run over on beach

Last Modified: Tuesday, October 14, 2014 at 9:52 p.m.

A judge has sided with Volusia County in a family’s lawsuit over the 2010 death of Aiden Patrick, a 4-year-old boy from Deltona who was killed by a pickup while running toward the ocean in New Smyrna Beach.

In an order issued Friday in circuit court, Judge Robert Rouse wrote that Aiden’s father “was aware of all of the dangers posed by vehicles such as the truck the child darted in front of.” He added: “Here, there is nothing that Volusia could have imparted to the father that would have increased his knowledge of the immediate danger to his four-year-old son, and the need to exercise a high degree of care for the child’s safety.”

An attorney who brought the lawsuit said Tuesday the case wasn’t over. “We are filing a motion for the judge to reconsider,” Lou Pendas of the Pendas Law Firm in Orlando said in an email. “Should that fail, we plan on appealing. This fight is not over!”

From the county’s perspective, the case was over, although Volusia attorney Dan Eckert said the judge’s order did not apply to Donovan Sias, the driver of the truck that hit Aiden. The Patricks sued Sias, along with Volusia County.

Aiden was the second of two 4-year-olds killed on Volusia beaches in 2010, a pair of nationally publicized tragedies that eventually prompted a series of new safety measures on the beach. The family of the other toddler, a…

Proposed elementary school zones. (Photo: File )

A group of Robertson County parents are considering a lawsuit following the board of education’s Oct. 6 release of a federally mandated, mandatory rezoning plan while others are urging residents to embrace change and move forward for the students’ sake.

By Monday, an online petition to reject the federal rezoning plan in Robertson County had been signed by nearly 1,150 people and a Facebook page devoted to speaking out about the issue had garnered more than 1,500 likes and ample discussion.

Others, meanwhile, were taking to social media in an attempt to quell the backlash.

“I think people need a place to vent because they are frustrated and they don’t understand how this has happened, but I think we need to take a step back and try to analyze it dispassionately,” Robertson County Mayor Howard Bradley said. “No one likes it, but we have a responsibility to be adults about this and to lead through example.”

At first, backlash came in the form of unorganized social media postings, Facebook comments and Tweets expressing mostly negative viewpoints. Then, on Tuesday, Oct. 7, a new Facebook community emerged, “Community speaks up for NO in rezoning Robertson County Schools,” and it began to grow into an organized effort.

Springfield resident Jolene Safford is one of the site’s creators. A mother of two children, ages 8 and 6, Safford said she refuses to comply with the federally-mandated plan, which would…

An Albuquerque teahouse and its owners will pay $50,573 in back wages and damages to settle a lawsuit filed last year by the U.S. Department of Labor, the federal agency announced Thursday.

The lawsuit against the St. James Tearoom alleged the Albuquerque business and its owners had violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by failing to pay required minimum and overtime wages to its employees. Investigators found the tearoom required dishwashers and serving staff to join a tip pool, resulting in minimum wage violations, according to a news release.

The mandatory tip pool included salaried managers, shift leaders, dishwashers and other employees who are not eligible for tip pools, making the entire arrangement invalid, the release said. The agency also said the teahouse didn’t keep accurate records of employees’ hours.

The lawsuit sought to recover unpaid wages and damages totaling $304,000.

Under terms of the settlement — filed Thursday in U.S. District Court — St. James and owners Mary Alice and Daniel Higbie…

LAKEWOOD, Ohio – The city will pay $507,500 to settle a lawsuit with the owners of Hidden Village Apartments, who claimed racial harassment against black tenants.

The suit, filed in federal court in 2008, was the city’s longest pending civil lawsuit. City Council Monday night agreed after a closed-door session with attorneys to pay the owners of the apartment complex on Clifton Boulevard.

The city has always disputed the allegations and admits no wrongdoing as part of the settlement, Mayor Michael Summers said. The suit was filed before Summers became mayor.

“We believe the resolution of a very old, very time-consuming and potentially costly case was in the best interests of our citizens,” Summers said.

The settlement comes only a few weeks before an Oct. 27 jury trial was to begin in U.S. District Court in Youngstown. The city unsuccessfully sought to have the case dismissed prior to trial.

The owners of Hidden Village Apartments claimed in legal documents that Lakewood waged a racially motivated harassment campaign at some of its black tenants. The dispute rose from incidents in 2006 and 2007.

In 2006, the Youth Re-Entry Program, run by Lutheran Metropolitan Ministries, began housing clients at Hidden Village. The program helps young people released from foster care or juvenile detention…

SEASIDE HEIGHTS — A 48-year-old man who alleged Seaside Heights police officers pepper sprayed him and threw him to the boardwalk has settled an excessive force lawsuit against the borough for $500,000.

None of the police officers named in the suit nor the borough had to admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which was reached in August. News of the settlement was first reported by New Jersey Civil Settlements, a blog which tracks settlements paid by New Jersey government agencies and their insurers to those who have sued them.

George Hatze, 48, said a police officer on bicycle patrol bumped into him and his 8-year-old daughter while they were on the boardwalk for a fireworks show on July 4, 2012, according to a report on APP.com.

Shortly after asking officer Robert MacFarlane why he ran into them, other cops arrived and attacked Hatze, the suit alleged. Hatze said he was then sprayed with mace and kneed in the back.

The Toms River man was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Authorities later dropped those charges. Hatze wound up pleading guilty to a municipal ordinance violation, the report said.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JGoldmanNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A Warwick widow has filed a lawsuit against the Social Security Administration accusing the federal agency of wrongfully denying her survivor benefits after she lost her 56-year-old wife to cancer in 2011.

The plaintiff, Deborah Tevyaw, 58, was married to her late wife, Patricia Baker, in 2005 in Massachusetts, but the federal agency says the relationship ended in 2011, before Governor Chafee ordered state agencies to recognize same-sex marriage in May 2012, according to the lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court.

Rhode Island has recognized out-of-state marriages, including marriages in Massachusetts, since at least 1904, and in 2007 the state’s attorney general issued an opinion stating that same-sex marriages from other states “must be recognized under principles of comity and full faith and credit,” says the complaint.

In July this year, Governor Chafee wrote the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Carolyn W. Colvin, to express his concern that the federal agency had misinterpreted the 2012 date as the date when Rhode Island first recognized out-of-state same-sex marriages, the complaint says.

Tevyaw filed the lawsuit with support from Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders.

She was denied disabled widow’s benefits and a lump sum death payment and is living on disability income of $732 per month, says the lawsuit. In June 2013, she was forced to sell the…