Litigation Nation
Fred Habermel, 72, filed a lawsuit against Norton Healthcare for losing part of his brain. The complaint said doctors at Norton Cancer Institute in Louisville, Ky., extracted a piece of brain tissue to use to develop a vaccine to inject into Habermel’s head in an experimental procedure to fight a brain tumor that had resisted previous treatment.
“I can see losing a blood sample, but how do you lose brain tissue?” his attorney, Gary Weiss, asked. “I can’t imagine worse negligence.”
Weiss said Habermel doesn’t have enough of the affected tissue left in his brain to undergo the procedure again. Despite his client’s poor prognosis, Weiss noted one silver lining: The hospital told them they wouldn’t have to pay for the surgery. (Louisville’s The Courier-Journal)
Go Pro
China has banned unofficial weather forecasts by individuals and organizations. State media said the measure is necessary to prevent public panic in advance of major weather events. Amateur meteorologists risk fines up to $8,000 or imprisonment. Critics said the ban is part of a government clampdown on independent sources of information that challenge official versions of events, such as the 2014 ban of phone apps that provided pollution readings from the U.S. embassy in Beijing. (BBC News)
Drinking-Class Hero
A British immigration court overturned a deportation order for a foreign criminal because he is an alcoholic. The 53-year-old man, who came to Britain from Libya in 1981 and has been convicted of 78 assorted offenses, appealed on the grounds that deporting him would violate his human rights because he would face physical punishment and imprisonment in his homeland for his uncontrollable drinking.
The court noted that his many, unspecified offenses were committed “largely and possibly exclusively as a consequence of his alcoholism” but Upper Tribunal Judge Jonathan Perkins said deportation would deprive him of his “right to family life” in Britain, enabling him to continue his alcohol-fueled criminal behavior. (Britain’s The Telegraph)
