<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : Lodging an Objection to ‘Vexatious Litigants’
Welcome to tort corner, where, as a lawsuit reform initiative inches toward a voting booth near you, we update you on the curiouser (and curiouser) aspects of the law.
In San Francisco lives a woman, a former dancer, actress and law student, who has sued her neighbors for playing basketball, sued a State Bar examiner for chewing gum too loudly, filed claims in nine car accidents . . . you get the idea.
She has an unpaid $72,000 court order for legal costs and others, also unpaid, for litigation misconduct, officials say.
Her latest legal distinction is that she is now classified as a “vexatious litigant,” one of more than 200 Californians whose tort tactics are considered court system abuse. That means if she or the others on the list wish to sue, a local judge has to decide the case has merit, and unless the plaintiff posts a bond to cover court costs, the people or companies being sued get the cases dismissed.
And a federal judge has disposed of a lawsuit filed by a San Diego man who said his civil and privacy rights were violated at a concert when distressed women stuck in very long lines for women’s bathrooms opted to use the men’s bathroom at Jack Murphy Stadium. The city contended that Bob Glaser’s suit was not a federal matter; Glaser could refile in state court.
The concert headliner: Elton John, the unsurpassed performance gender-bender.
Name That Baby
Here, by gender, are the most popular names for babies born in California in 1994, the most current year available from the state Health Department:
Girls: Registered
1. Jessica: 5,271
2. Ashley: 3,172
3. Stephanie: 2,978
4. Jennifer: 2,929
5. Samantha: 2,453
6. Elizabeth: 2,366
7. Sarah: 2,255
8. Amanda: 2,174
9. Emily: 2,173
10. Vanessa: 2,112
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Boys: Registered
1. Daniel: 5,087
2. Michael: 5,040
3. Jose: 4,722
4. Christopher: 4,226
5. David: 4,031
6. Anthony: 3,915
7. Andrew: 3,782
8. Matthew: 3,562
9. Joshua: 3,545
10. Kevin: 3,354
Source: California Department of Health Services, Birth Records
Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times
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Toxic waist: Dreyer’s, the Oakland ice cream firm, is always quick to publicize its grander moments: the anniversary of the creation of rocky road in 1929 . . . its official taster’s palate, like Betty Grable’s legs, being insured for a mil.
But when an ammonia leak ruined a batch of labels, leaving 600,000 gallons of ice cream unfit for human consumption and destined for dumping--dozens of flavors of ice cream, packed into tubs, shaped onto sticks, measured into cups--Dreyer’s wanted to do it on the QT.
Fat chance.
Nearly 100 trucks hauled the stuff to a Stanislaus County ranch and dumped it into a heap that can probably only be calculated in acre-feet, in the chimeric hope that pigs would eat the ice cream, carton and all.
The only pigs who showed up were the two-legged variety, captured on news footage--to Dreyer’s dismay--loading up. But they didn’t take it all, and now Dreyer’s has until next Tuesday to clean up the paper and plastic detritus.
The county says the ranch had neither the livestock to eat the ice cream--which for cows would only be recycling anyway--nor a permit to dump the cartons, which Dreyer’s had paid to have plowed under. So don’t hang around Crows Landing come spring, waiting for the butter brickle crop to come in.
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Hotter world: Will wonders never cease? A New Year’s Eve fire among the coastal estates of Carpinteria found actor and resident Kevin Costner packing shovel and garden hose, doing just what folks in Laguna Beach or Altadena would do in his circumstances--battling the flames. The firefighters’ route was blocked for a time by eucalyptus trees felled by the wrenching winds.
Afterward, marveled Andy Rosenberger of Santa Barbara County’s Office of Emergency Services: “Mr. Costner declined to have his picture taken. He took a very ‘Aw, shucks’ attitude. He sounds like a real regular guy.”
No, really? You aren’t funning us? Next thing you’ll be saying he puts his pants on one fin at a time.
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The holly and the I.V.: If your holiday was unremarkable and your seasonal newsletter dreary--be grateful.
On Christmas Eve, Zhi Yung Ye torched his in-laws’ San Francisco house, killing his sister-in-law, police say, because he felt sick and concluded the in-laws had not only “insulted” him, but deliberately poisoned him at dinner the night before.
Two pals were celebrating 1996 in Fairfield by getting off a few rounds with a semiautomatic handgun, and as the new year came in, Randolph Gelpi went out, killed in his own frontyard by one of the bullets his friend, William Skinner, had been firing into the air.
A lesser New Year’s Eve casualty: a bowl of menudo.
A festively fired bullet pierced a trailer in Thermal half an hour into the new year and, while the family slept, the morning’s menudo--a Mexican supposed hangover elixir concocted of animal entrails--drained away through the bullet hole in the wooden bowl.
EXIT LINE
“I’m just terribly sorry I got in a position where I would commit such acts and intentionally wound the land. That’s not my style.”
--Mt. Shasta artist Charmian Glassman, prepared to take her jail-time lumps--perhaps 120 days’ worth--if she agrees to a plea bargain for setting fires to make work for her son, a firefighter.
California Dateline appears every other Friday.
