Word: van
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Court of California has ruled that one good deed may very well not go unpunished - unleashing a debate not only on who is a Good Samaritan but also who shouldn't even think about being one. On Dec. 19, the court made a decision in the case of Alexandra Van Horn v. Lisa Torti. The case alleged that Torti worsened the injuries suffered by Van Horn by yanking her "like a rag doll" from a wrecked car on Nov. 1, 2004, thus rendering Van Horn a paraplegic. The court found that Torti wasn't protected from legal action under California...
...supreme court's ruling is yet to be seen." Steinberg warns, "Here in California, one of these days we can have another earthquake, and the question is, Do you want people to help or do you want people to be thinking about whether they're going to get sued?" Van Horn's attorney, Robert B. Hutchinson, did not return several calls for comment. Steinberg has requested that the supreme court hear the case again. It will decide whether to do so by March. (Read about lawsuit abuse...
...fact the way it's been interpreted. If not, it needs to be changed. We need to clarify that, and I thought, Let's move quickly and clarify it." Such proposed legislation would not be retroactive and would have no impact on the ruling in the Torti-Van Horn case. (Read about Good and Bad Samaritans...
Shapiro says the message of the Torti-Van Horn case is not "Don't rescue, because if anything happens to the person, you're liable." Those who choose to rescue people have always been protected under common law, he points out, provided they act with due care. "If you wanted to rescue somebody, you can go rescue somebody even if you are not a doctor, but if you are negligent and the person is hurt, you're going to be liable," says Shapiro. "Negligent means unacceptably careless. It's not that big of an obligation to put on people...
...Brash was the tone for several actors who died last year. Van Johnson, 92, was the boy-next-door type, wooing such luscious ingenues as Elizabeth Taylor, Esther Williams, June Allyson and Janet Leigh. But he laced his altar-boy grin with a terrier's raspy impatience; he was the Chris Matthews of 1940s MGM. A trash-talking, proto-rapping musical-comedy star of a later era, Rudy Ray Moore, 81, created the street-smut sasser Dolemite as part of his stand-up act, then used the character as the hero of a legendarily transgressive 1975 blaxploitation epic. Stick around...