Halloween Torts

CBS News is reporting that a professor at Ashland University has found very high levels of lead in a variety of Halloween-themed products, including “ugly teeth” which, as you might suspect, are made to go in a child’s mouth.  A later report indicates that the distributor and retailers are trying to get them pulled from shelves, and Amscan (the distributor) has announced a recall (though it’s not on its press releases page).

In only very slightly related news (i.e., I discovered it while looking for Halloween-themed material), it is with no small amount of pride that I observe that the Google search for “Halloween torts” has as its very first result my very first Torts exam [PDF].  I am particularly fond of this part:

Spooky Scary World was an event that ran for four weeks in the fall every year. It was operated as a benefit by the Center to Cure Mild Irritability and Crankiness (“CCMIC”). The CCMIC hired over two hundred short-term employees to staff the half-dozen haunted houses as scare actors and operators of the various technologies involved in the attractions.

(I also rather like the description of a particular “scare zone”: “an almost entirely vacant warehouse “spook zone” entitled “Britney’s Brain” (featuring one actor performing as a “thought” roughly every twenty minutes).”)

And perhaps the funniest line I’ve ever gotten from a student was in response to my use in the exam of a scare actor dressed as then-Red-Sox-player Johnny Damon: “Everyone knows that Johnny Damon is only scary with runners in scoring position.”

–BC