"Something Wicked This Way Comes": Halloween Is Starting With A Litigious Flare
“Something wicked this way comes.” Those words from William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” capture the approach of Halloween.
Traced to the Celtic festival of Samhain to mark the end of the harvest, pagans would often summon the dead. Halloween today more often summons contingency lawyers by the gross. If there is a holy holiday for personal injury lawyers it is Halloween with its mix of slip-and-falls, food liability, and costume defects.
After all, what can go wrong with a holiday celebrated at night with millions in ill-fitting costumes handing out tons of foodstuffs to strangers?
This year, it is already producing its share of spooky torts.
In Queens, a haunted house was shut down after various people filed lawsuits over being injured. “A Haunting in Hollis” was called “a death trap” by the Fire Department, but not the fun kind. The converted two-family home was accused of such attractions as the ankle shatterer.
Solainne Mancero-Tannis of Jamaica, Queens, says she was at the house with her family when she went down “Satan’s Slope.” The slide in a pitch-black space allegedly hurled her into a concrete wall at the bottom, shattering her ankles.
The FDNY has since allowed the house to re-open with improvements.
Sometimes, Haunted Houses are a bit too haunted, even for the trained eye.
Take the case of Sgt. Eric Janik, 37, who went to a haunted house called the House of Screams when he was confronted by a character dressed as Leatherface with a chainsaw. Janik pulled out his service weapon and pointed it at the man, who dropped character and fled the house.
This year, an employee, Anora Jenkins, was working at a haunted attraction in Tennessee when she jumped up to scare a group, and a frightened man slugged her, sending her to the hospital. AMS Haunted Attractions said that spooked customers assaulted several of its actors.
Some haunted homes can be a tad too improvisational. In Dickson v. Hustonville Haunted House and Greg Walker, Glenda Dickson, 51, broke four vertebrae in her back when she fell out of the second-story window left open at the Hustonville Haunted House. She was in a room called “The Crying Lady in the Bed” when one of the actors came up behind the group and started screaming. Dickson jumped back through an open window covered with only a sheet.
Halloween can bring out the best and worst of people, even neighbors.
A few years ago in Florida, a woman filed a defamation and emotional distress lawsuit after her neighbor set up decorations that included a fake tombstone that read, “At 48 she had no mate no date/ It’s no debate she looks 88.”
This year, another woman in Ohio took a more direct approach in Toledo. On Oct. 7, the woman went on a rampage in the front yard of the home of the Zeller family with their extensive Halloween decorations.
Over half an hour, she caused roughly $1,000 in damages, including destroying cherished family items. Police arrested 48-year-old Christina Horvath, who is also accused of stealing some items. Yet, the Zellers are not literally giving up the ghost. They put up a sign reading “She Came in Like A Wreckin’ Ball” next to a skeleton riding a wrecking ball.
Each year, costumes produce a slew of jump scare lawsuits from demon eye contact lenses that can actually blind you to this year’s witch hats that can turn into flaming headwear. In New York a few years ago, Sherri Perper, 56, of Queens, New York, filed a personal injury lawsuit due to defective shoes allegedly acquired from Forum Novelties. The shoes were over-sized clown shoes that she said made her trip and fall because they were . . . well … oversized.
I admit that my house is one of those over-the-top Halloween houses. As a torts professor, I try to walk the line between a fun attraction and an attractive nuisance.
Indeed, I have contemplated the ultimate jump scare of meeting children with a notary, and a waiver form covering everything from slips to nut allergies. There are simply some scenes that are too scary for the young and old alike.
So welcome to the most hallowed holiday for lawyers. Have fun but it is strictly BYOC, bring your own counsel.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”