Assorted Stupidity #98
- Some lawyers who sued a former client for complaining on Yelp about their service learned why that isn't a good idea: her new lawyer filed an anti-SLAPP motion and won, and the judge ordered the former lawyers to pay $27k in attorneys' fees. I should mention that the lawyers involved work for the Tuan A. Khuu Law Firm, in case they would like to sue me as well.
- Good news for those who enjoy having their personal belongings searched by strangers: the government has been secretly paying transport and security agents for tips that result in seizures of cash or contraband. This, of course, gives them a direct financial incentive to conduct more searches. One of these paid snitches earned over $1 million from the program, according to this DOJ report, and the government agencies involved also benefited.
- Did the program include TSA employees? Of course!
- On the bright side, the state of Iowa has completely disbanded its state "forfeiture" team, thus ending at least one of the many civil-forfeiture programs that are so utterly corrupt and horrible. The state also paid $60,000 to settle a case in which state troopers stole $100,000 from two gamblers who happened to be traveling with a lot of cash and a little pot. The state had previously returned about $90,000 of the stolen money; the $60k is in addition to that.
- The widow of a 69-year-old Florida man has apparently provided few details of her claim that her husband died of emotional distress after employees at a local Walgreens store forced him to clean the bathroom. According to the report, the complaint doesn't say how much time passed between the alleged incident and the death, nor would the woman's attorney explain when or how the death actually occurred. He did say they would accept $500,000 to settle.
- Authorities have shut down the U.S. Embassy in Ghana, which might be an act of war except that it wasn't a real embassy. Some guys just ran up the flag, put up a picture of Barack Obama, and sold fake visas and whatnot. They only got away with that for about ten years, though.
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