• Widow Maggie Smith and her two adult children won $1.2 million late in 2002 (reduced from an August jury award of $3.5 million) in their wrongful death lawsuit against Dr. Franklin Price, having convinced a jury that Price did not do enough to help the late Lawrence Smith avoid his fatal heart attack. Smith, of University Heights, Ohio, was 54, overweight, a long-time smoker who ate a poor diet, got little exercise, had diabetes and high cholesterol, and admitted to being stressed at work; Price said he gave Smith repeated admonitions about his bad habits, but apparently not enough of them.
• In Riverhead, N.Y., in December, Oscar Novick, 69, filed a $5.5 million lawsuit against the New York Dinner Theater of Manhasset for injuries he suffered when a dancer from the show (being performed on location at an Office Depot employee holiday party) slipped and fell on top of him during an audience-participation number. The bigger-than-he-is dancer had convinced Novick to step out onto the floor, where she twirled him around to a fast number, "bounced (my head) back and forth into her breasts," and "lowered me down into a dip," but then lost control, with both falling to the floor (Novick with a fractured ankle).
• Expensive boo-boos: Ann Laerzio sued the Octavia Hair Design in Clinton Township, Mich., in February, claiming a shop technician nicked her finger with cuticle scissors (allegedly causing the loss of a nail) and asking for $500,000. In March, Robin Laybutt won her suit against her former employer, the Australian doughnut maker Balfours, because of a cut on her finger (which she now says makes her unable to use her arm for any gainful employment) caused by the alleged malfunction of a doughnut machine; she was awarded about $240,000.
• In a January ruling on the federal Tariff Code, the U.S. Court of International Trade declared the Marvel Comics X-Men characters to be "nonhuman creatures," thus enraging the characters' fans, who know perfectly well that the X-Men are humans. But it was a Marvel Comics affiliate that called them nonhuman to begin with; the company was importing X-Men figurines, and at the time that the dispute with U.S. Customs arose, imports of "human" re-creations (called "dolls") were taxed at 12 percent while imports of nonhuman re-creations (called "toys") were taxed at 6.8 percent.
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