[Arvon]

The Litigious Society

In January, the brother of one of the seven people killed in October when a deranged man attacked the driver of a Greyhound bus in Tennessee filed a lawsuit against Greyhound and the driver. Apparently, the brother believes that the company should have hired a driver who could safely drive 60 mph while fending off a knife-wielding psychopath (or else trained drivers better to do that). [Atlanta Journal-Constitution-AP, 1-4-02]

In October, a judge in Rio de Janeiro turned down a defamation lawsuit brought by the daughters of the late Brazilian soccer player Manuel dos Santos ("Garrincha") against a biographer who had written that Garrincha was a "sex machine" with a penis nearly 10 inches long. The daughters had thought the disclosure was an insult to the memory of their father, who died in 1983, but Judge Joao Wehbi Dib concluded that, contrary to defamation, most Brazilian men would view such a reputation with great pride. [Agence France-Presse, 10-23-01]

The family of Paul Waymant filed lawsuits for more than $1 million in October in Salt Lake City against the searchers who failed to find Waymant's 2-year-old son before he froze to death on a hunting trip in October 2000. Waymant had left the boy alone in his truck for a few minutes, which allowed the boy to get out and wander off, and he eventually froze to death. Waymant was convicted for leaving the boy unattended, but in July 2001, rather than serve his 30-day sentence, Waymant committed suicide. Now, Waymant's family believes this tragic chain of events was all the fault of inept county search-and-rescue teams and their dogs, who did not find the boy in time. [Deseret News, 11-21-01]

Lynn Rubin sued the school district in Union City, Calif., in November for $1.5 million because his son Jawaan was improperly assigned to his high school's junior varsity basketball team after failing a tryout for the varsity. Rubin said the family had already made logistical plans to accommodate the varsity practice schedule and that he, as Jawaan's father, was not consulted by the coach before Jawaan was sent back to the JV. [Washington Post, 12-12-01]

According to witnesses, Kevin Rodriguez, 11, choked to death in January 2000 in his Broward County, Fla., school cafeteria after a hey-watch-this exhibition in which he shoved a large part of a hot dog into his mouth. In December 2001, Rodriguez's family filed a lawsuit against the school board because cafeteria and other personnel were not able to save Kevin's life and because hot dogs are too dangerous to serve 11-year-old kids. [Miami Herald, 12-28-01]