[USA Today]

Bradley LaShawn Fowler of Canton, Mich., is seeking $60 million from Zondervan, based in Cascade Township, and $10 million from Nashville-based Thomas Nelson Publishing.

Fowler filed the suit in federal court against Zondervan on July 7, the same day U.S. District Judge Julian Abele Cook Jr. refused to appoint an attorney to represent him in his case against Thomas Nelson.

Fowler filed a suit against Thomas Nelson in June. He is representing himself in both claims. 

“The Court has some very genuine concerns about the nature and efficacy of these claims,” the judge wrote.

Fowler, 39, alleges Zondervan’s Bibles referring to homosexuality as a sin have made him an outcast from his family and contributed to physical discomfort and periods of “demoralization, chaos and bewilderment.”

Read more here.

[From me]

Why don’t overweight people sue for the references on gluttony?  How about the National Enquire suing for the verses on gossip?  Why not have Budweiser sue about the verse on being drunk?  Why not Mothers Against Drunk Driving sue for the verses where Paul tells Timothy to drink a little wine?  

I get convicted daily when I read the Bible.  I’m not going to sue–I’m going to change my life to become more like Jesus.   I hope the ACLU backs the publishers!

What do you think?

[HT] Bill Grandi & Ruth Turner

[Business and Media]

The Weather Channel has lost its way, according to John Coleman, who founded the channel in 1982. Coleman told an audience at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 3 in New York that he is highly critical of global warming alarmism.   TWC founder and global warming skeptic advocates suing Al Gore to expose ‘the fraud of global warming.’

 “The Weather Channel had great promise, and that’s all gone now because they’ve made every mistake in the book on what they’ve done and how they’ve done it and it’s very sad,” Coleman said. “It’s now for sale and there’s a new owner of The Weather Channel will be announced – several billion dollars having changed hands in the near future. Let’s hope the new owners can recapture the vision and stop reporting the traffic, telling us what to think and start giving us useful weather information.”

Coleman also told the audience his strategy for exposing what he called “the fraud of global warming.” He advocated suing those who sell carbon credits, which would force global warming alarmists to give a more honest account of the policies they propose.

Read about it here.

[From me]

This should be fun!

What do you think?

[Fresno Bee]

A lawyer has been charged with assault for shaking a federal prosecutor’s hand so hard, authorities said, that it injured her shoulder. Kathy Brewer Rentas, 49, was arrested Thursday after attending a court hearing for her husband, who was accused of violating the terms of his probation for a cocaine distribution case. The husband, Anthony Rentas, was sentenced to 90 days of house arrest.

After the hearing, Brewer Rentas asked to shake hands with Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Keene. A court security officer reported that Brewer Rentas shook Keene’s hand so forcefully that the prosecutor’s arm was nearly ripped out of its socket.

Read about it here.

[From me]

Talk about giving a “firm” handshake. I was always told to give a strong grip since I was a young boy. But this is ridiculous.

What do you think?

[Herald-Leader]

A lawyer for the first officer of Comair Flight 5191 has asserted a novel, and controversial, defense in 21 lawsuits filed against him: that the 47 passengers of the doomed flight share the blame for their deaths.

In response to questions from a plaintiff’s lawyer, James Polehinke’s lawyer asserted that the passengers killed in the Aug. 27, 2006, crash should have known that Blue Grass Airport was dangerous because of considerable media coverage of a massive runway construction project there. They should have known the air traffic control tower was understaffed, that airports in Louisville and Northern Kentucky are safer and that taking off in the dark is dangerous, wrote William E. Johnson, a well-known attorney from Frankfort.

Attorney David Royse, who represents two families, said it amounts to a blame-the-victim strategy. Polehinke had asserted “contributory negligence” — legalese for saying the other party is also at fault and contributed to their injuries.

“We find it ironic and disingenuous that he would suggest the passengers are now at fault when he was the pilot and he had all this information,” Royse said.

Read about it here.

[From me]

This has to be one of the dumbest claims I’ve ever heard!  How is it the victims’ fault?

What do you think?

[Houston Chronicle]

Republican district attorney candidate Kelly Siegler told a judge last year that members of Houston’s Lakewood Church are “screwballs and nuts” and that she works to keep them off of juries.

Siegler made the comment while defending herself from a defense attorney’s suggestion that she struck a man from the jury pool in a capital murder case because he is black. It wasn’t the man’s race that prompted Siegler to eliminate the man from the jury pool, she said. It was the fact that he attends Joel Osteen’s megachurch.

According to the transcript, visiting state District Judge Doug Shaver asked why she struck the potential juror.

“To start with,” Siegler said, “he’s a member of Lakewood Church. And we have had a running agreement — my partner Luci Davidson and I have, since we started — that people who go to Lakewood are screwballs and nuts,” Siegler told the judge. “I’m very familiar with that church. We try our hardest not to put anybody who goes to Lakewood regularly on any jury, … That’s one reason that scared me about the man.”

Lakewood has a weekend attendance of about 45,000 members, led by Pastor Osteen.

Read about it here.

[From me]

So much for her best life now.

What do you think?