What weird news stories make you either laugh out loud, or just say "huh?'

[lady M]

What made me go HUH!!!   This morning 2 teens suing their mom. Said she is a bad mom. I can't remember why the boy was suing but the girl said her mom texted her to make sure she would be home by curfew. And the daughter was upset that her mom wouldn't buy her an expensive dress for prom. OH WAIT IT GETS BETTER. Her husband is representing the kids in court.

Doesn't that bite your butt!!

[Archer]

Not so much because there is often more to the story.  Family Immunity At Common Law, a child could sue a parent for breach of contract and for torts related to property. An adult could sue his or her parent for any tort, whether personal or related to property. In 1891, the Mississippi Supreme Court, in Hewllette v. George, 9 So. 885 (1891), held that a child could not seek compensation for personal injury that was caused by a parent's wrongdoing, so long as the Parent and Child were obligated by their family duties to one another. The decision was based not on precedent but rather on public policy: The court found that such a lawsuit would undermine the "peace of society and of the families composing society." Criminal laws, the court found, were adequate to protect children.

Other states fell in step with Mississippi, adopting parental immunity of varying degrees. Some parental-immunity laws prohibited only claims of negligence, whereas others prohibited lawsuits for intentional torts such as rapes and beatings. The rationale supporting parental-immunity laws includes the need to preserve family harmony and, with the availability of liability insurance, the need to prevent parents and the children from colluding to defraud insurance companies.

Unjust results have led courts in many states that espouse parental immunity to carve out exceptions to the rule. For example, a child usually (some states) can sue a parent for negligence when the parent has failed to provide food or medical care, but not when the parent has merely exercised parental authority. Most courts have abolished the parental-immunity defense for car accident claims, and many allow children to sue their parents for negligent business or employment actions. Courts normally permit Wrongful Death suits to be brought by a child against a parent or by a parent against a child, because death terminates the parent-child relationship. Most states allow a child to sue a parent for injuries suffered in utero owing to the negligence of the mother like . . .

 

Its still a subject matter that occasionally causes seasoned courthouse personnel say "huh" in a few situations, mostly relating to the exceptions to the doctrine of family immunity.

Topic on this news article relates to saving the American economy:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASKihL6ibiQ

[arbcoind]

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/08/31/tsr.moos.cop.car.sex.pkg.cnn?hpt=hp_t2

A cop, a car hood, and a little dog.

Gina

[Merlin the Elder]

I happened to watch that not 5 minutes before I saw your post. Conduct unbecoming...!

[Archer]

I don't have a link to it, because it's fairly old, but a year or so ago this article ran in the Seattle Times.

"Man runs into bear with bicycle."

No, the bear wasn't on a bicycle, the guy was.  And he literally RAN INTO the bear while riding his bike before heading into work.  Both he and the bear went flying.  The startled bear ran off.  The startled biker landed on his head (yay for helmets!), and was later quoted as saying "bike helmets save you from run-ins with bears!"

That story caught my eye.   June before last,  I nearly hit a very large brown bear while riding on a motorcycle in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.  It was so big that I think he would have sought some payback so I was very pleased to have missed him and that he didn't stick out a clawed paw to swipe me off my bike.  It was high excitement and a close call that will stay in the memory banks.  He wasn't there and then, suddenly he came out of the woods with his body mass taking up my entire traffic lane moving at his own pace.  I gave him the lane and thanked me lucky stars.

[KeeperoftheBar]

I remember many years ago a motercyclist hit a black bear on Hyw 191 just north of Yellowstone Park.  It killed them both.  A bit before that my old boss hit a moose in the same area (Gallatin Canyon).  Killed the moose and scarred up my boss pretty good.

[Lady Christina de Pond]

MAN TRIED to board a flight at Miami International Airport last week with bags of exotic snakes down his pants.

There was a total of seven snakes, according to US officials at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

Oh, and there were three tortoises stuffed down there as well.

Security officials spotted the nylon bags hidden in the man's pants after he passed through a body scanner at the airport last Thursday.

The man, who had intended to travel to Brazil, has yet to be identified. Local media said he was arrested at the airport by the US Department of Fish and Wildlife.

This isn't the first time the TSA has stopped snakes being snuggled on board. In 2007, officials had to stop a passenger from boarding a flight after they found a boa constrictor inside his shoe.

And it was only last week that police in Arizona revealed that a man stole several baby albino boa constrictors at a pet store by stuffing them in his shorts.

[Rowan MacD]

  I wouldn't know where to begin speculating on how thishappened...

Hundreds of panties turn up along Ohio road
APAP – Thu, Sep 1, 2011

LANCASTER, Ohio (AP) — Authorities in central Ohio are trying to solve a panties puzzle: why hundreds of pairs of mostly women's underwear were dumped along the side of a road.
Fairfield County Deputy Gary Hummel said Thursday the undergarments were found in trees and on hillsides in several spots this week on a road in Berne Township, about 30 miles southeast of Columbus.
He says some of the panties were still folded the way they'd come in packaging, while others appeared to have been worn. There were nearly 1,700 pairs in all, in a mix of colors and patterns. Hummel says when collected, they filled 10 large trash bags.
He says investigators are "baffled" as to where the panties came from.

[Archer]

It is submitted that Merlin is the only one old enough to have created a special moments souvenir collection that large.   

Should he be directed to lost and found ?

[redkimba]

FEMA and the "Waffle House Index" - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/01/waffle-house-hurricanes_n_945756.html

According to the Wall Street Journal's Valerie Bauerline, the 62-year-old Southern food chain has a longstanding reputation for staying open during natural disasters. And if a storm is too intense to stay open straight through the worst of it, Waffle House has especially strong protocols for getting back online quickly.

Waffle House's tenacity and preparedness are so watertight that FEMA Director Craig Fugate has joked that he watches a "Waffle House Index" of disaster magnitude. He can tell how bad a disaster's been by how much of its menu Waffle House is serving.  EHS Today specifies the exact parameters of the index, which gained credence when Washington University Business professor Panos Kouvelis conducted a study on the subject:

    For example, if a Waffle House store is open and offering a full menu, the index is green. If it is open but serving from a limited menu, it's yellow. When the location has been forced to close, the index is red. Because Waffle House is well prepared for disasters, Kouvelis said, it's rare for the index to hit red. For example, the Joplin, Mo., Waffle House survived the tornado and remained open.

As FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate explained to the Wall Street Journal, "If you get there and the Waffle House is closed? That's really bad. That's where you go to work."

[Merlin the Elder]

It is submitted that Merlin is the only one old enough to have created a special moments souvenir collection that large.   

Should he be directed to lost and found ?

You shouldn't be airing my dirty secrets, Archer... I was sending them back to be refilled...

[Archer]

If so, you'll have Nim to deal with. . . 



and that could potentially be a news story that makes us say "huh" ?

[Archer]

Mkay, this strange news broadcast calls for a "huh" ?

Guatemala August 2011 . . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH-KNJYvLSA

[Rowan MacD]

  This just comes under the 'What the heck were they thinking!'  header.
 I have always had dogs in my house and raised two kids from birth around them.  My heart goes out to the parents,  but man, I don't care how much I trust and love my pets,  they are still dogs.
  Why take the chance that something so much smaller than them will 'trip their trigger' somehow? 

 

http://news.yahoo.com/newborn-fatally-mauled-family-dog-near-houston-032623314.html

[Merlin the Elder]

Okay...just so you know... Here in Maumelle, we are not all this kinky (or is it all this kinky?).

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/07/police-arkansas-meteorologist-found-asleep-in-tub-next-to-dead-man/?hpt=hp_t2