xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
In May, in the latest blooming of the lawyers’ class-action money tree, California law firms asked a court to approve $258 million in fees for their handling of a lawsuit against Microsoft Corp., amounting to $3,000 an hour for the lead attorney (who billed for 6,000 hours of his own time, even though three dozen lawyers from more than 30 firms had a piece of the case) and $1,000 an hour for administrative work, all for the following consumer bonanza: Each victim will get a coupon worth $5 to $29 toward the purchase of another Microsoft product (coupons that are often routinely ignored by consumers in these settlements, as not worth the bother).
In April, a judge in Ocala, Fla., sentenced a 27-year-old man to probation-only for having sex with his then-girlfriend’s rottweiler (with the man admitting that he had a “lifelong problem”) and lamented that under state law, the man could not be forced to register as a sex offender, since the victim was a dog.
Also in April, authorities in Nashville, Tenn., charged Metro News with violating the state’s Sunday-closing law for adult businesses, but the owner said he would fight it since he had recently tried to avoid the law by occupying most of his floor space with a Sunday-law-acceptable retail furniture and garden business (although his sign still said customers had to be age 18 or older to shop for furniture).
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD