Tag Archives: new jersey

Students Subjected To School Lunch On The Floor

Food disaster

The Camden Board of Education has agreed to settle for $500,000 after a teacher forced 15 students to eat lunch off of tray liners on the floor.  This was done as a punishment for the 15 predominately hispanic students.  Even the students who were not present on the day were subject to the abuse as well. The punishment was administered after one of her students spilled some water while attempting to change the water jug in the cooler. In this community, there is high population of both African-American students, as well as Hispanic students. This punishment prompted the African-American students to taunt and poke-fun at the students sitting on the ground, further aggravating the tension between the African American and Hispanic populations in the community.

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Rabbi Takes A Sabbatical To Jail

Hung out to dry

Rabbi Mordchai Fish, of Brooklyn, New York, has been sentenced to 46 months in prison for laundering nearly a million dollars.  In early 2008, Fish accepted checks to charities in New York and New Jersey from admitted Ponzi schemer and FBI informant Solomon Dwek.  The charities, including Boyoner Gemilas Chesed, Beth Pinchas, and Levovous, are called “gemachs”, groups intended to give money to people in need.  Instead, the cash went straight back to Dwek, freshly laundered, with Fish keeping a nice 10% commission for himself in the process.  Too bad Dwek was wired up and handing Fish bait money provided by the FBI.  Over two years, Fish and Dwek, with the latter informing all the while, laundered more than $900,000, a crime punishable by a maximum 20 years in prison and fines up to $200,000.  Fish swam by the recommended 57-month sentence from Judge Joel Pisano, receiving a lower sentence because of his work in the Orthodox community.

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Assault with a Deadly Weapon, aka a Child’s Wild Pitch

Justice

Can we not step out of our house without worrying about being mauled in the face by an errant baseball?  This is a fear that must haunt Ms. Elizabeth Lloyd, a Manchester Township citizen in New Jersey.  Ms. Lloyd is suing Matthew Migliaccio, a thirteen year old Little League player, for throwing a baseball that hit her in the face while young Matthew was warming up his pitcher.  Elizabeth Lloyd was simply minding her own business at a picnic table right outside of a fenced in baseball field, when Matthew Migliaccio “intentionally” threw the baseball that hit her in the face.  Matthew is now faced with a lawsuit with over $150,000 in damages to cover Ms. Lloyd’s medical bills and any suffering Matthew’s throw may have caused.

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A jar of Nutella with a spoon covered in chocolate hazelnut spread rests inside. The lid is off and placed nearby. The background is slightly blurred, showing a mix of red and yellow colors.

Nutella Settles Class Action About Healthiness

Anyone who scoops Nutella with a spoon has no intention of using it as a “spread.”

Nutella, the hazelnut spread considered by some to be the immortality-inducing ambrosia of myth, was alleged in a class action lawsuit to not be as healthy as advertised.  How anyone can believe that a product akin to a peanut-butter-chocolate lovechild is healthy is beyond me, but nevertheless, the company that makes it, Ferrero, now must pay out $4 per container in trust to anyone who bought their product over a four-year period.  If you bought a jar of Nutella between Jan. 1, 2008 and Feb. 3, 2012, you’re entitled to recompense for up to five jars, or $20.  A fund of $2.5 million will be set up by Ferrero to pay out these claims.

In addition to the monetary penalty, Ferrero agreed to change its advertising to remove any suggestions that Nutella is healthy.  What used to say “An example of a tasty yet balanced breakfast” will now say “Turn a balanced breakfast into a tasty one.”  Astute readers will note that these two phrases are not very different at all.  The key distinction, though, is that the former slogan implied that Nutella is both tasty and balanced, while the new one only implies that Nutella adds some taste to an otherwise bland albeit healthy breakfast.  Ignoring the fact that many Nutella aficionados eat it by the spoon as meal in itself, this new advertising will actually make little impact on the perception of Nutella as healthy.  I don’t think Ferrero was actually fooling anybody with their previous slogan for the 100 calorie-per-tablespoon spread.

To find out how to file a claim on your own jar of fraudulently-advertised hazelnut butter, visit the official Nutella class action settlement website.

 

Blind Woman Struck by Car Receives $200,000 Settlement

Cannot see

The Star-Ledger reports today that a settlement has been reached for the blind Morristown, NJ woman who was hit by a car two years ago.  Chistina Brino was walking her seeing eye dog when she was hit by a Morris county employee driving a county-issued car.  The employee, a former assistant prosecutor, made a right hand turn outside of the county courthouse, of all places, when he struck Brino, fracturing her kneecap and dislocating her knee.  The dog was uninjured.

This news hits close to home for lawyer.com, which is located in Morris County.  The Seeing Eye, the oldest guide dog training center in the world, is headquartered in Morristown, and their dogs come primarily from a breeding center in nearby Chester.  It’s not uncommon to encounter the young dogs in training around Morristown.  Being a small city, the dogs learn all they need about crossing streets and the danger of traffic.  In fact, there’s a statue of a Seeing Eye dog and trainer in the middle of the main thoroughfare.  So, a 20-year county prosecutor must have been aware of the abundance of training dogs in the city, which makes this accident all the more unfortunate.