Jury Says 'Up Yours' To Rectal Exam Lawsuit [Rectal Exams]

Remember Brian Persaud, the Brooklyn construction worker who tried to sue a New York hospital for performing a by-the-books rectal exam on him in 2003? Earlier today, a Manhattan jury tossed his lawsuit, claiming he failed to show he suffered assault and battery. This means we'll never get to hear both sides splitting hairs about what constitutes a full "rectal examination"—Persaud says the doctor did it, and the doctor says she didn't.

Dr. Susan M. Trocciola, who was a resident in trauma medicine at the time, testified that she placed a finger in Mr. Persaud's rectal area after conducting a physical exam of his spine to check for a spinal-cord injury.
 
Whether the rectal exam was performed was a matter of dispute. Mr. Persaud testified that he felt a finger inserted in his rectum, but Dr. Trocciola said the exam was never carried out.

Mr. Persaud was not necessarily the most sympathetic plaintiff. It emerged during the trial that Mr. Persaud, a native of Guyana who did not complete high school, had been convicted of two misdemeanors: attempted aggravated harassment for making phone calls to an ex-girlfriend's mother in 2001 and criminal mischief for threatening a fellow motorist with a baseball bat after a minor car accident in 2007. Mr. Persaud had filed a workers' compensation claim and also sued the owner of the site where he was injured. He was awarded about $4,000 in the compensation claim, but the suit was settled for a negligible sum, Mr. Marrone said.
 
In a phone interview, Mr. Marrone said of his client, "He's not a perfect person, but he's not a criminal by any standard of the word. He's got a lot of anxiety. He reacts negatively in stressful situations and he has a short temper."

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(Photo: Getty )

U-Haul Must Pay $84 Million To Man For Injuries [Verdicts]

A Dallas court found U-Haul guilty of negligence for failing to maintain its vehicles properly, and awarded 74-year-old Talmadge Waldrip $84 million in damages, $63 million of which are punitive. "The truck's parking brake did not work at all," said the man's lawyer. "He stepped out of the truck and it rolled right over him."

U-Haul will appeal, of course, and announced that "the damages awarded are particularly outrageous given the circumstances of this case... The final verdict is another example of abuse of the legal system against corporate citizens in America."

What they failed to mention in their statement was that Waldrip's pelvis was crushed in the accident, "leaving him unable to walk and with no bowel control," and that "six previous renters had similar problems with the truck."

Time Warner Delivers Modem, Cockroaches [Used Equipment]

Maybe Time Warner needs to include a decontamination protocol when it transfers reusable equipment between customers:

On Tuesday, April 15, 2008 a Time Warner representative came to our home to install the digital telephone modem which would also provide our internet service.
 
My husband observed an insect walking on the modem box and asked what it was and the employee seemed dazed and confused.

After the installer left, my husband and I saw cockroach after cockroach emerge from the modem. We killed them as quickly as we could. We have never seen roaches in our house before. Our house is free-standing and many yards away from neighbor homes.
 
I called Time Warner insisting that they come to remove the modem. The woman I spoke with insisted that I had to be wrong and that it was impossible for cockroaches to be in the modem. She refused my request that Time Warner come on the following day to remove and replace the offending modem, which housed a swarm of roaches.
 
We wrapped the modem up in plastic and duct tape.
 

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