Strollerderby : defamation

Couple Sues After Failed Vasectomy

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:04:00 GMT

What would your first assumption be if your wife got pregnant after you’d had a vasectomy? Would you suspect her of being unfaithful—or your sperm of outsmarting your sterilization surgery?

Well, unless your marriage is on the rocks or you’re swingers (and, hey, I don’t judge!), the latter is the more likely. At least 1 percent of vasectomies fail to prevent pregnancy—just as condoms break and women on the pill get pregnant.

Mindy and Brady Hill of Arkansas found out what it was like to be that one percent (as, presumably, have thousands of other couples), and they didn’t like it one bit. They claim that doctors suggested that Mindy had been unfaithful, which put stress on their marriage. After Mindy miscarried, a paternity test showed that there was a 99.999 percent chance that the baby was Brady’s. No doubt this whole ordeal was highly stressful and unpleasant. Still, one would hope that Brady trusted Mindy enough that a paternity test wasn’t necessary to make him believe that the baby was his. But, of course, a paternity test will come in handy in court.

Mindy and Brady are suing for negligence and defamation. Should they win?

Photo: Shaadi Times

Should 21-Year-Olds Get Vasectomies?

MySpace, Naked Photos, and a Dumped Teenager: A Cautionary Tale

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:36:00 GMT

The plight of Alex Phillips offers a good lesson in how NOT to respond to a break-up. The 17-year-old Wisconsin teen (pictured) faces up to 16 years in prison for publishing naked photos of his ex-girlfriend on his MySpace page. If this sounds like the doings of a puritanical, punishment-happy society, wait till you learn a bit more about this lovely Alex character.

After Alex “dated” (which is probably a very tame way to put it) a 16-year-old girl for a while, they broke up and she started seeing someone else. Alex decided to teach his ex a little lesson about who she was dealing with—and about being a bit more cautious when she emailed photos in the future. He allegedly pasted on his MySpace page two nude photos that the girl had emailed to him during happier times. Suffice it to say that, according to the police report, one of the photos was a close-up that was not of the girl’s face.

Under this photo, Alex eloquently described his broken heart this way: “Yo tell me this bitch desurves this!!!!!....TF gets my leftovers….” I’ve included the ellipses to indicate references to the girl’s anatomy (or, more specifically, to what Alex did to said anatomy) that are best left to the imagination.

Unfortunately for Al, he took a similarly aggressive stance when police phoned him and asked him to remove the photos. “Fuck that,” he reportedly said. “I’m keeping them up.” Once he was brought in to custody and charged with child porn, defamation, and sexual exploitation of a minor, Alex conceded that he was simply “venting,” but he “probably should not have done this.” The girl told police she was “very upset.”

In a best case scenario, boys such as Alex Phillips would have some really good therapy for years before they were allowed any more contact with women. And 16-year-old girls would not email photos of their anatomy to boys like Alex. And teenage boys would not call girls bitches, and would know how to spell the word “deserve.” Considering that this is clearly not a “best-case scenario” world, what do you think of Alex Phillips: vicious pervert deserving of criminal prosecution or confused teenager who simply took these things a bit too far?

Photo: The Smoking Gun

Seinfeld Says He Was Joking About Cookbook Author As Killer

Kelly Mills — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:31:00 GMT

Jerry Seinfeld's lawyers asked a judge to throw out a lawsuit filed by Missy Chase Lapine, author of a cookbook with many similarities to Jessica Seinfeld's "Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food." We've covered this one for a while, and you might remember that it all kinda started when people began noting that "Deceptively Delicious," published in October of last year, seemed an awful lot like "The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals," which came out six months earlier.

Before you assume anything, you can always review some of the details of the book scandal here, but how did Mr. Seinfeld get involved? He went on Letterman and compared her to the killers of John Lennon and Martin Luther King, Jr., and his lawyers say it's clear he was kidding. I have no doubt he was joking about that, but personally, I'd be more pissed by the fact that he basically said Lapine was after Jessica because she's famous and that crackpots and stuff like this are part of being a celebrity, and there was no "ha ha" in that. Well, Lapine is suing for "copyright and trademark infringement, and made slander and defamation claims." I guess we'll see if using fame to pimp a book has any kind of price tag--and I mean for Jessica, who didn't mind the being a celebrity so much when it meant tons of free publicity for the cookbook.