Mercy! 3-Letter Word Costs Mercy Flights $30k

August 31st, 2010. By LucyC

Welcome to Totally Tortelicious—a review of some of the more bizarre legal stories making news—and there’s certainly no shortage of them.

Mercy Me! Where are these guys when it comes to apostrophe abuse? The US Department of Transportation(DOT) has fined a non-profit $30,000 for ‘incorrectly’ using the possessive personal pronoun ‘our’ with respect to sales jargon, if I understand this scenario correctly.

Short version, Mercy Flights, an air ambulance firm based out of Oregon, and one of the country’s oldest air ambulance operators, apparently broke laws, according to the DOT, that prohibit unfair and deceptive practices in the sales of air transportation by saying it is “our helicopter.” Really? How careless!

It seems that the helicopter was purchased for Mercy Flights exclusive use, but an entirely separate company

was set up for the deal, and that separate company is the owner of the helicopter—on paper.

The DOT, not without mercy themselves, apparently, have said that Mercy only has to pay half the fine, if they avoid further pronoun violations for one year. My God. What do these guys do when they read a newspaper?

Maybe they could check sentence structure on road signage sometime…

The Brownie Bandit—heard of him? He’s quite famous in his neck of the woods—which is Gonzales, Louisiana. Why? Because he steals brownies. Those delicious, gooey, chocolaty little squares of sugar, butter and flour beloved the world over. Diet food empires have been founded on the backs of these little slices of heaven. But it’s very hard to produce a low calorie version that can produce the same orgasmic effect—on your taste buds.

I digress.

Although the brownie bandit is obviously as smitten as myself—actually more so.

He was recently apprehended by the police with a bag full of brownies, after having broken into the Jumonville bakery for the umpteenth time. Eighteen-year old Jamon J. Simoneaux stole freshly baked brownies leaving behind crumbs and the odd broken window. Needless to say the owners, Lynn and wife Pat Jumonville, got a little fed up with the mounting expense. So Mr. Jumonville called the police and told them that the burglar would break in around 8:30 or 9:00 pm. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened, and Simoneaux was nabbed.

The Jumonvilles estimate that Simoneaux took about 12 dozen brownies and about two dozen sugar cookies during his brief career. Sugar cookies—OMG—I remember those…

Anyway, the poor bloke is behind bars, facing six counts of simple burglary, and four counts of simple criminal damage to property. His bail bond was set at $90,000!! Are you kidding? What kind of flour were they using? I guess he will have to acquire a taste for simpler fare.

Got a license for your frying pan? A 70-year old bargain hunter was arrested recently after he clobbered another bargain hunter over the head with a cast iron pan. How civilized.

Jon Joslin was charged with assault with a deadly weapon. (Wonder what Julia Child would say about that). But hey, the pan weighed 5 lbs.

According to the police report both men arrived early to the yard sale—competitive events at the best of times—and were walking up the driveway together, when Joslin tried to trip 64-yearold Joseph Brown. The situation obviously progressed from there, as you would expect with two grown men.

You know, I’ve had yard sales before and no one ever got that excited over my used kitchenware…

Tags: Tortelicious

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