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Hey Mary Poppins! Watch it with the umbrella, alright
In what’s sure to trigger a flood of umbrella-related litigation, a 53-year-old woman settled a lawsuit with the State of New York yesterday after she was struck in the forehead by a beach umbrella. Yeah. A beach umbrella.
According to the New York Times, Phyllis Caliano-Bahaj and her son were dallying on the beach one day, when the weather suddenly took a turn for the worse and a 6-foot, 15 pound umbrella was dislodged from the sand by a strong gust and torpedoed into her forehead, leaving a nasty gash that required 13 stitches and left the poor beach-goer with permanent nerve damage to her neck. After a 2003 decision that held the state responsible for the accident regardless of who owned the umbrella - due to the state’s responsibility to “safeguard its patrons” - the state settled the case yesterday, awarding Caliano-Bahaj a hefty $200,000. As Ms. Caliano-Bahaj’s attorney remarked, “Summer’s coming. Believe it or not, beach umbrellas like this can be a real hazard to your health.”
Actually, the lawsuit got me to thinking: If a woman can successfully sue a state for negligently allowing an umbrella to strike her in the forehead, I bet it’d be a helluva lot easier to go after someone who intentionally struck you in the forehead with an umbrella. And I have to say, you have no idea how many scratches and cuts I’ve gotten over the years compliments of little cocktail-umbrellas tossed into my face. Note to single men out there; unless you want an umbrella stuck to your cornea, you probably oughtn’t ask a lady if she is wearing astronaut pants, even if her ass is out of this world.
