NewsQuirks 686

By Roland Sweet, AlterNet. Posted August 12, 2002.

Amateur Hour

Richard Ankrom, an artist and frustrated commuter in Los Angeles, painted a fake highway sign to guide motorists through a complex and confusing transition from the Harbor Freeway onto Interstate 5. He installed it in broad daylight, dressed in a hard hat and orange reflective vest while friends videotaped the process. Meticulously painted to exact Federal Highway Administration specifications, even embossed with tiny reflective buttons, the faux sign stood in place for nine months. When transportation officials learned of the deception after a friend of Ankrom's tipped off a newspaper column, they admitted they were embarrassed but said they would leave the sign where it is because it works. "The experts are saying that Mr. Ankrom did a fantastic job," a representative of the California Department of Transportation said. "They thought it was an internal job."

Litigation Nation

Renee Koutsouradis, 36, sued Delta Airlines, claiming that she was publicly humiliated when she was pulled off a flight in Dallas and asked to remove a sex toy from her luggage after it started vibrating. An airline security agent took the woman to the suitcase on the tarmac and forced her to open it "and remove the adult toy and hold it up for visible view," according to the lawsuit filed in Pinellas County, Fla., where the woman lives. Passengers on the side of the plane facing the tarmac saw everything, and three male Delta employees nearby "began laughing hysterically" and made "obnoxious and sexually harassing comments." Koutsouradis is seeking $15,000 for unspecified damages.

Caesar Barber, 56, is seeking unspecified damages from four leading fast-food chains for causing his obesity, diabetes, high-blood pressure, high cholesterol and two heart attacks. He said he ate fast food for decades because he believed it was healthy. "They said '100 percent beef.' I thought that meant it was good for you," the 5-foot-10, 272-pound New York City maintenance worker charged. "I thought the food was OK." Barber, whose lawsuit names McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Kentucky Fried Chicken as defendants, insisted, "The fast-food industry has wrecked my life."

A 38-year-old woman who was badly maimed after a subway train in New York City hit her sued and was awarded $14.1 million, even though she had lain down on the tracks in an apparent suicide attempt. The jury agreed that the train, which had already slowed to 15 mph after a report of a person on the tracks, should have been going even slower. The judge reduced the award to $9.9 million because the accident was 30 percent the woman's fault.

Edward Law of Orlando, Fla., filed a lawsuit against a West Palm Beach strip club for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. Law, a quadriplegic, said that the lap dance room at the Wildside Adult Sports Cabaret requires climbing a short flight of stairs, and the counter around the stage where the strippers dance is too high for someone to see from a wheelchair. Law also sued another West Palm Beach strip club, as well as an Orlando restaurant and a Daytona Beach Harley-Davidson motorcycle shop, for violating ADA standards.

Margie Mullet, 55, of Milwaukee hired a lawyer and went to court after her teen-age daughter's soccer team was dropped from the top division of a state girls soccer league. Mullet said the demotion hurts the team's chances of getting into prestigious tournaments and the best players' chances of winning college scholarships. Before the case reached a judge, attorneys for the parents and the Wisconsin Competitive Girls Soccer League agreed to let a three-person panel appointed by the league director resolve the dispute.

More Than an Arm and a Leg

Police in the western Slovak town of Malacky reported that a 56-year-old man drove his car up to the front of a tax office, pulled out a device resembling a guillotine, stuck his head in it and tried to decapitate himself. "It did not cut his head off completely," Police Chief Milan Kuzma told Reuters news agency, "but he wounded himself so badly that he died afterwards." The man left a message, saying that he could no longer pay his taxes.

It Happens

Jerry Glass, the owner of Pooch's Poop Removal of Dayton, Ohio, recently quit his other job to devote all his time to scooping poop. "It's a service that there is a need for," said Glass, who charges $6 a visit to remove dog waste from the property and deposit it in a hazardous waste dumpster. Glass also is the co-founder of the newly formed Association for Animal Waste Specialists, which has a code of ethics and sets standards, such as having insurance and disposing of waste properly. "The single most important qualification," Eric Riker, vice president of the association, said, "is cleaning all boots and equipment between yards to prevent cross-contamination."

To motivate dog owners to clean up after their pets, authorities in Anchorage, Alaska, proposed squirting a dollop of peanut butter on each pile of poop in parks and beside sidewalks. "Somebody makes a peanut butter dispenser that puts a dab on the stuff," Jim Posey, city parks director, said. "You only have to do it for a short period of time because when everybody realizes what their dog is really eating there out in the bushes, there's that camaraderieship, I-like-my-dog-to-lick-me-in-the-face thing."

Calling Plan of the Year

When Colombian mountaineer Leonardo Diaz was stranded in the Andes mountains during a blizzard, he was unable to use his cell phone to call for help because he had used up his prepaid minutes. After he endured the cold for 24 hours, his phone rang. The caller was a sales representative from the phone company trying to sell him more time. "We called him to remind him that his cell phone was out of minutes," said Bell South operator Maria del Pilar Basto. "He said it was the work of an angel because he was lost in the Andes. We thought it was a joke, but he insisted, and it was true." Basto alerted rescuers, then she and other operators called Diaz periodically to keep him awake to ward off hypothermia. Rescue teams arrived seven hours later.

Compiled by Roland Sweet from the nation's press. Send clippings, citing source and date, to POB 8130, Alexandria VA 22306.

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