Crazy Sh*t Lawyers See Archive

Who Owns Kenzo? This Dogfight’s a Catfight!

September 10th, 2015. By LucyC

Gal pal pooch poaching or not? That’s a question the lawyers will have to duke out—pardon the pun. So, what happens when you suddenly find yourself so busy with acting assignments and television appearances—you know—gotta catch a plane Tuesday, back in three months, gone again the following week—that you may have to find a new home for your beloved pet? Hey—it’s obvious—call your friends. Sorry, email your friends, that’s how it works these days.

According to the email train that’s what Ibukunoluwa Oyerinde did—emailed her friend Ellen Webb asking if she could take little her Maltipoo, Kenzo. Sidenote: According to the NY Daily News, Oyerinde is a Nigerian-born former Miss Africa USA finalist who has appeared on the pages of Elle and Essence magazines–so she’s globetrotting for her bookings. So re: the dog, what did she mean by “take”? Oyerinde claims she meant temporary housing and Webb claims Kenzo was a gift—of sorts. Enter the lawyers and we all know where it goes from here.

Webb’s attorney, Robert Hantman, told The New York Post, “It is obvious that the complaint has no merit and is a transparent attempt to garner publicity.”

However, Oyerinde’s lawyer, Jim Kirk, has, as you would expect, a completely different take on matters, stating, “At no point—and I think Ms. Webb would have to acknowledge this—did my client ever say Kenzo now belongs to you or the dog is now yours.” Kirk said his client tried to settle the matter privately for weeks.

In the suit, the 26-year old actress claims that back in April she asked Webb to watch the dog while she went to the UK to film a TV series.

So far so clear—but then it all goes to hell in a dog carrier…

According to an email exchange on April 24, Oyerinde appeared to give the dog to Webb’s mother and sister. BTW—these emails were provided by Webb to The New York Post.

“Been super crazy on my end,” states a text from Oyerinde to Webb about the dog last June. “I want to keep him but reality is that I will not be able to.”

In another text from Oyerinde to her 31-year old friend, Oyerinde said, “I can’t have a dog now . . . Who should I give him to?” She then asks whether Webb’s mom and sister want Kenzo.“Yea they do,” Webb texted. Well, that seems clear enough, no? “I think that’s what I need to do,” Oyerinde wrote back. Yes that’s pretty clear.

But hold the phone sweet Mary—on June 22, another exchange of messages shows that Webb said she didn’t like how Kenzo looked after returning from a dog boarder. “I just haven’t been able to focus on what’s going on with him,” Oyerinde replied. I’m now lost. Who has the dog?

Maybe Webb, because according to her, she heard nothing from her friend until August 23, when Oyerinde showed up at Webb’s apartment to reclaim Kenzo, which clearly didn’t happen and so a confrontation ensued. Webb refused to give the dog up.

Did either one of them think to pick up the phone? Or is that too old school?

The Police weighed in, telling them they needed to settle the matter in civil court.

According to Webb, these texts prove Oyerinde’s lawsuit has no merit. “I’ve done nothing wrong,” Webb told The Post. “I’ve rescued animals all my life. I thought I adopted him.”

Could they co-parent? It has been known to work. If they put the pooch into counselling now, I’m sure he could lead a productive life and, with time, adjust to his new surroundings.

Ironically, little Kenzo may just be the envy of every dog in every pound and animal shelter in the US right now.

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Paternity Test Shows he’s 50% a Dad (sort of…)

September 1st, 2015. By LucyC

A night on the town recently got a whole lot more expensive for one unsuspecting father. This is certainly a weird one—in fact it’s been called precedent setting. The whole thing started out routinely enough—a mother of twins filed for public assistance in Passaic County, N.J., claiming that one man—her romantic partner—was the father of her twins. But, no, not so much, DNA testing proved—the twins have separate fathers. Yes, you read that correctly.

The New Jersey Law Journal reported on this case in May, stating that Judge Sohail Mohammed of State Superior Court in Passaic County found that the man who the woman claimed was the father of her twins was deemed to have fathered only one of the children. Not surprisingly, there are only a few cases of this reported in the US.

What happened—apart of from the obvious? Well, Mom, who was referred to only as T.M., while filing for benefits, had revealed during testimony that she had indulged in a little extra curricular the same week she had liaised with her “romantic partner.”  So, the Passaic County Board of Social Services filed an application to establish the paternity of A.S. (the father) and force him to pay child support for the twins, who were born in January 2013.

But Whoa Nelly!—not so fast. When the paternity test results came back last November, everything went pear shaped, and the case became one for the legal textbooks.

Karl-Hans Wurzinger, the laboratory director of the Identity Testing Division at Laboratory Corporation of America, provided expert testimony, stating that basically the woman’s twins were fertilized by different fathers during the same menstrual cycle. Yes. You read that correctly.

Dr. Wurzinger, it turns out, has published a study on this phenomenon, showing that one in 13,000 reported paternity cases involved twins with separate fathers. This case, he testified, was one of those. Talk about luck of the draw.

So, how does all this work medically? According to Jennifer Wu, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, it’s called superfecundation, a rare phenomenon classically illustrated in medical textbooks with a black baby and a white baby who are twins. (They might need to revisit that illustration at some point.)

What Mom likely didn’t know when she had her tryst, is that a sperm can be viable for up to five days. So, in this case, if T.M. had sex with one of the men, ovulated, and then had sex with the other, all within five days, one egg could have been fertilized by one man, while the other’s fertilized another, Dr. Wu said.

Interestingly, thanks to the spread of assistive reproductive technologies, Dr. Wu said, this phenomenon has become more common. She reportedly gave the example of men in gay couples sometimes both contributing sperm to a pregnancy.

“That’s why we’re seeing it more often than we were in the past,” Dr. Wu said, “when we were relying on nature and women who have more than one sexual partner in the same cycle around the time of ovulation.” (New York Times)

Oh boy. Sex is already complicated enough—but this just adds a whole new layer of “are you kidding?” Not to mention additional grounds for lawsuits.

As for the man originally named as father of both twin? He will now have to pay child support for the toddler whom a DNA test proved his paternity—which, according to USAToday, is a whopping $28 per week.

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Worse than Ashley Madison Hack? Maybe a Mail-Order Bride…

August 25th, 2015. By LucyC

Is it international infidelity month? First Ashley Madison goes to the mat over a massive data breach—and is now facing a class action in Canada for failing to live up to its promises… read into that what you may, and this week news of a yet another partnership gone sour —this one between a “Russian mail order bride” and a millionaire financier. He was fooling around on his wife—not through Ashley Madison but through a catalog called “Meet Truly Beautiful Russian Women by Mail”. (Getting a picture here?) However, all did not go according to plan, but then these things rarely do. According to legal papers, the Russian mail-order bride was not playing by “the rules” (whose rules, I wonder). The whole thing is positively Shakespearean.

The backstory is that in 1993 Ekatarina Petuhova, aka Katherine Nelson, hooked up with A US citizen named Neeraj Nelson. According to court papers, the marriage didn’t last long because Mr. Nelson discovered Ekatarina was having sex with an Armenian pimp named “Gari”, shortly after she landed in LAX. (A remedy for jet lag, possibly?) Nelson had the marriage annulled shortly after the wedding, as you do in these scenarios. He never even consummated the marriage, he told a judge. “After having been used by Ekaterina, I would never again place an ad to meet a Russian woman! I have learned a lesson,” Neeraj says in his September 1997 filing for an annulment. So, human trafficking in any other nationality would do?

Whatever. As it turns out, Petuhova wasn’t stateside long enough to get any relevant US paperwork, so was facing deportation.

Enter Delphi Financial Group CEO Robert Rosenkranz, who was and is married. Somehow, he met Ekatarina. They dated, as you do when you’re married—witness Ashely Madison—hey, life is short—and naturally, she became his mistress for four years. Until something went sideways. Possibly Rosenkranz reneged on the deal after finding out that Ekatarina was a mail-order bride. She’s claiming Rosenkranz duped her into signing a deal to end their relationship and keep quiet about it in exchange for $100,000. That’s peanuts. Seriously? So, Ekatarina has lawyered up and sued.

The “she said/he said” thing goes something like: Petuhova has denied Rosenkranz’s claim that she tried to hold him up for $10 million. Rosenkranz sent a message to Ekatarina stating “I may have cheated on my wife, but you were a mail-order whore.” (New York Post). And he wasn’t whoring around?

Regardless of the amount, Rosenkranz has refused to pay Ekatarina—whom he compared to Glenn Close’s character in “Fatal Attraction,” according to court filings. Instead, he obtained an order of protection in Manhattan Family Court.

Last week, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Paul Wooten threw out most of Ekatarina’s claims against Rosenkranz. She now faces possible jail time for taunting Rosenkranz and his family through Twitter after a judge had barred her from contacting them.

Well, on the bright side, at least she’s got a roof over her head and three squares a day, maybe not ideal but it’s a retirement of sorts. Wonder what Shakespeare would have made of all this…

Oh—p.s.—Ekatarina told The NYP she eventually received a green card from a second ex-husband, whose name was not mentioned in the legal papers.

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Neighbors Sue Over Kid’s Crow Fest Mess

August 18th, 2015. By LucyC

Is it Hitchcockian—or humanitarian—well not quite humanitarian—but it does involve birds. Whatever, no one seems to know—or maybe they just don’t want to commit, publicly. So, a group of residents, neighbors of a family whose 8-year old daughter is “feeding the birds,” is suing on the grounds that the feeding thing is a health hazard, has damaged their properties and is making their lives hell. Well, they aren’t called a murder of crows for nothing… read on.

The neighbors are suing a family called the Manns, who live in a posh neighborhood in Seattle. The saga begins with an innocent feeding experiment by the Mann’s daughter, Gabi, back in 2011. She started feeding crows and pigeons who, in return for food, brought her gifts—beakable bits of refuse collected from the central Seattle neighborhood, according to the Seattle Post Intelligencer. And having paid their rent, so to speak, the birds took up residence on the street in September 2013, apparently.

You can check the gifts out online, because this being the age of the Internet and social media—the story went viral—even the BBC picked it up. And of course, the story’s on Facebook.

Ok, back to the lawsuit. According to the Manns’ neighbors, all this feeding attracts birds in large numbers. Given that what goes in must come out, the large number of birds are contributing a large amount of bird poop, a scene described by attorney Anna Johnsen as reminiscent of “The Birds.”

“No one wants to be trapped living inside an Alfred Hitchcock horror movie,” said Johnsen, who filed the lawsuit in King County Superior Court. “This is a residential neighborhood that was not designed to host a large-scale wildlife feeding operation.” (Seattle PI). Ok—what is considered large scale? While I don’t think there’s a bird count, evidently there are enough birds to cause over $200,000 worth of damage. According to the neighbors, the birds’ droppings have damaged their homes and properties, and the feeding draws rats. This just gets better and better.

Or not. Two neighbors, Matt Ashbach and Christine Yokan, filed the lawsuit in August. Not only are they looking for compensation, they also want a court order preventing the Manns from setting out more than a quarter pound of animal food each day.

Despite apparent efforts by the neighbors to get the Manns to either scale down or stop the feedings, Johnsen said, the feedings escalated. “Large numbers of birds swarm the feeding operation daily, leaving behind dirt, feathers, peanut particles and shells, feces, and urine on the surrounding properties,” the attorney said in court papers. And I thought the ubiquitous Canada Goose was bad.

Adding to their frustrations, the lawsuit reportedly claims that the neighbors went to animal control agencies at every level of government hoping to find someone to intervene, but to no avail. Fifty-one neighbors signed and filed a petition with the city of Seattle, which also failed to prompt action.

The Seattle PI reports that a Public Health – Seattle & King County investigator who visited the Manns’ home, did indeed find bird food that could attract rodents but never witnessed any rats. Health officials sent letters to the family asking them to reduce scattered food at their home. But it seems like that didn’t work so well either. Despite the county health code requiring residents prevent rats and mice from feeding on their properties, the Manns weren’t cited by investigators.

So, it falls to the neighbors’ attorney, who wrote the court stating the Manns “ignored all neighborly requests” to resolve the dispute. Lisa and Gary Mann, Johnsen said, “have refused to engage in any meaningful dialogue regarding the unsanitary conditions they have created in an urban residential environment.”

“My clients went to extraordinary lengths to resolve this issue amicably before filing a lawsuit,” she told the Seattle PI. “We hope for a reasonable and fair resolution for the safety and well-being of the wildlife and humans alike.” Yeah, I’ll bet. After all, selling in that environment could prove a little difficult.

While the neighbors might seem like the bad guys in all this, the facts are that birds can transfer diseases, including salmonella and E. coli. Rats drawn to the bird feed can also carry a host of other pathogens. Remember the bubonic plague? (Well, maybe not).

And there’s the noise. Overall, “The situation has become a public health issue, and constitutes a public nuisance under Washington law,” Johnsen said. “The threat of disease is of particular concern for children, pregnant women, and the elderly.”

How did Hitchcock’s “The Birds” end? I think they won, didn’t they?

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Singing “I Shot the Sheriff” not Welcome at Work?

August 12th, 2015. By LucyC

So, what is the appropriate response to “You’re Fired!”? One guess….Come on….Yeah—you got it—“I’m Suing.”

Oh yes indeedy. And why not? After all, who’s to say you’re any crazier than your employer or colleagues—it’s likely all just a misunderstanding anyway. At least that’s Nicole Phillips’ ploy. Phillips was recently let go from a City of New York call center job for behaving, well, just a little oddly.

Fifty-two year old Phillips worked at NYC’s Financial Information Services Agency, for several years, I’m guessing, but was let go in June because her bosses began to fear she may be a danger to her co-workers. Either that or her superiors were suffering from a complete sense of humor failure. Either way, Phillips has lawyered up and the proceedings are underway.

What did she do? Well, the incident that got her fired from her $73,248-a-year job involved her singing, loudly allegedly, that old Bob Marley favorite—“I Shot the Sherriff”. Ok, I can see the humor in that.

Another incident involved her pouring salt all around her desk to “keep the demons down.” (Hey come on, she was working in Financial Services). Apparently Phillips also acted “in a threatening manner toward the deputy director . . . while loudly singing lyrics to herself about ‘shooting the deputy,’ ” according to a letter from her agency. Hmm. If I sat next to her, I’d be bringing in donuts every day.

Her side of the story is that she did nothing wrong—a native Jamaican, she is a born Bob Marley fan. “They play it in the club, on the radio, it’s famous,” Phillips told The New York Post. Well, she’s right. “And the lyrics are exact: ‘I did not shoot the deputy,’” she said. Yeah, jam filled donuts, with sugar on top.

And, she is claiming the salt is also a misunderstanding. Well, yes the intention isn’t immediately apparent. Could it be cultural differences? Or that she really has seen and heard too much?

All these, and likely more, rather odd behaviors are not new, though. Back in 2013 Phillips was ordered to undergo a psychiatric examination by her supervisors. Be interesting to know how that turned out.

So Phillips is suing—she wants her job back—good luck on that one—and back pay—which may be an easier win. According to her lawyer, Joel Field, her psychiatric hearing was untimely (not sure what that means) and the city used outsourced documents for her exam. According to a spokesman for the city Law Department, the lawsuit is under review.

I wonder what tune Phillips will be humming if she wins?

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