Friday, May 12, 2006

Where's HIS Mother's Day Present?

More entrepreneurial lawyering in California:

A Los Angeles psychologist who was denied a tote bag during a Mother's Day giveaway at an Angel game is suing the baseball team, alleging sex and age discrimination.

Michael Cohn's class-action claim in Orange County Superior Court alleges that thousands of males and fans under 18 were "treated unequally" at a "Family Sunday" promotion last May and are entitled to $4,000 each in damages.

(Dave McKibben, "L.A. Psychologist Who Didn't Get Tote Bag at Mother's Day Angel Game Files Lawsuit", Los Angeles Times, May 11). Cohn's attorney is Alfred Rava, who (as the L.A. Times really should have found out by Googling Overlawyered, if not its own archives) was among the key figures in the 2003 spree by which owners of San Diego nightspots were hit up for handsome cash settlements for having held "Ladies' Night" promotions. The Unruh Act, California's distinctively liberal civil rights statute, allows complainants to demand $4,000 a pop for such misdeeds, and it's no defense to suggest that the customer's primary reason for getting involved in the underlying transaction may have been to set up the $4,000 entitlement."

Father's Day, 1985. Yankee Stadium, Bronx, NY. I took my Dad to a ballgame, and one of my friends accompanied us with a new lady friend. A very feminist, lady friend. Hey, she had great cans but that's neither here nor there right now. Anyway, the Yanks were handing out some bogus Father's Day Yankee Ties or some such nonsense, and Ms Great Cans bitched a holy fit because the freebies were given only to men. Fathers. But she didn't get it, and to her it was discrimination and all men should die, but at least NYC doesn't have a law similar to the land of fruits and nuts that makes EVERYTHING a crime if it is a gender specific endowment.

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