology in 2008 and...

SAN FRANCISCO — A Navy veteran is suing after what his lawyer describes as a 16-pound pine cone fell and crushed his skull in San Francisco. The San Francisco Chronicle reports (http://bit.ly/1juNiqP ) that Sean Mace is suing the U.S. government, the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior and San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park for $5 million. Mace's attorney Scott Johnson says the veteran was relaxing under a non-native pine tree at the maritime park when the cone fell, causing an irreversible brain injury. Johnson says Mace has had two surgeries and requires a third. The park...

I n April a BMW racing through a fruit market in Foshan in China’s Guangdong province knocked down a 2-year-old girl and rolled over her head. As the girl’s grandmother shouted, “Stop! You’ve hit a child!” the BMW’s driver paused, then switched into reverse and backed up over the girl. The woman at the wheel drove forward once more, crushing the girl for a third time. When she finally got out from the BMW, the unlicensed driver immediately offered the horrified family a deal: “Don’t say that I was driving the car,” she said. “Say it was my husband. We...

It's shameful that a company like Sony would go groveling to a deceitful, tyrannical, un-American thug, but this column is not about Sony’s sucking up to Al Sharpton. This column is about a tort system that is dedicated not to justice but to making lawyers richer, and it comes not only at the price of American prosperity but at the cost of our liberty as well. Certainly, Sony has a yellow streak as wide as Seth Rogen’s gut. Its creepy supplication to that race-hustling, MSNBC troll shows its true cowardly character, since Sharpton – unlike North Korea – doesn’t have...

Sometimes it’s better to just let things go. That could be the mantra for overprotective retail clerks and loss-prevention agents everywhere following a lawsuit in Santa Rosa civil court by a would-be shoplifter who was badly injured when he was tackled by a grocery store manager. The clash happened when plaintiff Johnny Ramirez was stealing a bottle of rum from the Windsor Raley’s, according to a tentative ruling from Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Arthur Wick. Ramirez tucked the glass bottle into his waistband and ran out the door, only to be stopped by manager Shea Carpenter, who tackled him...

When Darrell Issa called Jay Carney a "paid liar" this week, his critics figured he'd finally gone too far—that his one-step-ahead-of-the-facts rhetoric would force Republicans to rein him in. They figured wrong. For all the polite Washington handwringing over that single comment, the truth is this: Issa’s aggressive approach is just what the Republican House leadership wants. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor singled out Issa for praise at a closed-door GOP conference meeting on Tuesday. Hours later, Cantor gave him plaudits on national television, saying on CNN that Issa and other GOP chairmen investigating the IRS were doing “a fantastic...

(Washington, D.C.) – On Friday, September 7, 2012 at 10 a.m., a panel of judges in the New York Appellate Division (4th Department) in Rochester, New York will hear arguments in a first-in-the-nation case, deciding whether a controversial federal gun industry shield law protects gun sellers who negligently and illegally sell guns to traffickers. The court will decide whether to reinstate a lawsuit brought by Danny Williams, a former Buffalo high school basketball star who was shot with one of hundreds of guns sold in high-volume, all-cash sales at an Ohio gun show to a notorious gun trafficking ring. Williams...

In a case attorneys say has no precedent in New Hampshire, a federal appeals court is weighing whether the owner of a handgun used to kill three people at a Conway military surplus shop in July 2007 could be held liable for their murders. Lawrence Secord didn't do enough to secure the .22-caliber handgun he kept at his camp in Wentworth Location, enabling his grandson, Michael Woodbury, to steal it and open fire in the Army Barracks store several days later, according to a lawsuit brought by the mother of one of the victims. A federal judge decided Secord didn't...

Lawyers Harry and Charles Binder began representing applicants for Social Security disability benefits in the 1970s, when the field was a professional backwater. Last year, their firm collected $88 million in fees for guiding clients through the system, government data indicate, making it the nation's largest Social Security disability advocate by far. "We'll deal with the government," a cowboy-hatted Charles Binder proclaims in his firm's ubiquitous television ads. "You have enough to worry about."

AUSTIN, Texas — Gov. Rick Perry signed into law Monday a measure that will limit frivolous lawsuits by levying some fees on plaintiffs and allowing meritless suits to be dismissed early in the process. Perry designated the "loser pays" bill a top priority of the legislative session, saying Texas needs to crack down on junk lawsuits. Some plaintiffs who sue and lose will be required to pay the court costs and attorney fees of those they are suing. The law also creates expedited civil actions for cases less than $100,000. It goes into effect Sept. 1...

Citigroup saw several red flags in the dealings of Bernard Madoff's firm years before his multibillion-dollar fraud was exposed in late 2008, the firm's liquidator said in a newly unsealed lawsuit. Irving Picard, a court-appointed trustee seeking to recover money for former Madoff clients, made the accusations in one of several complaints he has filed against big banks he says "enabled" the massive, decades-long Ponzi scheme by turning a blind eye to it. "Citi had access to and received information placing it on inquiry notice that Madoff's advisory business was potentially a fraud, and/or that Madoff was making hundreds of...

Bernard L. Madoff said he never thought the collapse of his Ponzi scheme would cause the sort of destruction that has befallen his family. In his first interview for publication since his arrest in December 2008, Mr. Madoff — looking noticeably thinner and rumpled in khaki prison garb — maintained that family members knew nothing about his crimes. But during a private two-hour interview in a visitor room here on Tuesday, and in earlier e-mail exchanges, he asserted that unidentified banks and hedge funds were somehow “complicit” in his elaborate fraud, an about-face from earlier claims that he was the...

The trustee liquidating Madoff’s asset management firm, has filed a complaint against JPMorgan Chase, claiming the bank had suspicions about Madoff’s Ponzi scheme going back to at least 2006, but waited until 2008 to alert authorities while it earned hundreds of millions of dollars from doing business with Madoff. The complaint seeks to recover nearly $1 billion in fees and profits, and an additional $5.4 billion in damages, for JPMorgan Chase’s decades-long role as primary banker for Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities’ (BLMIS), allegedly aiding and abetting Madoff’s fraud. “Incredibly, the bank’s top executives were warned in blunt terms about...

BUFORD, Ga.— A Cobb County jury has awarded a Buford woman $1.2 million after she said she was scalded by 190-degree water that shot out of a cappuccino machine at a QuikTrip convenience store. Lawyer Nelson Tyrone III says the woman, 52-year-old Cynthia Nance, was burned on Halloween night in 2007 at a QuikTrip convenience store. Atlanta attorney Valerie Pinkett, who represented QuikTrip, said the case was settled on confidential terms after the jury's verdict. She said the machine involved has been replaced with a newer model at all QuikTrip stores. Tyrone said Nance was burned on her hand and...

How many times have you been watching a commercial for this or that medicine with images of a couple strolling through a bucolic meadow or scenes of a depressed woman who’s suddenly happy again only to be bombarded with a rapid-fire litany of potential side effects so scary that they would have kept Atilla the Hun from ever leaving the neighborhood. And there are other examples. Credit card agreements come with pages of small type that takes a microscope to read. A contract for a house can be as thick as a phone book with language with all of the...

"Apple Inc. was ordered by a jury to pay damages to Mirror Worlds LLC for infringing patents related to how documents are displayed on a computer screen," Susan Decker reports for Bloomberg. "The federal jury in Tyler, Texas, awarded $208.5 million in damages for each of the patents infringed. The verdict form was unclear as to whether the amount applies to the three patents collectively or would be charged individually. Lawyers for closely held Mirror Worlds declined to discuss the verdict," Decker reports. MacDailyNews Take: Tyler, Texas. Rocket Docket. Decker reports, "Mirror Worlds, a software business started by a Yale...

GREENVILLE, NC- A record making judgment has been made in a Pitt County Court. The woman who broke up a North Carolina couple's marriage has to pay $5.8 million. This is the second largest judgment ever made under the alienation of affection law. Judges are laying down the law, and we're seeing more of these multi-million dollar judgments being made. When they moved to Greenville, she was a radiologist and he retired from the army. They took vows to love, honor, and obey, but when she was several months pregnant and her husband's former high school classmate came to visit--...

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 2:49 am Ford $131 Million Verdict 9th Largest in U.S. History By Stacy In a landmark ruling going against U.S. automaker Ford, a $131 million verdict was returned by the jury leaving the manufacturer culpable for the wrongful death of Minor League baseball player Brian Cole. The New York Mets hopeful had been driving his Explorer and was thrown from the vehicle when it flipped, suffering terminal injuries. Get the full story, pictures and video below Company spokeswoman Marcey Evans said Cole had been driving over 80 miles per hour when he went off the...