By Drew Grant 9/07/12 4:05pm

Lawsuits

One way to get around insurance premiums

Fake Plastic Surgeon Lands Light Jail Time and Small Fine for Permanent Disfigurements

Though it’s not as bad as the fake implant/Botox stories that have been making their way around the country, you’d hope (?) that outside of Los Angelenos, New Yorkers would be the most wary of quack plastic surgeons. Not everyone who hangs out near a massage parlor is licensed to inject things into your body, ladies! Haven’t we learned that by now?

Apparently not, as Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman gravely advised residents in a press release sent out today. Read More

By Drew Grant 3/13/12 3:08pm

up in smoke

No smokes for you!

New York City Rolls Up More Lawsuits on Loose Tobacco Establishments

Well, we knew this was coming. Back in November, the city of New York filed a lawsuit against Island Smokes for avoiding the state’s high cigarette tax by allowing customers to roll their own tobacco in-store.

While selling loose tobacco and not paying the cigarette tax isn’t illegal, the lawyer for the city’s corporation council affirmative litigation division, Eric Proshansky, declared that by helping patrons make their own cigs in the establishments, the stores were allowing people to leave with a finished product and thus circumventing the tax. So the question was:  is a cigarette indeed more than the sum of its part?

Apparently so, since the city has decided to go after two more shops. Today the New York City Corporation Counsel and Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman  launched a joint filing against tobacco stores BB’s Corner n Brooklyn and Nitecap Entertainment on Staten Island, for violating “the Federal Contraband Cigarette Trafficking Act, the New York State Cigarette Marketing Standards Act, and New York State tax law.” Read More