The Litigious Society
If you’ve ordered a Quarter Pounder recently and specified “no cheese,” you may be interested in a $5 million class-action lawsuit brought against McDonald’s on Tuesday, May 8, by Cynthia Kissner of Broward County, Fla., and Leonard Werner of Miami-Dade. According to the Miami Herald, the two are angry that they’ve been paying for cheese even though they ordered their sandwiches without it. The lawsuit contends: “Customers continue to be overcharged for these products by being forced to pay for two slices of cheese, which they do not want, order or receive.” Also, Kissner and Werner, “have suffered injury as a result of their purchases because they were overcharged,” and “McDonald’s is being unjustly enriched by these practices.” While attorney Andrew Lavin admits the mobile app ordering option does offer a Quarter Pounder without cheese, he notes in-store customers have no such choice.
Oh, the Irony
Charlotte Fox, 61, an accomplished mountain climber who summited Mount Everest in 1996, met an unlikely death on Thursday, May 24, when she fell down the hardwood stairs at her home in Telluride, Colo. Fox was part of the infamous 1996 Mount Everest expedition chronicled in Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, when eight climbers died. Friends referred to her fatal fall as “shocking,” according to The Aspen Times. Climbing partner Andrea Cutter said of the news: “It made me think, ‘Jeez, it’s just so wrong.’” Mount Everest—Earth’s highest mountain above sea level—is more than 29,000 feet tall.
Sore Loser
In a bid to unseat his boss, Bon Homme County, S.D., deputy sheriff Mark Maggs thrashed incumbent sheriff Lenny Gramkow—who was seeking reelection—in the Tuesday, June 5, Republican primary by a vote of 878 to 331. So, Gramkow didn’t waste time: Less than a minute after the polls closed, he fired Maggs, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported. “As of this moment, you are no longer an employee of Bon Homme County,” Maggs’ termination notice read. Maggs will not become sheriff until January 2019, but he’s confident the county commission “will stand with [his] family and insure that [they] will not be left hanging without an income or insurance.”
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Pratt Falls Fall Flat
Car salesman Brett Bland in League City, Texas, finally had enough and filed a lawsuit in May against his employer, AutoNation Acura Gulf Freeway, and Jeremy Pratt, a co-worker. Pratt, the suit alleges, engaged in “constant taunting, making extremely crass, vulgar and rude comments, and reinforced dominance over his subordinates by regularly entering their enclosed offices, intentionally passing gas and then laughing,” as well as “pinching and touching his male subordinates’ nipples.” KPRC-TV reported Pratt was fired, but that afterwards, AutoNation continued to allow Pratt to “loiter at the dealership” and continue harassing employees. The plaintiff, Bland, however, has been threatened with termination if he didn’t sell a minimum of eight vehicles a month. Bland is seeking damages and court costs.
How Do You Say “Yuck!” in Chinese?
In Beihai in southern China, an unnamed 51-year-old man had been experiencing nonstop nosebleeds for 10 days when his wife told him she saw something “peek” out of his nose. In June, Metro News reported, the man went to Beihai People’s Hospital, where Dr. Liu Xiong-Guang removed a slithery, several-inches-long leech from his nostril as a nurse filmed the procedure. The doctor said the leech might have entered the patient’s nose as he swam in a river.
Road Rage Number Two
In a gross twist on road rage, Henry George Weaver, 69, of New Tripoli, Penn., ended an argument with another man on Friday, June 8, by defecating on him. According to Lehigh Valley Live, Pennsylvania state police reported that: “The accused and the victim got into a road rage argument, leading the accused to defecate on the victim,” but they did not disclose what started the argument or precisely how the offense occurred. Weaver was charged with harassment.
© 2018 ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION
