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Monday, December 15, 2008

Too smart for her own good!

Charlotte, North Carolina
A lawyer purchased a box of very rare and expensive cigars, then insured them against, among other things, fire. Within a month, having smoked her entire stockpile of these cigars & without yet having made even her first premium payment on the policy the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company.
In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost 'in a series of small fires.' The insurance company refused to pay, citing that the woman had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion. The lawyer sued and WON! (Stay with me.)
Delivering the ruling, the judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous. The judge stated nevertheless, that the lawyer held a policy from the company, which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure them against fire, without defining what is considered to be unacceptable 'fire' and was obligated to pay the claim. Rather than endure lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid $15,000 to the lawyer for her loss of the cigars lost in the 'fires'.
NOW FOR THE BEST PART
After the lawyer cashed the check, the insurance company had her arrested on 24 counts of ARSON!!! With her own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against her, the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning her insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

US Army Fallen Heroes 3/2 SCR

May God be with our fallen soldiers, families and battle buddies of those who paid the ultimate price for our freedom. May I nor generations past or to come ever forget!


Iraq Deployment August 2007-October 2008

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Military jet crash in San Diego kills 3; 1 missing

SAN DIEGO - Residents near Marine Corps Air Station Miramar are accustomed to loud, low-flying military jets, but they immediately knew something was wrong when they heard the skies thunder. The explosions came moments later.

After the pilot safely ejected, an F/A-18D Hornet fighter jet crashed in the street of a quiet neighborhood Monday and tore into a home with four people inside, authorities said. Three people - a mother, one of her children and a grandmother - were killed, Fire Department spokesman Maurice Luque said. Another child was missing, and rescue crews planned to resume searching Tuesday morning.

Two homes were destroyed and three damaged in the neighborhood of half-million dollar houses.

"It happened in a split second - boom, boom, boom," said Alain Blanc, 64, a retired photographer who lives next to the destroyed homes and was working on his computer. "The whole house started shaking and rocking."

Blanc heard what he thought were exploding propane tanks. Two neighbors said a pickup truck caught fire after a driver ran over flaming debris and yelled that his gas tank was full as he fled the vehicle.

Terri Scheidt, who was wrapping Christmas presents, heard an "unbelievably loud" sound, followed by explosions. She saw two homes engulfed in flames when she ran around the corner.

Someone led an older woman from one of the homes, "completely in shock," Scheidt said.

The pilot, who ended up hanging by his parachute from a tree in a canyon beneath the neighborhood, was in stable condition at a naval hospital, said 1st Lt. Katheryn Putnam, a Miramar spokeswoman. He had been returning from training on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the San Diego coast when the plane went down, she said.

Dawn Lyons spoke to the pilot just after he landed in the tree.

"I saw an incredibly composed person," Lyons said. "He didn't have any scrapes or bruises. He was very lucid."

Authorities said the smoke that poured out of the wreckage three hours after the crash was toxic and about 20 homes were evacuated. By Monday night, six uninhabitable homes remained empty, authorities said.

There was little sign of the plane in the smoking ruins, but a piece of cockpit sat on the roof of one home, and a charred jet engine lay on a street near a parked camper.

The neighborhood in the University City section of San Diego smelled like a brush fire doused with jet fuel. Streets were choked with rescue vehicles. A Marine Corps bomb disposal truck was there, although police assured residents there was no ordnance aboard the jet. The team was looking for the aircraft's second ejection seat, which does have a small explosive charge, Marine officials told the Los Angeles Times.

Neighbors described chaos after the jet smashed into the houses and flames erupted.

"It was pandemonium," said Paulette Glauser, 49, who lived six houses away. "Neighbors were running down toward us in a panic, of course."

Jets frequently streak over the neighborhood, two miles from the base, but residents said the imperiled aircraft was flying extremely low.

There was no initial cause given for the crash, though the Navy recently inspected hundreds of F/A-18 Hornets built by Boeing Co. after discovering "fatigue cracks" on more than a dozen aircraft. The Navy announced last month it had grounded 10 of the $57 million jets and placed flight restrictions on 20 more until repairs could be made.

The inspectors checked the Hornets for cracks in a hinge that connects the aileron - a flap that helps stabilize the jet in flight - to the wing.

The supersonic jet is widely used by the Marine Corps and Navy and by the stunt-flying Blue Angels. An F-18 crashed at Miramar - known as the setting for the movie "Top Gun" - in November 2006, and that pilot also ejected safely.

There was no indication the pilot in Monday's crash was using alcohol or drugs, Putnam said. Investigators will review information from a flight data recorder before reaching any conclusions on what went wrong.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

The Original Team O.J. -- Where Are They Now?

With O.J. Simpson having faced sentencing in my hometown of Las Vegas on charges of armed robbery, what better occasion for a retrospective on the lawyers involved in O.J.'s landmark trial of the century but to spend this Cocktail Hour smoking a Cuban cigar and sipping a nice bourbon in the company of friends and a beautiful woman in a pair of black stiletto heels, and wearing a "short" dress, in my favorite color red/burgundy, but I digress.
While at cocktail hour we check in on the status of those who found their 15 minutes of fame (some more, some less) as players in the first O.J. trial.
As you've probably heard in his radio ads, O.J. team leader Robert Shapiro helped found a legal document preparation company with problems of its own. Johnnie Cochran published a memoir of his life, and then sadly passed away in 2005. Heavy hitter F.Lee Bailey faced another kind of death: He was disbarred from the Florida bar, and then the Massachusetts bar in 2001 and 2002 respectively. As for the prosecutors, Marcia Clark and Chris Darden, both have authored books.
Lance Ito, the celebrity-struck judge, still sits in courtroom 110 in the Los Angeles Superior Court, waiting (or not) for another high profile case.
Bitter Lawyer ends its list with news from a non-lawyer, L.A.'s most famous house guest, Kato Kaelin. But honestly, did you really need to know?
As for some of those law students at the time, namely myself who found themselves awestruck while being hired by both firms to sift through mounds of evidence and draft pages upon pages of research briefs; I now find myself serving my country and helping families with special needs children, still in the heart of the action, Beverly Hills, Las Vegas, Paris and the likes...just not as lucrative as I'd have hoped, but with my health and my family…happy nevertheless.