By Dan Slater
Cardiologist's delight: New York's Second Avenue Deli is having a massive coronary over a trademark challenge to its "Instant Heart Attack Sandwich" and a planned "Triple Bypass Sandwich," the New York Post reports. Arizona's Heart Attack Grill, which specializes in fatty food with a "taste worth dying for," sent a letter to the Second Avenue Deli alleging infringement of its own "Triple Bypass Burger." The Deli, which is seeking a declaratory judgment of non-infringement in Manhattan federal court, said there is no likelihood of confusion between the food from the two establishments. "The defendant's Triple Bypass Burger is more precisely a cheeseburger, and as such is decidedly not kosher and unsuitable for the Second Avenue Deli's customer base," it said in a filing.
Cadaver controversy: If you accuse a cadaver company of trafficking in executed Chinese prisoners, you had better have something good to back it up, Courthouse News reports. A company that supplied human corpses to the "Bodies" museum exhibition can proceed with a libel suit against a human rights organization that claimed the bodies were bought on the Chinese black market, Florida Federal District Judge Steve Merryday ruled. The defendants tried to dismiss the complaint for lack of jurisdiction, claiming that the plaintiffs are not Florida residents and no harm occurred in Florida, but Judge Merryday disagreed: "The plaintiffs need not travel to the defendants' state of residence in order to obtain a remedy," he wrote.
Get the ref: Soccer fans have been known to beat each other up, and, on occasion, the referee as well. Three fans of the Irish soccer team Louth appeared in court on Tuesday to answer charges that they assaulted referee Martin Sludden because he allowed a goal to the opposing team in last year's Leinster Senior Football final, the Irish Times reports. The victim, for his part, was contrite: Sludden admitted he was wrong to award the goal, which cost Louth the championship. The defendants will enter pleas in July.
Parody protection: In a case testing the intersection of the First Amendment and anonymous speech, the anonymous speakers won, Politico reports. On Monday, a federal judge in Utah tossed out Koch Industries’ lawsuit against pranksters who set up a fake website and sent out a bogus press release saying the company had changed its position on global warming. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball also said Koch cannot disclose the identities of the defendants, who are members of a group called Youth for Climate Truth. "We are disappointed by the judge's decision," said Koch spokeswoman Melissa Cohlmia.
Tabloids win! European celebrities shall have no more privacy protection than American ones, the New York Times reports. On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights in France rejected an attempt by Max Mosley, former president of Formula One auto racing, to require news organizations to notify subjects of articles before publication. The court said such a requirement would have a “chilling effect” on free speech. Mosley's suit stemmed from a 2008 article in the News of the World with the headline “F1 boss has sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers." Mosley plans to appeal the decision to the Grand Chamber of the Strasbourg court.