You Are Not Leaving on a Jet Plane–Not Dressed Like That

On September 1, Green Day’s frontman Billie Joe Armstrong was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight because his pants were too saggy.  Two months ago a football player from the University of New Mexico was also removed from a flight, this time by US Airways.  With these events taking place in relatively rapid succession, the blogosphere lit up with complaints about the airlines.  There are even online petitions and calls for both men to sue their respective airlines.

I view this no differently than the signs I saw as a kid walking into restaurants: “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service.”  A private company has a right to enforce a dress code on patrons.

Those calling for a lawsuit may have their trigger fingers a bit too itchy.  This was by no means a restriction based on race, ethnicity, gender, etc.  This was a company seeking to enforce a public dress code.

Perhaps this is a potential market opening for any of you with millions just looking for something to do with it – open an airline that allows passengers to wear their pants sagging.

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Finding the Positive Amid a Family’s Searing 9/11 Tragedy

It was several years before Andrea Haberman’s purse was returned to her family. It took a few more years before her father, Gordon, was willing to go through what was in the purse inside an evidence bag he was given by the New York City police department. He described his reaction to the purse as “very visceral.”

On the other hand, for weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, Haberman kept calling his daughter’s cell phone number. No one answered. “You’re asking me why I would call that,” Haberman said to Mike Gousha during an intense, somber “On the Issues” program in Eckstein Hall’s Appellate Courtroom on Tuesday. “It was a connection to her.”

As the tenth anniversary of the death of Andrea Haberman and nearly 3,000 other people in the attacks of Sept. 11 arrives, Andrea’s family and friends remain deeply committed to keeping alive their connection to the 25-year-old daughter, sister, fiancé, and friend who was just hours into her first trip to New York.

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Your Children’s Ultimate Weapon: Suing You for Emotional Distress?

In what surely must be one of those “truth is stranger than fiction” stories comes the news that two siblings, one 20 and one 23, sued their mother for intentional infliction of emotional distress from “bad mothering.”

In 2009, Steven Miner II and his sister Kathryn Miner sued their mother, Kimberly Garrity, for emotional distress due to her alleged bad parenting and requested $50,000 in damages.

Although the Miner children grew up in Barrington Hills, Illinois, in a $1.5 million home, they apparently felt deprived of a proper mother. 

Continue ReadingYour Children’s Ultimate Weapon: Suing You for Emotional Distress?