Halloween’s Bubbling Cauldron of Litigation
Is any date on the calendar more fertile ground for litigation than Halloween? We doubt it. The Fourth of July, perhaps, if you’re measuring merely the total number of personal injuries suffered on that glorious day. But after a while, it’s hard to maintain interest in those familiar reports of maimed digits and scorched eyebrows that were, in someone’s imagination, arguably related to celebrating our independence from harsh English rule. Let’s admit: If you’ve read one account of fingers lost to premature explosions of cheap pyrotechnics, you’ve read them all.
The same goes for Christmas. Each year, we’re amused but not surprised to learn that a surprisingly large number of our friends and neighbors are unaware that Christmas trees are flammable.
Halloween is a bubbling cauldron of legal complaints, a ghastly fountain of judgment errors, a coven of self-inflicted wounds that ooze litigation.
Halloween, on the other hand, is a graveyard for common sense. And every tombstone is unique. Halloween is a bubbling cauldron of legal complaints, a ghastly fountain of judgment errors, a coven of self-inflicted wounds that ooze litigation so diverse it’s as if the holiday itself was designed to keep lawyers busy, pondering weak and weary, well past the midnight dreary.
We have examples. Mind you, dear reader, these are but a fraction of the Halloween-related horrors that bubble to the surface during even the most cursory legal research session.
He Paid to Be Scared (And He Was)
The website for the Haunted Trail, a Halloween attraction that promises to scare patrons “sh-less,” warns that running away is the main cause of minor injuries on the trail. “Don’t run and you should be fine!” The plaintiff in Griffin v. The Haunted Hotel, Inc., No. D066715 (Calif. Ct. App., 4th Dist., October 23, 2015)? He ran. He bolted at the sight of a ghoulishly costumed actor waving a menacing, gas-powered chainsaw, and he sustained injuries when his flight to safety was rudely interrupted by a fall.
According to the court, between 10 and 15 people fell while running from the chainsaw-wielding actor during the three years preceding the plaintiff’s incident. Three people fell the night the plaintiff sustained his injuries. None of them reported being injured. The plaintiff admitted during his deposition that “not many people would attend the event if it were not scary.”
The trial judge granted summary judgment to the Haunted Trail’s operators, and the appellate court affirmed. Quoth the appellate court: “Being chased within the physical confines of The Haunted Trail by a chainsaw-carrying maniac is a fundamental part and inherent risk of this amusement.”
The Knife-Wielding Pretend Ninja
In Faust v East Wind Caterers LLC, No. 07-15746 (N.Y. Sup. Ct., Suffolk Cty, Sept. 1, 2011), the plaintiff began his observance of All Hallows’ Eve by drinking 6 or 7 beers over the course of three hours at a Halloween party hosted by the defendant, a catering company. Later that evening, when the plaintiff stepped outside the premises for a smoke, he encountered a fellow partygoer dressed in a black ninja costume, wielding a sword above his head. While others in the vicinity wisely elected to run away, the plaintiff attempted to subdue the ninja pretender with what was, in hindsight, a poorly executed bear hug. The ninja imposter slashed the plaintiff’s right hand with the sword and vanished into the night (as ninjas are wont to do).
The plaintiff claimed the defendant was negligent for not providing better security. Quoth the trial court: The plaintiff was injured “as a result of a spontaneous and unexpected criminal act of a third party for which the defendant may not be held liable.”
The Slippery Halloween Wig
The toy aisle on Christmas Eve. The school supplies aisle on Labor Day. The Easter candy aisle on Good Friday. Ghastly graveyards of seasonal merchandise where ghosts of misbegotten impulse purchases haunt the cold and empty shelves. Zombie inventory – a crushed Monopoly box, a one-armed doll, an unnaturally yellow collection of marshmallow chickens, a leaking bottle of synthetic slime – silently reposes on the linoleum below.
According to his complaint, the plaintiff in Goodwin v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., No. CA 00-620 (Ark. Ct. App., 3d Div., Feb. 21, 2001), dared venture down the Halloween aisle at his local Wal-Mart, whereupon he slipped and fell on a plastic bag containing a Halloween wig, which was laying on the aisle floor.
The plaintiff argued that Wal-Mart was negligent in overstocking the Halloween aisle. Wal-Mart’s defense: Customers routinely rummage through its merchandise, including Halloween costumes, and likely discarded the sinister wig on the floor.
Verdict: Summary judgment in favor of Wal-Mart.
Blackface Halloween Costume Haunts Company Executive
Pithy observations calcify into cliches over time because, in many cases, they’re true. As in, “your past can come back to haunt you.” A case in point: the plaintiff in Orlando v. Kraft Heinz Co., No. 3:22-CV-01636 (D. Conn., Sept. 27, 2024), was terminated from a high-paying executive position after several news outlets reported that he had donned “blackface” makeup several years earlier as part of a Halloween costume.
The executive explained that he didn’t view the costume as racial in nature, and he expressed his belief that the costume demonstrated respect for a black character on the television show Miami Vice. For its part, the defendant company asserted that the Halloween costume violated company policies, raised doubt about the plaintiff’s ability to handle future claims of harassment or discrimination, and risked impairing employee morale and the company’s relationship with its clients.
The court decided that the executive’s act of wearing blackface, as well as his questionable explanation for that decision, provided valid non-retaliatory reasons for terminating his employment. However, disputed factual issues on the question of whether these reasons were pretextual prevented the court from ordering summary judgment in favor of the employer.
The Ripped-Off Scary Halloween Mask Dispute
Fictional serial killer Michael Myers wore an all-white mask while terrorizing a small midwestern town in the 1978 cult classic movie Halloween. The mask was designed by Don Post Studios, who sold it to the filmmakers for $150 without reserving any rights in the mask’s design. Don Post Studios later attempted without success to obtain a license from the filmmakers to make and market the original Mike Myers mask. Eventually, Don Post Studios produced its own version of the Mike Myers mask and obtained – after two attempts – a copyright registration for that work.
Several years later, the filmmakers gave Cinema Secrets a non-exclusive license to produce a mask like the one “Mike Myers” wore in the Halloween movie. Don Post Studios sued, alleging that Cinema Secrets has unlawfully copied the design of its Mike Myers mask. The court, in Don Post Studios, Inc. v. Cinema Secrets Inc., No. 99-5731 (E.D. Pa., Dec. 1, 2000), dismissed the case. The court concluded that Cinema Secrets had lawfully copied the mask used in the movie and had not unlawfully copied the mask subsequently designed by Don Post Studios.
Adding terrifying insult to frightful injury, the court pounded a final nail in the mask-maker’s coffin. It ruled that the copyright registration in the Don Post Studios version of the Mike Myers mask was invalid because the mask was clearly a copy of the Mike Myers mask used in the Halloween movie. The same mask it had designed over 20 years earlier.
Halloween Deposition Fiasco
Finally, there’s the deposition incident described by the court in Estate of DeGregorio, No. E028077 (Calif. Ct. App., 4th Dist., 2d Div., Oct. 17, 2001), as the “Halloween deposition fiasco.”
There was nothing spooky about the deposition. It was merely a case of unprofessional behavior, an instance of sanctionable abuse of the pretrial discovery process, for which the offending attorney was fined $9,000.
In this case, the administrator of a decedent’s estate filed a petition for an accounting and to establish ownership of business property and royalty income in businesses that had been owned jointly by the decedent and a business partner. Although the estate was probated in California, the administrator, who resided in Washington, was represented by an attorney who was licensed to practice law in Washington but not California. The business partner’s deposition was noticed for Halloween in California. The administrator’s Washington-licensed counsel had filed a motion for pro hac vice admission in California but, as of the deposition date, the probate court had not acted on it.
When the deposition began, the business partner’s attorney objected to the deposition of his client because the Washington-licensed attorney was not admitted to practice in California. The deposition was halted, and the Washington-licensed attorney subsequently filed a motion for sanctions. The attorney argued that it was a sanctionable abuse of the discovery process to delay the business partner’s deposition and to allow the Washington-licensed attorney to travel to California for a deposition that the business partner’s attorney knew was not going to happen.
Both the trial court and the appellate court agreed. By waiting until the administrator’s attorney had traveled from Washington to Palm Springs before springing the objection to his license status, the attorney’s behavior had caused “the maximum amount of inconvenience to the parties,” the court said. The objection was technically correct: the Washington attorney could not lawfully have participated in the California deposition. However, the only purpose served by the attorney’s Halloween prank was to delay the deposition – behavior that was properly sanctioned by a $9,000 fine and $3,600 costs for the services of a special master, the court decided.
Halloween is big business too, well worth prolonged and expensive litigation. In one famous case, two of the largest Halloween costume makers in the United States squared off in a patent infringement case over rights to create and market apparel, plastic eyeballs and other fake body parts that appear to ooze real blood. Scary stuff for trick-or-treating customers, but spine-tingling for stockholders as well. Fake blood is big business.
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