Watercooler Stories

Ky. man off the hook for old truck loan

LOUISVILLE, Ky., June 26 (UPI) -- A Kentucky man has finally freed himself of a growing debt for a pickup truck he had never even seen, much less owned.

A Jefferson County judge Monday declared Rocky Cisney was not liable for the 1992 Ford bought by a former employee who then fell behind in the payments in 1998.

"I felt all along this was a miscarriage of justice," Cisney told The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal. "It simply wasn't right," Cisney said.

Cisney had been told he owed $60,000 to an auto credit business even though the long-gone employee only owed $9,000 when the trouble began.

Cisney was served with a court order to garnish the truck owner's wages, but by that time she had left the company. Cisney ignored the letter since there were no wages to garnish, which turned out to be the wrong move.

The matter evolved into a court ruling declaring Cisney, who ran a delivery company at the time, to be responsible for the debt and its 26-percent annual interest rate.

The judge Monday ruled the credit firm waited too long before attempting to get its money from Cisney. The company told the newspaper it acted according to the law and only went after Cisney when it couldn't locate the vehicle's owner.

Massachusetts ballot could read strangely

BOSTON, June 26 (UPI) -- Massachusetts' secretary of state has gone to court seeking to drop the translation of the 2008 presidential ballot into Chinese.

Secretary of State William F. Galvin is challenging a 2005 agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice requiring the translation on the grounds the names are too difficult to accurately spell out in Chinese.

The Boston Globe pointed out there is no actual translation for English names, which could result in Mitt Romney being read phonetically as "Sticky Rice" or Fred Thompson coming out as "Virtue Soup." Barrack Obama could translate as "Oh Bus Horse."

In addition, the ballots would have to be printed in both Mandarin and Cantonese dialects.

Galvin said he could go along with printing the ballot in Chinese if the candidate names are in English; however, the Justice Department and Asian activists say that could lead to confusion among Chinese voters.

Potato Queen fights loss of tiara

BAY CITY, Mich., June 26 (UPI) -- The Munger (Mich.) Potato Festival Potato Queen has been stripped of her tiara six weeks early for what she says is a bum rap of not attending enough events.

Allison Nowicki told the Bay City (Mich.) Times that she only missed one engagement, a St. Patrick's Day Parade. She believes she had a good reason, a compulsory meeting at Lake Superior State University, where she is a student and which is a three-hour drive from the parade in Bay City.

Since she was crowned in 2006, Nowicki has graced the Miss Bay County Pageant, the St. Johns Mint Festival, the Bay County Fair, the Montrose Blueberry Festival and the Linwood Pickle Festival.

Nowicki claimed that the Munger Potato Festival Potato Queen Committee tried to blackmail her, offering to restore the title if she didn't go public with her story, the Times reported. She only had six weeks left in her reign when she got the committee's letter June 4.

"When my mom first called me with the letter, I tried not to show that I was hurt, but I was," Nowicki tolld the Times. "To me, it wasn't about getting a crown and getting a sash -- it was about getting to meet people and showing my love for Munger. ... Who knows if they're going to do that to next year's queen."

Dentist probed for filling 52 cavities

NEW YORK, June 26 (UPI) -- A New York dentist is under investigation for billing Medicaid for filling 52 cavities in a single mouth, a feat he claimed took no more than an hour or two.

"This dentist never should have been paid in the first place," State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli told the New York Post. "Human beings typically have 32 teeth. When a dentist tries to get paid for filling 52 teeth in one mouth in one day, it should raise some red flags."

The dentist, who practices in Brooklyn and lives on Long Island, is under investigation by the state Education Department, which is in charge of licensing for dentists and says it first learned of the dubious fillings from the Post, and the Health Department, which supervises Medicaid.

"We're looking at every dollar he's ever submitted through Medicaid," a Health Department spokeswoman said.

The dentist reportedly billed Medicaid for work on two other patients the same day that he billed for the 52 fillings.

The dentist's wife told the Post that her husband has been practicing in the United States for 30 years with no legal problems.