A south Florida man is suing a hospital for emotional distress after his amputated leg was discovered in a hospital dumpster.

After John Timiriasieff had his right leg amputated below the knee at Doctors Hospital in Coral Gables, the leg was discovered at a waste management facility and reported to local authorities. A month later, his family was contacted by homicide detectives investigating whether foul play led to the leg being thrown in the hospital garbage.

"Rather than properly disposing of the plaintiff's limb as expected and as required by Florida law, Doctors Hospital threw the Plaintiff's amputated limb into the garbage, with tags indicating it belonged to the Plaintiff," according to the lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court.

Normally, amputated limbs are incinerated by hospitals. The lawsuit noted that when the family went back to the hospital to find out what happened, they were told it would "provide no explanation for what had occurred." Timiriasieff described the hospital's conduct as "outrageous and beyond the bounds of human decency as to be regarded as odious and utterly intolerable in a caviled community."

Doctors Hospital said it could not discuss the incident because of patient privacy considerations, other than to say, "Proper procedures have been reinforced at the hospital to prevent similar situations from happening in the future."

"I have heard of people having the wrong limb removed but hospitals aren't supposed to throw them away," Timiriasieff's lawyer said, noting that Timiriasieff is particularly upset by the hospital's unwillingness to accept responsibility and its failure to protect his private medical information.

—Source:  reuters.com

An Oregon couple has been awarded nearly $240,000 in damages after suing their neighbors because of their constantly barking dogs.
 
Dale and Debra Krein sued their neighbors, John Updegraff and Karen Szewc, for what they described was a decade of ceaseless barking by the defendants’ Tibetan mastiffs. According to news reports, the defendants started breeding the dogs at their home around 2002. The plaintiffs claimed the dogs would often begin barking at 5 a.m. and wouldn’t stop all day. Despite being cited by the Jackson County Animal Control in 2002 and 2004 for violating public nuisance codes, the barking continued. The Kreins sued.
 
In the lawsuit, defendants claimed their dogs were necessary to protect their livestock from predators. The court, however, found that the Tibetan mastiffs weren't ideally suited to be livestock guardians and ordered them debarked within 60 days or replaced with a more suitable breed.
 
—Source: kgw.com (Portland, Oregon

The Virginia Supreme Court recently ruled against a local attorney who was suing his former law firm's insurance carrier claiming liability on the firm's part because he was thinking about work on the way to the office.

H. Christopher Bartolomucci, a former partner at Hogan Lovells, was involved in a traffic accident on his way to work, resulting in a lawsuit filed by the injured driver of the other car who sued Bartolomucci for $1 million. With Bartolomucci's own liability coverage capped at $100,000, he sought to establish that his vehicle was covered by the firm's insurance policy since he was thinking about work-related issues in the car while on the way to the office.

Despite his argument that he sometimes works from home and thus was traveling between work locations, Bartolomucci failed to persuade the court that he was working and the court overturned a jury finding.

—Source: Wall Street Journal

A Colorado man is suing a local district attorney claiming to have experienced "emotional and psychological trauma" after hearing stories that the DA used drugs.

Trevor Peterson of Pagosa Springs, Colorado, is suing 6th Judicial District Attorney Todd Riesberg in small claims court for $5,000. Peterson claims he has been distressed by stories that his (unnamed) friend told him "they smoked together at Risberg’s sweet house a couple months ago." In a single-paragraph complaint, Peterson wrote that Risberg is an elected official, and stories of drug use make "Mr. Risberg unsuitable and unfit to perform required tasks/duties as District Attorney."

“I’m not even going to comment – it’s a ridiculous thing, legally and factually baseless. It’s ridiculous,” Riesberg said, after learning of the lawsuit through The Durango Herald's website.

Peterson said the DA’s office previously has charged him with domestic violence, but his lawsuit against Risberg is not vengeful, he said.

According to news reports, when asked about the merits of the claim, defense attorney and former public defender Tom Williamson brushed off the lawsuit, saying, "This guy lives in Colorado, and he’s emotionally and psychologically traumatized because he heard Risberg smoked pot? Maybe he needs to move. To Nebraska."

—Source: The Durango Herald (CO)