Results tagged “lawsuit”

If you were dining at a gourmet restaurant, would you want to slip out to feed the pigs between courses? And if you did, and it was dark and you couldn't see the pigs, would you stick your hand through the fence with a handful of pig feed? And if a pot-bellied pig bit you in going for the feed you were holding, would you think, "Hey, I've got a lawsuit here?"

• A neighborhood-based local business discount card for Capitol Hill? Um, yes please! CHS tells us the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce is exploring the idea (take a survey about it here), and JSeattle leaks via Twitter, "Think it's definitely happening. Question is how it works." Rad.
• West Seattle Blog posted a surprisingly brief blurb on Mac Clay's $15 million settlement from a lawsuit over his paralyzing injury two years ago at West Seattle High School.
• Have you taken your walking tour of the viaduct yet? Queen Anne View reminds us that we have another chance on March 21. It's free, and only 45 minutes. Do it.

It's 100 percent free to be thrilled about the inauguration of our new executive leader. Joy isn't the only freebie today, however. (What? There's more?!) Krispy Kreme will give you one free donut today in honor of the occasion, and a bunch of department stores such as Nordstrom and Macys are giving away free cosmetics and beauty products starting today and continuing until supplies last. Though fitting to the savvy celeb now residing in the White House (we're speaking, naturally, of Michelle Obama), the beauty giveaway is actually in response to a lawsuit accusing the department stores of price fixing on their cosmetics. That kind of two-faced cheating is simply not going to be tolerated under the Obama administration. Get your free stuff before the country runs out of donuts and concealer!

Gregoire just got hit with a second lawsuit over her proposed 2009 budget, which--unlawfully, according to the unions suing the governor--reneges on certain contracted pay raises for state employees and home-care workers. Gregoire's office has responded, saying the money simply isn't there to fulfill the terms of those contracts. Seattlest is a union girl (we have a fraction of Irish blood coursing through our veins, and some stubborn Midwest farmer blood in there too), but we have to wonder: what exactly are the two angry unions hoping to accomplish? A different budget allocating non-existent money? A token acknowledgment that though what's done is done, what's done was illegal? Good luck with that.

We love the bus. We ride it whenever we can. We try to convince our friends, family, and neighbors to ride the bus. We even offered favors to our girlfriend if she would start riding the 41 from her Northgate crib to her downtown office. (She declined; we broke up. Draw your own conclusions.)

Because we haven't said enough about Starbucks this week, and because we haven't said enough about local coffee shops today, we figured we'd jump in on this story.

Not even merely Blog Hot. She's actually approaching TV Hot. Check her out in this (unfortunately un-embeddable) video clip from KOMO4.

... and a $50 gift card.

Well, so much for the ol' "jury of your peers" principle, because we're pretty sure if any skiers, snowboarders, or general outdoor sports people were on the jury at this trial, they would not have awarded Kenny Salvini $31 million because he crashed off a jump at Snoqualmie. That's the amount of the original award from the jury, yet somehow the judge decided that $17 million was the amount relevant to Salvini's role in the whole situation, and adjusted the final amount down to $14 million. Is that how ski resorts will operate? A skier or snowboarder signs a waiver when they buy a ticket that they accept the risks, but then when something happens they get to only accept half of the risks? What if Salvini had hit a tree instead, would the lawyers have argued that the trees weren't thinned enough, and so Salvini didn't have a fighting chance? Or, in the words of an acquaintance of ours who is a snowboarding instructor:

Yeah, it's horrible that the guy got hurt, but did the ski area make him hit the jump? It's a bunch of BS in my opinion. If you decide to huck yourself off something, own up to the fact that you might get hurt. I've seen numerous poorly shaped jumps and said I'm passing on this one. It's more about riding with in your own abilities and judging for yourself whether something looks doable or not.

When Seattlest was a starving college student in Portland, we visited the Taste of Portland festival on the river during a particularly hot day. We got a cheeseburger from McCormick and Schmick's--the next day, we were so sick we went to the hospital, where we found out we had salmonella. We were sick for over a week, approaching two. It was the most miserable illness we've ever had, save for an ear infection 8 years ago that caused us to scream nonstop for almost an hour (infants of the world, we understand your plight).

A special report from national advertising correspondent Pauls Toutonghi

Well, guess what? The tide has turned once again in the War On Christmas - The Port of Seattle has decided to replace the trees it removed from the main passageway of the airport over the weekend. Rabbi Bogomilsky withdrew his suit, but we're guessing the reversal had more to do with the national attention the Port got than any actions on the part of the rabbi.

Last time we reported on a Starbucks lawsuit, public sympathy was tilted in the caffeine giant's favor. Even the frequently anticorporate commenters at Consumerist thought it was stupid to sue them for "betrayal" over a botched email coupon.

That Old Nerd™ we told you about the other day who filed a lawsuit against the publisher of the world's greatest cartoonists, claiming defamation and violation of his right of publicity (apparently over some alleged stories of the man's past recounted in one Fanta book and a lack of the requisite "TM" next to his trademarked name on the cover of yet another), recently made the legally dubious decision to grab the breast of an author and award presenter at last month's 2006 World Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim, CA.

Upon hearing that Alaskan Way viaduct tunnel or rebuild will cost billions more than originally thought, some on the city council are calling for...oh, you'll just never guess, so here's what the Times says:

Yes, Starbucks fucked up. Their "complimentary iced grande beverage" email coupon rapidly escalated beyond its intended audience, to no-one's surprise but Starbucks management's. They're embarrassed, and they should be -- it's a rookie Internet mistake, the kind of thing that we associate with the wild-'n'-woolly days of early '00 or so.

-Two lovebirds are looking for somewhere in the Pacific Northwest outdoors to consummate their marriage. "We will have a two person tent, sleeping bags, a bit of mosquito netting, bug spray...and many little towels." Hot!

As of July 1, Amazon.com runs their own baby and toy sites, rather than partnering with Babies R Us and Toys R Us. Though the move was apparently not entirely voluntary -- a lawsuit and a court decision and a July 1 deadline were involved -- Amazon.com's spokespeople were upbeat:

"We are very excited about it," said Patty Smith, Amazon spokeswoman. "We offer two times the selection of what our former partner was able to offer."

-A new use for the Wawona and Kalakala can be found in today's P-I.

First they closed Leilani and you didn't speak out, because you didn't bowl. Then they closed Southgate Skate Center and you didn't speak out, because you didn't roller skate. Blah blah blah you know at the end there's no one left to speak out for you. Well, that and you can speak out all you want but ain't nothing but $1.8 million going to save the White Center roller skate place. Efforts are there, though.

Seattlest saw a house party get senselessly attacked with a shotgun and end in seven dead. A local senator is debated and their version of the big dig is investigated. To truly get to the bottom of it they interview the writer Jonathan Raban.

There's a document in Seattle today that the Seattle Times makes out to be some kind of Dead Sea Scrolls of illegal wiretapping. This is a document so secure that Portland, where the trial that's making use of it is occuring, has no facility staunch enough to house it. A special secure facility could be constructed, but that could cost millions of dollars and take months to achieve, so the document's headed to Seattle where there apparently is such a facility but don't even wonder to yourself where it might be because the NSA's little-known thought-tapping program will find you and disappear you. Seriously, it's that secure. We shouldn't even be telling you this.

Costco has a lawsuit in progress that revolves around the artificially high prices of wine in the state of Washington. There are a bunch of laws in the books that severely restrict how beer and wine sales happen in the state and Costco is attempting to undo those, and they've had some success. The end result may be cheaper wines from, unfortunately, fewer wineries. Seattlest buys a few bottles of wine a week, but we can't really see the outcome of Costco's lawsuits affecting us all that much. Maybe we're wrong.

Payola: In the music industry, the illegal practice of record companies paying money for the broadcast of records on music radio is called payola, if the song is presented as being part of the normal day's broadcast.

We walked down to Occidental Square for our Monday lunch field trip and unfortnunately didn't see much. Supposedly the cutting has begun in Pioneer Square and trees are being felled, but the area lacked any chainsaw buzz or shouted "tim-berrrrrrr"s around noon. We didn't stick around to gawk, though, so maybe they were between trees. A nice little pile of fresh firewood was sitting around.

And now for a whistle-stop tour of some suburban bowling houses...

According to news stories via The Globe and Mail and The LA Times (registration required), an accused lawyer by the name of Jules Zalon representing Robert Crumb filed a lawsuit in a Seattle court December 21 against Amazon.com seeking compensation for an older case of copyright infringement whereby the online shopping behemoth allegedly made an unauthorized use of Crumb's keep on truckin' character on its website in 2003.

How dissappointing. Chris Cornell of Soundgarden is from Seattle. His ex-wife Susan Silver is, we believe, from Seattle as well. We thought she lived here and owned some cafes or restaurants or something (heads Atmosphere Artist Management). Who knows where Mr. Audioslave lives. Anyway, you'd think the least he could do for the city would be to sue his ex in a Seattle court. He isn't, though. He's suing her in an LA court.

Last week while driving down Stone Way, hand poised over horn, we were surprised and somewhat dismayed to see that Vern Fonk Insurance had closed shop. However, a quick check at the Fonk site indicated that the office had only moved to a newlocation. As a result, because of Fonk's horn-blowing slogan, we imagine their old neighbors are relieved to have them gone, just as their new neighbors are probably preparing a lawsuit.