Naked Cowboy lawsuit vs M&Ms maker to go forward
June 24, 2008 | 1 Comment
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The $6 million lawsuit filed by the New York City street performer known as The Naked Cowboy against M&Ms candy maker Mars Inc can go forward on grounds of trademark infringement, a judge ruled on Monday.
Robert Burck — for 10 years a fixture in Times Square, who strums a white guitar while dressed only in white cowboy boots and hat and skimpy white underwear — filed the suit in February over video billboards depicting a blue M&M dressed in his signature outfit.
U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin denied a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, ruling that Burck may proceed with his false endorsement claim, “for he plausibly alleges that consumers seeing defendants’ advertisements would conclude — incorrectly — that he had endorsed M&M candy.”
Chin dismissed Burck’s right to privacy claim, noting that New York law protects the name, portrait or picture of a living person but not that of a character or a role created by or performed by a living person.
Burck, who poses for photos with giggling tourists in return for dollars slipped into his boots, has trademarked his look and licensed his name and likeness to companies for endorsements and advertisements, including a Chevrolet commercial that appeared during a Super Bowl, the suit says.
In addition to Mars, Burck sued Chute Gerdeman Inc, the agency that created the ads with the Naked Cowboy M&M as well as ads with M&Ms dressed as other characters associated with New York, including the Statue of Liberty and King Kong.
Chin ordered attorneys for both sides to appear for a pretrial conference on July 11.
(Reporting by Bill Berkrot, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
Woman sues Victoria’s Secret claiming thong injury
June 21, 2008 | 1 Comment
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A woman who says she was hurt by her thong panties when a metal clip flew off and hit her in the eye has sued Victoria’s Secret, saying in a TV interview on Thursday that the injury caused her “excruciating pain.”
Macrida Patterson, a 52-year-old Los Angeles traffic officer, told NBC’s “Today” show that she suffered cuts to her cornea from the small piece of metal that had been used to secure a rhinestone heart onto the blue thong.
“I was putting on my underwear from Victoria’s Secret and the metal popped in my eye. It happened really quickly. I was in excruciating pain. I screamed. That’s what happened,” Patterson told NBC.
Patterson’s lawyer Jason Buccat, who also appeared on the “Today” show, said the metal staple causes “severe damage” to her cornea that required a topical steroid.
The product liability lawsuit, which was filed on June 9 in Los Angeles Superior Court and first reported on the Smoking Gun Web site, seeks unspecified damages.
A spokeswoman for Victoria’s Secret, which is operated by Limited Brands Inc, could not immediately be reached for comment.
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb)
Drunk driver takes traffic cop for a ride
June 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment
VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (Reuters) - A Russian drunk driver knocked over a traffic policeman then drove for about 1 km (0.6 miles) with the officer clinging to the roof of his car, local police said on Friday.
The motorist only came to a halt after the policeman on the roof fired eight rounds from his pistol, police in the Khabarovsk region, on Russia’s Pacific coast, said in a statement.
The driver was unhurt and is in jail awaiting charges, while the traffic policemen only sustained a graze to his right arm, the statement said.
(Reporting by Alexei Dovbysh; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Charles Dick)
Curse of the Fuwa fulfilled by floods
June 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment
BEIJING (Reuters) - Floods sweeping southern China seem to have fulfilled the final stanza of an Internet curse involving Beijing’s Olympic mascots, but censors have been quick to remove postings that might fuel the superstition.
After a devastating earthquake struck Sichuan province last month, Internet users tied four of the five “Fuwa” mascots to the calamities that have struck China in the run-up to the Games, which begin in August. One Fuwa is a panda, the totem of Sichuan.
The others resemble a torch, reminding netizens of the protests against the international Olympic torch rally; a Tibetan antelope tied to widespead demonstrations in Tibetan areas; and a swallow that looks like a kite, linked to a deadly train crash in Shandong province.
The final Fuwa, sporting a fish, was left unexplained in the original superstition as a curse yet to come.
Unexplained, that is, until widespread flooding in southern and central China claimed dozens of lives in June.
“I am in Shenzhen. There is heavy rain for two days and no sign that it will stop… now the curse of the last “fish” has proven correct. What shall we do?” said a post by yellow_hades on Tianya, a popular online forum.
That and similar posts have disappeared quickly this week. China’s censors monitor the Internet carefully and remove any posts deemed inflammatory or not in line with government policy.
Major calamities, earthquakes in particular, were viewed in imperial China as a sign that a dynasty had lost the mandate of Heaven.
Although the Communist Party has tried to stamp out “feudal superstition” since it took power in 1949, the Beijing Games will start on the auspicious moment of 8:08 pm, on August 8 2008. Eight is a lucky number in Chinese.
Teen Pregnancy Pact shocks Massachusetts city
June 20, 2008 | 1 Comment
By Jason Szep
BOSTON (Reuters) - A Massachusetts city is investigating an apparent teenage “pregnancy pact” that has at least 17 high-school girls expecting babies, four times more than last year, including many aged 16 or younger.
A high school health clinic in the city of Gloucester became suspicious after seeing a surge in girls seeking pregnancy tests. Local officials said on Thursday nearly half of those who became pregnant appear to have entered into a pact to have their babies together over the year.
“Some girls seemed more upset when they weren’t pregnant than when they were,” Gloucester High School principal Joseph Sullivan told Time magazine, which broke news of the pact on its Web site.
Sullivan was not immediately available to comment. But local officials said at least some of the men involved in the pregnancies were in their mid-20s, including one man who appeared to be homeless. Others were boys in the school.
Carolyn Kirk, mayor of the port city 30 miles northeast of Boston, said authorities are looking at whether to pursue statutory rape charges. “We’re at the very early stages of wrestling with the complexities of this problem,” she said.
“But we also have to think about the boys. Some of these boys could have their lives changed. They could be in serious, serious trouble even if it was consensual because of their age — not from what the city could do but from what the girls’ families could do,” she told Reuters.
Under Massachusetts law, it is a crime to have sex with anyone under the age of 16.
NATIONAL TREND
“At the very least these men should be held responsible for financial support, if not put in jail for statutory rape as the mayor has suggested,” Greg Verga, chairman of the Gloucester School Committee, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Nationwide, teen pregnancies are showing signs of rising after steadily declining from 1991 to 2005. This trend was highlighted on Thursday when Britney Spears’ 17-year-old sister Jamie Lynn, star of Nickelodeon’s popular TV show “Zoey 101,” gave birth to a baby girl, according to People magazine.
“The data seem to be indicating that the declines that we had seen through the 1990s are coming to a close,” said David Landry, a researcher at the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based nonprofit group focusing on reproductive issues.
Birth rates for teenagers aged 15 to 17 rose by 3 percent in 2006, the first increase since 1991, according to preliminary data released in December by the National Center for Health Statistics.
Landry cautioned against attributing the trend to Hollywood following the recent hit movie “Juno,” in which a teenager gets pregnant and decides to have the baby, and “Knocked Up,” a comedy about a one-night stand.
“The trend emerged before those movies,” he said.
In Gloucester, the 1,200-student school administered 150 pregnancy tests to students in the past academic year. The school forbids the distribution of condoms and other contraception without parental consent — a rule that prompted the school’s doctor and nurse to resign in protest in May.
“But even if we had contraceptives, that pact shows that if they wanted to get pregnant, they will get pregnant. Whether we distribute contraceptives is irrelevant,” said Verga.
