xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

Mr. Jerry Colaitis of Old Brookville, N.Y., died of complications from spinal surgery in 2001, and the next year, his family filed a $10 million lawsuit blaming everything on the Benihana Japanese restaurant chain. Benihana hibachi chefs engage in colorful hand acrobatics while skillfully slicing and grilling food at tableside, and on the night in question, Colaitis flinched at a shrimp the chef had tossed his way. The flinch jarred two vertebrae in his neck, which eventually required surgery and then a second surgery, after which complications developed, leading to Colaitis’ death. In November 2004, a judge cleared the case for trial.

In February 2004, two 11-year-old boys cut classes at the Ronan Middle School in Ronan, Mont., found some alcoholic beverages, and hours later died of hypothermia in a snow-covered field. In November, the parents of the two filed a lawsuit, asking $4 million in damages from the local public schools for not preventing the truancy. School personnel should have known, according to the lawsuit, that the kids were of Native American heritage, with a high rate of alcoholism in the community, even though neither boy had any alcohol-related incident on his record.

Ladell Alexander, serving a 16-year sentence for molesting a child in a public library in South Bend, Ind., filed a lawsuit in 2004, asking for $4 million in damages, charging that his predicament is actually the fault of the library’s security company because officers should have seen him with the boy in a staff-only area of the building and kicked him out before he could do anything bad. (A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in December.)
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

NEWS OF THE WEIRD