On Point - A New Take On Legal News

Are Strip Clubs Safe from Dancers' Flying Footwear?

The careless stripper bug has struck again in Florida where a patron of a Pompano Beach men's club has alleged he was injured when a dancer's flying shoe hit a mirrored ceiling, sending glass raining down on him.

Charles Privette's suit -– which may be the first to allege negligent performance of a pole dance -– follows that of investment banker Stephen Chang, who sued a Manhattan strip club in January over injuries he allegedly sustained during a lap dance.

A dancer at the aptly-named Booby Trap club, Privette says in his complaint, “negligently performed her pole dance routine when one of her high heeled shoes flew up into the air and struck the mirrored glass ceiling causing the mirror to shatter and fall onto Plaintiff.”

Privette, who was sitting in the front row near the stage, suffered a small laceration to his eyebrow, headaches and nose bleeds, according to his attorney. The suit seeks at least $15,000 in damages.

The club “had a duty to ensure the safety of its patrons” and breached that duty “when its employee failed to perform her routine in [a] reasonably safe manner,” the suit says.

Booby Trap general manager George Gettinger has confirmed that such an incident happened but said paramedics were not too concerned about Privette's injuries after they arrived at the scene. “A quote from the paramedics was, 'I can't believe you even called us for this,'” he told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

A wayward shoe, curiously enough, was also the alleged cause of Chang's injury at the Hot Lap Dance Club in November 2007. During the course of a lap dance, his complaint said, the dancer “suddenly swung around, striking the plaintiff in the eye with the heel of her shoe.”

One can only hope that the strip club industry gets a grip on this problem before any more innocent patrons are harmed as a result of negligent strippers and their flying footwear.

By Matthew Heller
10/16/08

By Jove! Judge Dismisses Suit Against the Almighty

Ernie Chambers

If you sue God, you have to -– in the legal sense, at least -– serve God, a judge has ruled in dismissing a Nebraska state senator's bizarre suit against the Almighty because he did not serve it on the defendant.

“Given that this Court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named Defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice,” Douglas County District Court Judge Marlon A. Polk said, meaning the complaint cannot be refiled.

Sen. Ernie Chambers filed his suit in September 2007, seeking a permanent injunction ordering God “to cease harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.” He said he was making a point about access to the court system after other legislators tried to limit “frivolous lawsuits.”

Plaintiffs in Nebraska have six months in which to serve a defendant but Chambers had not done so by the March 2008 deadline.

At a hearing in August, the senator urged Polk to waive service because God, as an omniscient being, would not need formal notice of a lawsuit. Rather than debate whether God exists, he suggested, the judge could just accept the existence of God as fact –- that is, take “judicial notice” of it.

“If God is omnipresent,” Chambers, an avowed atheist, said, “then he is here in Douglas County and in this courtroom.”

But Polk wouldn't go that far. “[T]his Court has no jurisdiction to make further orders except to formalize the dismissal,” he said in his order.

Despite the ridicule he has already attracted by filing the suit, Chambers told the Omaha World-Herald he is considering an appeal. "It is a thoughtful, well-written opinion," he said. "However, like any prudent litigator, I want to study it in detail before I determine what my next course of action will be."

By Matthew Heller
10/16/08