Legitimate Latino?

In an election year, some politicians will do almost anything to get into office. Now a political blogger is suing one candidate for allegedly using a Latino name on the ballot for political gain. Steven Chavez Lodge, a candidate for Anaheim City Council, was born Steven Albert Chavez, but changed his last name to Lodge when his mother married his stepfather.

Blogger Cynthia Ward says that he has only reverted to his birth name to curry favor with Latino voters. “He's been known as Steve Lodge in a lot of the documents I've seen for years,” she said. “I've found him going by Steve Lodge from as far back as at least high school.” Ward wants a judge to decide if Lodge should be allowed to use the name “Chavez” on the ballot.

Gambling Goof

It wasn't Lady Luck, but an unshuffled deck of cards that allowed 14 gamblers to win more than $1.5 million. Now the casino wants the card manufacturer to pay up. In April, the gamblers were playing a game of mini-baccarat at the Golden Nugget casino in Atlantic City, N.J., when they realized that the same sequence of cards was being dealt over and over. The pattern continued for 41 hands, during which time the players upped their bets from $10 to $5,000 a hand.

The casino initially sued the players, saying that they had violated state gambling regulations that require all casino games to offer fair odds to both the house and the players. But a federal judge rejected this reasoning, and ordered the Golden Nugget to pay the group their winnings. Now, the casino has sued the card maker, Kansas City-based Gemaco Inc., which admitted that the cards were not properly preshuffled.

Pernicious Pet

Class pets are supposed to be cute and cuddly, or at least not violent. But that may not have been the case at one Indiana charter school, where a pet rat allegedly bit one student three times over the course of several months. Glenda Calhoun is suing the Xavier School of Excellence, claiming that the rat bit her son after a teacher told him to pick the pet up. The student's catalogue of injuries from the latest bite includes “an infection due to the bite wound, torn tendon surgery, permanent injury and emotional damage.” His mother is also claiming unspecified damages for medical bills, emotional damage and “a loss of love and affection.”