truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Compelling Explanations: In the 2006 take-off crash of a Comair commuter airliner at the regional airport in Lexington, Ky. (which the FAA blamed on pilot error), all 47 passengers were killed, and 21 lawsuits have been filed, with attorney William Johnson defending the only cockpit survivor (the first officer). The Lexington Herald-Leader reported in January that, in court papers filed in the lawsuits, Johnson had offered the defense that the seat-belted-in passengers should share the blame for their own deaths, in that they should have chosen other airports that might have been safer. (Shortly after the newspaper report, Johnson withdrew the defense.)

In the 2006 take-off crash of a Comair commuter airliner at the regional airport in Lexington, Ky. (which the FAA blamed on pilot error), all 47 passengers were killed, and 21 lawsuits have been filed, with attorney William Johnson defending the only cockpit survivor (the first officer). The Lexington Herald-Leader reported in January that, in court papers filed in the lawsuits, Johnson had offered the defense that the seat-belted-in passengers should share the blame for their own deaths, in that they should have chosen other airports that might have been safer. (Shortly after the newspaper report, Johnson withdrew the defense.)

A prominent British novelist (former winner of the prestigious Whitbread Prize) announced in January that she had won a settlement of the equivalent of more than $200,000 from a shoe manufacturer in the town of Totnes because fumes from its factory so sapped her creativity that she was forced to write down-market thrillers instead of literary works. Joan Brady said numbness in her hands and legs, caused by pollutants, made her settle on simpler plotlines involving violence as she worked out her aggression toward the factory owners.

A prominent British novelist (former winner of the prestigious Whitbread Prize) announced in January that she had won a settlement of the equivalent of more than $200,000 from a shoe manufacturer in the town of Totnes because fumes from its factory so sapped her creativity that she was forced to write down-market thrillers instead of literary works. Joan Brady said numbness in her hands and legs, caused by pollutants, made her settle on simpler plotlines involving violence as she worked out her aggression toward the factory owners.

The Litigious Society: In December, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority filed a lawsuit demanding payment from the families of four people killed by an out-of-control tractor-trailer in 2006 (presumably to recoup clean-up costs and damage to the roadway). However, after the New York Post asked NJTA lawyer William Ziff for a comment, he rushed to the Union County courthouse and withdrew the lawsuit.

In January, Jerome Felske was fired as a truck driver for the city of Chicago when investigators learned that he had 22 criminal convictions on his record. Felske appealed, and in September, the city's Human Resources Board reinstated him, noting that Felske had actually disclosed six of them on his original application and, as to the others, the board said, the city had not proved Felske "intentionally" hid them. Felske, his lawyer had argued, had simply forgotten about the other 16 (all of which occurred before 1991): "I challenge anyone ... to recall their grocery list from ... two weeks ago."