A Jehova’s Witness has taken the country of Spain to the European Court of Human Rights for administering her a blood transfusion during surgery against her will.

Rosa Edelmira Pindo Mulla, an Ecuadorian woman living in Spain, claims to be a victim of “medical paternalism”, due to her nationality and religion. In 2017, following a series of medical examinations, the 53-year-old woman was advised to undergo surgery. In 2018, before the procedure, Pindo Mulla was presented with three documents to fill out – an advance directive, a long-term power of attorney, and an informed consent form. She claims to have specifically mentioned in all three that she was a Jehova’s Witness and that she refused to receive any kind of blood transfusion (blood, red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets or plasma), even at the cost of her own life. After suffering a life-threatening hemorrhage during surgery, she received a blood transfusion, and she has been seeking justice ever since…

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In what can only be described as the real-life plot of a horror movie script, a homeless man was wrongfully arrested and locked up in a mental hospital for over two years, after being mistaken for a man he had never even met.

Joshua Spriestersbach’s nightmare began on a hot day in 2017, while waiting in line for food outside a homeless shelter in Honolulu. When police woke him up, he thought he was being arrested for breaking the city’s law against sitting and lying on public sidewalks, but little did he know that things were a lot more serious than that. What Spriestersbach didn’t realize was that the police officer had somehow mistaken him for one Thomas Castleberry, who had a warrant out for his arrest for violating probation in a 2006 drug case. The fact that the two didn’t even look similar didn’t seem to matter to anyone, and instead of simply checking photographs or fingerprints of the two men, the homeless man simply became Castleberry.

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In a landmark divorce ruling, a Chinese court ordered a man to pay thousands of dollars to his ex-wife, as compensation for housework performed during their five-year marriage.

According to court papers, the man, identified only as Chen, filed from divorce from his wife, Wang, last year, after a five-year marriage. Although reluctant to grant him the divorce at first, the woman later requested that he compensate her for all the work she did as a full-time housewife during their marriage, adding that he had not participated in raising their child and “barely cared about or participated in any kind of domestic chores”. Recently, a Beijing family court ruled in the woman’s favor, sparking a heated debate in China.

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A court in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently sentenced a woman to three months in jail after her husband sued her for looking through his phone without his permission.

In a statement made against his wife, the unnamed husband claimed that she would access his phone while he was asleep, copying all the data, including pictures and chat conversations to her own smartphone so she could look through all the information at a later date. The man also complained that his wife would share some of his private information with her siblings. Although the woman defended herself by saying that her husband had given her the password to his phone and permission to look through it, because she had previously caught him chatting with other women, a court in Ras Al Khaimah found her guilty.

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A woman who has been trying to divorce her husband for three years was recently denied the right to do that by the UK’s highest court, which ruled that an unhappy marriage that had broken down for years was not grounds for divorce.

68-year-old Tini Owens had been hoping to finally end her 40-year marriage to Hugh Owens, 80, but the five judges at the UK’s highest court unanimously upheld rulings by a family court and the court of appeal that the two must stay married at least until 2020, when they will have been separated for five years and Tini will be eligible for a divorce without consent or evidence of fault. The decision has been met with criticism from divorce lawyers who believe it makes people more likely to falsely blame their partners and come up with embellished and inflammatory causes for divorce, to make sure they don’t suffer the same fate as Tini.

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A New York woman who posted some not so favorable online reviews of a Manhattan gynecologist she visited last year has been forced to spend close to $20,000 to defend herself in a $1 million defamation suit filed by the doctor.

When Michelle Levine decided to share her negative experience regarding an annual checkup performed by Dr. Joon Song of New York Robotic Gynecology & Women’s Health, she never imagine that she would end up spending tens of thousands of dollars defending herself in court. The woman claims that she was just expressing her opinion about the service she received and trying to help others by sharing her negative experience so they wouldn’t go through the same thing. Dr. Song’s lawyers have a different view, though – they consider the reviews defamation, and are seeking $1 million from Levine.

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A 30-year-old man from Camillus, New York, was recently ordered by a judge to move out of his parents house, after they sued him for refusing to leave voluntarily.

Parents Mark and Christina Rotondo had been trying to convince their 30-year-old son Michael to get a place of his own for several months, before taking him to court. They reportedly started giving him notices on February 2nd, telling him that he needed to get a job and move out. They even tried offering him $1,100 as an incentive to leave their house, but even though he took the money, he refused to move, saying it wasn’t enough for him to live anywhere else. Left with no other options, they went to their local town court to get him evicted .

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An Oregon woman who allegedly left her horse outside during the winter without adequate care and shelter, causing it pain and suffering, is now being sued by the animal for more than $100,000 in damages.

It’s not every day you hear about horses taking humans to court, but in states like Oregon this sort of thing has been possible ever sing 2014, when the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that animals can be victims of crime and have legally protected rights. Justice, the horse in this particular case, is listed as a plaintiff in the legal action against its former owner, and, just like a human, has a team of lawyers fighting on its behalf.

According to Justice’s legal team at the Animal Legal Defense Fund in Portland, the 8-year-old horse has suffered a great deal of pain and suffering as a result of his former owner’s neglect and is entitled to a substantial amount of money that should go toward his current and future care and medical treatments.

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An experienced Kenyan lawyer recently filed a petition with the International Court of Justice in The Hague against the countries of Israel and Italy, as well as historical figures that have been dead for over 2,000 years, for the unlawful trial and crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

If you somehow feel that you’ve heard something like this before, you probably have. Kenyan lawyer Dola Indidis first tried to sue Israel and Italy over Jesus’ death in 2007. His petition to a Nairobi court was dismissed, but the persistent man didn’t give up. In 2013, he turned to the International Court of Justice for the first time, arguing that Jesus’ “selective and malicious prosecution violated his human rights through judicial misconduct, abuse of office bias and prejudice.” Unfortunately, his case was thrown out, but in March of this year, Indidis once again appealed to the ICJ, hoping to finally make it to an actual trial.

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An 18-year-old girl from Austria is taking her parents to court for posting over 500 photos of her on Facebook since 2009, without her permission.

The unnamed girl from Austria’s Carinthia state has apparently become fed up with her parents refusal to take down intimate and embarrassing photos of her dating back to when she was a toddler, and is now seeking justice in court. She told Ganze Woche magazine that even though she was 11 years old when her parents started sharing photos of her with several hundreds of Facebook friends, they went as far as to post pics of her as a toddler, without ever asking if it was alright with her. “They knew no shame and no limit – and didn’t care whether it was a picture of me sitting on the toilet or lying naked in my cot – every stage was photographed and then made public,” the young plaintiff said.

Referred to as Anna Meier (name changed by magazine editors under Austrian privacy laws), the girl added that she was only able to see the photos posted on Facebook by her parents when she was 14, after setting up her own account on the world’s most popular social network. Angry and upset, Anna asked her mother and father to remove the over 500 photos of her immediately, but they refused. She kept asking them over the years, but faced with constant refusal, she felt that she had no other way to coerce them than taking them to court. Which she did as soon as she turned 18, this year. “I’m tired of not being taken seriously by my parents,” she said.

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