Portland Oregon attorney, Kelly Clark, filed suits in Washington, Oregon and California on Monday, charging the Mormon Church and the Boy Scouts of America with liability for the molestation of his clients when they were children.  The cases, against both organizations in San Francisco and Seattle and against the Church alone in Portland, all concern allegations of molestation that took place in the 1970's and '80's. Clark has a long standing practice specializing in representing victims of abuse.

A Bronx school was hit with a lawsuit because a 12 year old was injured during a school dodgeball game while he was sitting on the sidelines.

According to the New York Daily News, 12 year old Shane Reese of the Bronx was hit in the face with a soccer ball and suffered a mouth injury during a game of dodgeball at public school IS 219. The City of New York has offered Reese $20,000 in order to settle the lawsuit.

His lawyer Mark Weinberger is quoted by the New York Daily News  as saying: "Soccer balls were flying all over the place. There was an issue of lack of supervision." According to the lawsuit, gym teachers gathered over a 100 students into a gymnasium and gave them soccer balls to play dodgeball with instead of the more gentle red dodgeballs that are typically used in the schoolyard activity. Soccer balls are typically harder and hurt more when an individual is hit with it.

The family of an Arizona man who was shot by police while he was holding his baby daughter has filed a lawsuit against the city of Scottsdale. The lawsuit is for $40 million dollars.

According to The Examiner, the scuffle between Scottsdale police and Mr. David Hulstedt occurred on November 7, 2008. The police department received a telephone call from a man who identified himself as David Hulstedt. He told the dispatcher who received his call that there was a crisis. When the dispatcher heard a baby crying in the background, she asked if Mr. Hulstedt was hurting the child.

Mr. Hulstedt responded to her query with: "I'm not going to tell you. I want you to send her to my house. I want to meet with her. I'm done talking here." Mr. Hulstedt was talking about his desire to meet with Arizona's governor Janet Napolitano. He wanted the governor to come to his house. No one knows why he was upset or wanted to the governor to come to his house. He hung up the phone on the dispatcher.

When the dispatcher called back, the man's mother told the dispatcher that her son was "mentally distressed".

Sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise. The AP reports that chlamydia has hit a new record in 2008 with 1.2 million new cases of the disease. The sexually spread disease is often symptomless, but one of its devastating effects is that it renders women infertile. It was the most STD cases ever reported to date for the disease.

Other STD cases have been on the rise too. Approximately 13,500 cases of syphilis have been reported in 2008. It was on the verge of being an extinct disease in the United States ten years ago. This means that there is a surge in new cases for this particular STD. Syphilis can be fatal.

The other two STDs that have seen a steady rise are HPV (Human Papillomavirus) and herpes. The STD cases for both of those reach in the millions. There is currently no cure for herpes.

If there are so many new cases of these STDs, it seems like there will soon be a rise in lawsuits about STD transmissions.

Jared Kopeloff of Flushing, Queens was just minding his business while skateboarding when he was slashed in the throat by a stray kite wire that was encrusted with glass shards.

The kite wire is used in a sport made popular by the book The Kite Runner. It is a South Asian sport that is particularly popular in the Afghani community in Flushing and is commonly played in Flushing Meadow Park. It uses strings encrusted with shards of glass in order to cut opponents' kites in what is known as "kite fighting." The fighting kite that gets cut falls from the sky until there is only one fighting kite left. That kite flier is declared the winner of the kite fight.

The lawsuit that Travis Barker and DJ AM (also known as Adam Goldstein) filed against Learjet for the crash that they suffered injuries from September 2008 was amended to include a claim of wrongful death by the late DJ AM's mother Andrea Gross.

The lawsuit now claims that DJ AM's death from an accidental drug overdose was directly related to the Learjet crash he and Travis Barker were in. According to Rolling Stone, DJ AM's family claims that the medication that DJ AM took during his hospital stay as well as the mental toll the crash took on him were the reasons that DJ AM resumed his drug use after ten years of sobriety.

Dunkin' Donuts cannot be pleased about a recent complaint with shades of the famous McDonald's lawsuit. Surely everyone remembers the 1994 case against McDonald's, Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants. Woman spills coffee. Coffee is hot. Woman suffers 3rd degree burns and is awarded $2.86 million in court.

A class action lawsuit was filed by CA residents Seong Bae Choi and Chris Chan Park on Nov. 5, 2009 against the popular car maker Toyota.

The plaintiffs claim that sudden acceleration is a problem that is present in many makes and models. This particular problem has caused countless unintended accidents and crashes. They also contend that in spite of Toyota's knowledge of the problem, that Toyota has failed to address the safety issue.

According to Bloomberg, there have been over 2,000 complaints about sudden acceleration. The lawsuit also contends that the sudden acceleration has been the cause of 16 deaths and over 200 injuries.

The family of 8 year old Christopher Bizilj (who died because of a Micro Uzi machine gun accidentally discharging during a Westfield Connecticut gun fair last year) filed a civil wrongful death lawsuit. The lawsuit is for $4 million dollars.

A newsclip of the story can be seen here:

There are currently 16 lawsuits pending against American military contractors KBR and Halliburton, claiming that they poisoned scores of American troops by burning everything from human corpses to asbestos in huge open air burn pits.

These lawsuits also include a Turkish company called ERKA. However, this post will focus on the American parties named in these suits.

KBR was Halliburton's subsidiary until 2007. They are now two separate corporate entities.

The lawsuits center around large open air fire pits that allegedly compromised the health of American soldiers and private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The lawsuits claim that these open air pits emitted extremely hazardous fumes. The suits claim that the companies burned a range of hazardous materials in these pits such as human corpses, animal carcasses, and asbestos.