First, it was the president of Mongolia, Elbegdorj Tsakhia, who cried foul when Dallas’ own Heritage Auctions auctioned off a rare Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton for a bit over $1 million. Said that there was no way the specimen could have come from anywhere but Mongolia and that, since there are…
It must be codified somewhere in the Conservative’s Guide to Crisis Management: Ensnared in scandal? Come across like an uninformed buffoon? Or are you a judge whose campaign fliers dispelled any appearance of impartiality in a really important case? Just blame it on the media. Sarah Palin became a journo-castigating…
Back in July, Benino Perez was working at a cement plant on Corinth Street in Dallas when he lost his balance. He fell from a height of several feet and was knocked unconscious from the impact. And according to a lawsuit filed in Dallas County District Court by his family…
Last June, things got pretty busy around Joe Bankson and Gena Charlton’s farmhouse in Hardin, what with the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office, the FBI, DPS and a half-dozen media outlets stopping by, as you see in the AP video above. What were they looking for? A mass grave containing 25…
It’s been almost a month since renowned car maker Carroll Shelby died in Dallas at the age of 89, but he’s not exactly at rest. According to TMZ, his body remains on ice in the medical examiner’s office while his estranged wife and children fight over who has control of…
Yesterday we wrote about Eccie.net, the apparently-local escort-review site that’s suing an anonymous blogger for libel. The blogger goes by the name of Ty Steel and has a whole host of accusations against Eccie: that its reviews are biased, that it’s run by “pimps,” that it participates in “human trafficking”…
Last month, five families sued the crime-scene cleanup company Aftermath Inc. and three of its north Texas employees. Three families had hired Aftermath to clean up after the suicide of a loved one, while the two others brought in the company after their family members were found dead several days…
On Eccie.net, the escorts are always known as “providers.” Visiting them is referred to as “the hobby,” as in, “I do most of my hobbying on the weekends.” This afternoon, some 5,700 “hobbyists” and prostitutes were chatting across thousands of message boards. Meanwhile, in a more remote corner of the…
Update on June 4 at 1:45 p.m.: If this post had you wondering, “This James Dondero sounds like a badass, but what kind of music does he like?” Daniel Hopkins will satisfy your curiosity at DC9 at Night. Short answer: Steve Winwood. Original post: To catch you up in case…
Here at Unfair Park, we’re suckers for “people trying to take shit from Asians” stories. The latest installment takes place in Carrollton, Texas, where the town’s seven hotels are each owned by Asians, and where the city is coming down on them. Hard. Some are more rundown than others, but…
Voters up in Parker County must not have thought much of district Judge Trey Loftin’s campaign mailers bragging about how his “decision regarding deceptive actions by environmental extremists made the EPA reevaluate its national policy.” That’s pretty grandiose, and it sounded like he was referring to the case of Steve…
Frisco High School’s only black coach says he was fired earlier this year for complaining of racial discrimination. Former Frisco world history teacher and basketball coach Alvin Jackson claims in a May 22 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court that school and district administrators began retaliating against him after he…
Update at 2:30 p.m.: Just got off the phone with Jim Halperin, Heritage Auction co-chairman who confirms that the Observer is a force for peace and good in the world and that it was indeed our blog post that prompted him to reach out to Painter. As for what happens…
Politics is politics, and incumbents running for re-election in conservative Parker County, Texas, where the local economy is fueled entirely by shale-gas production, want to look like champions of the industry. But what if you’re a judge? And what if, at the very moment you put up fliers of Rush…
Tricky work deciding who gets the protections of a journalist in court. In the case of a natural gas production company suing a Parker County man who blames it for contaminating his water well, state district Judge Trey Loftin attempted to suss it out in a recent order compelling fracking…
Billy Frederick Allen served 26 years in prison for two drug-related murders in University Park. In February 2009, the Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin freed him, citing ineffective lawyering and “newly discovered evidence” that gave them “no confidence in the outcome of the trial.” In March 2010, Allen filed…
The practice of law is a subtle art, one which requires finesse, tact, and skill. Sometimes too, we’ve learned, it necessitates calling the other guy’s lawyer a pansy, an asshole, an ignorant slut, and threatening, not very subtly, to sodomize him. (What’s with lawyers and threatening to sodomize people?) Martin…
My 3-year-old son is crushed. Yesterday, his dad was about $1,052,480 shy of purchasing a 75 percent complete fossil skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus bataar, sold by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions. Or at least I would have been had I put in a bid. It’s just as well, though, because whoever purchased…
It’s been three years, almost to the day, since 12 people were injured — one of them permanently paralyzed — after the Dallas Cowboys’ 88,000-square-foot, steel-and-fabric practice facility collapsed under high winds. Since then there have been lawsuits, federal investigations and detailed engineering explanations. Today, we’re reminded that it wasn’t…
Stephen Benavides, the Occupy Dallas protester arrested on suspicion of assaulting a police officer during a scuffle at the November Bank of America protest, has signed a plea deal that reduces the felony to a misdemeanor resisting-arrest charge and keeps him out of jail. Benavides pleaded no contest to the…
Dallas black activist the Reverend Ronald Wright went home last Friday expecting to be greeted happily by his 2-year-old German shepherd Sadie. When he opened the door, the house was silent. He immediately knew something was wrong. When he went to the backyard, he saw his dog lying on the…
Aftermath Inc. refers to itself as a “biohazard restoration company”, more commonly known as crime-scene cleanup: The company’s employees go in after murders, suicides, injuries, hoarding cases and other seriously unpleasant situations. But now three of their Texas employees are being sued in Dallas County district court, where five families…
