Quick Takes: Bones of contention

She first put up skeletons for Halloween. Then when Christmas neared, Alexis Luttrell added some holiday flair, dressing her 8-foot skeleton man in red and green colors. She even gave the skeleton dog a Christmas tree toboggan hat. But officials in her Germantown, Tenn., hometown aren’t so festive: They say the decorations have got to go. A code ­compliance officer handed Luttrell a citation for violating the city’s Holiday Decorations Ordinance. According to city officials, Luttrell could only keep her skeletons up from 45 days before to 30 days after Halloween. And changing the skeletons’ themes to reflect other holidays wouldn’t get her out of the citation or the Feb. 13 municipal court date. Rather than acquiesce and take down her ­skeletons, the Tennessee woman filed a case in U.S. District Court alleging Germantown’s decorations law violates her First Amendment right to free expression. “Why do one or two people in code enforcement get to decide what counts as an appropriate holiday decoration?” Luttrell told WMC-TV. In a Feb. 19 filing, Luttrell’s attorneys asked the federal court for an injunction to prevent city officials from enforcing the decorations ordinance until the case is resolved.

Enough with the ads!

An Indian man perturbed by ­never-ending commercials rolling before a movie didn’t just get mad—he demanded reimbursement. In February, an Indian court ruled in favor of Abhishek MR who had sued an Indian cinema chain for wasting his time and causing him mental anguish after suffering through 25 minutes of commercials before the start of his movie. According to the lawsuit, the show ran long, preventing the patron from getting his work done. The court ordered the cinema chain PVR Inox to pay the angry patron’s court costs as well as approximately $570 for wasting his time and $57 for mental anguish.

Merely a common sandal

Birkenstock sandals aren’t works of art, a German court ruled Feb. 20, and they can therefore be copied like any other consumer product. The makers of the cork-and-latex sandals had sought relief in court against copycat manufacturers that have eaten into the shoemaker’s market share. “We want to ensure that copycats can no longer make money at the expense of our brand,” spokesman Jochen Gutzy told The Guardian. If the court had declared the sandals a copyrighted work of applied art, the designation would have allowed the company to sue competitors.

In a forgiving mood

A French man whose backpack was stolen in February would like his wallet back. But what he really wants is a piece of what the thieves purchased at his expense. The victim’s lawyer announced Feb. 20 the thieves had used the victim’s bank card to purchase a winning French lottery ticket worth about $524,000. Attorney Pierre Debuisson said his client would happily split the proceeds with the thieves and preserve their anonymity, too. A shop owner remembers two men using the victim’s payment card to buy the winning scratch-off ticket, saying the two men were so excited that they forgot their belongings in the shop. But, ­perhaps fearing arrest, no one has yet tried to claim the winning ticket.

Pothole pranking

The local government of Cambridgeshire, U.K., would like locals to report potholes through a form on a website. One impatient Brit had a different idea. Frustrated by the slow progress of fixing a massive pothole in the village of Castle Camps, James Coxall added legs to the road hazard Feb. 23. Working with his family, the 41-year-old stuffed an old pair of jeans with rags and buried it upside down in the pothole. He added a bright pair of shoes to garner more attention. “The shoes were going to charity anyway, so we thought we’d give them an outing first,” he told the BBC. According to Coxall, the pothole has been a problem for eight months, but he said local authorities have promised to soon inspect and fix it.

Pastry emergency

At first the 911 dispatcher couldn’t understand the person on the other side of the emergency phone call. But eventually, the Moore, Okla., caller made clear the nature of his crisis: He wanted doughnuts. A toddler named Bennett made the call using an old cellphone, which still had the ability to dial 911 even without active service, the police department said. Before the Feb. 27 phone call ended, the dispatcher asked the boy if he’d be willing to share any doughnuts that he had. The boy rejected the offer. But the next day, police officers appeared at Bennett’s house anyway to drop off a fresh batch of doughnuts from Dunkin’.

What’s a few extra zeros?

For a moment, it may have seemed like there was a new richest person in the world. According to a Feb. 28 report in the Financial Times, Citigroup accidentally credited a customer’s account with $81 trillion last year. The financial behemoth said an employee caught the error 90 minutes after it posted and was able to fix the mistake. The miscalculation happened when an employee attempted to enter a $280 deposit into the client’s account but failed to first zero out an entry field that was pre-populated with 15 zeros.