People and Events

Call it Catch-22: A Beverly Hills furrier, Somper Fur Couture International, says you can get a real bargain on a full-length, one-of-a-kind Russian Belly Lynx coat designed by Christian Dior.

The price changes every day, based on a figure that just about all of the firm’s customers can quote: It is 100 times the closing Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Thursday’s market slump, for instance, dropped the bottom line by $3,444--all the way down to $251,664.

Somper owner Penny Jacobs said the numbers are in the right range; coats like that one usually sell for $250,000 to $260,000, and she’s had telexes and phone calls from prospective buyers as far away as Japan.

But still no sale.

Trouble is, when the market is up the price goes out of reach.

And when it’s down, who can afford it?

U.S. District Judge Pamela Ann Rymer ruled that Los Angeles Zoo Director Warren Thomas was justified in reneging on an agreement to swap elephants.

Animal trainer Gary Jacobson had sued, saying he had a deal to send the zoo four baby elephants in return for a “problem” male called Sampson--and Joyce, a gentle female. But he admitted that he only agreed to accept Sampson in order to get Joyce for the ride-an-elephant concession he runs in Florida.

Jacobson said he had found a home for the intractable Sampson at a zoo in Mexico, and it wasn’t his fault that the petulant pachyderm died mysteriously en route.

But Thomas said he wasn’t convinced. He said he decided not to ship Joyce to the Florida man when he discovered that another of Jacobson’s elephants had also died under peculiar circumstances . . . while chained by all four legs, more than two months after it had been injured in one of Jacobson’s shows.

Outlawing of toy guns by the City of Burbank has--not unexpectedly--touched off a virtual epidemic of bumper stickers, both pro and con.

Pro: “Don’t Kill My Kid for a Capgun.”

Con: “Ban the Waterpistol?”

Whatever: “Guns don’t squirt people--People squirt people.”

Attorney Stephen Yagman said the decision could be educational. A federal jury in Los Angeles awarded his client, Hawaiian restaurateur Timothy Hammer, $15,500 damages in his suit against police. He said they used physical coercion to make him take a blood test when he was arrested in Newport Beach two years ago.

“When police beat people over the head to take the test,” Yagman said, “there’s a lesson to be learned: They can’t do that!”

This is the last day to make reservations for the “Driver-Under-The-Influence” dinner symposium at the Los Angeles Police Academy. Asst. Chief Robert L. Vernon urged attendance, saying the Oct. 20 event should be an “enjoyable opportunity . . . to meet with colleagues in an an informal setting.”

Perhaps more enjoyable for some, however, than for others.

Highlight of the evening will be what the chief called a “practical demonstration” of the effects of alcohol. A few volunteers will be given measured amounts at specified time intervals, to prepare them for field sobriety examinations and breath tests to be administered on the spot.

They’re not inviting just anyone, of course: invitations are limited to the department’s own staff, command officers and traffic division lieutenants, and a few selected judges and prosecutors.

(Still, if they should happen to run short of guinea pigs . . . )