Girl Claims Price Scanner Gave Her Tourette's Syndrome

Attorneys for Dominica Juliano claim that she was burned and developed psychological problems after a store clerk aimed a hand-held price scanner at her face. Store attorneys say their scanners uses a harmless LED light and that the girl had serious health problems before she was scanned. From the article: "Dominica Juliano was 12 when she and her grandmother entered the Country Fair store in Erie in June 2004. A clerk allegedly called the girl 'grumpy' before flashing his hand-held bar code scanner over her face and telling her to smile. Attorneys for Ms. Juliano and her guardian say the girl was sensitive to light and burned, and later developed post-traumatic stress and Tourette's syndrome."

Comments

Grumpy

[Dark_Matter88]

"You're grumpy" *beep* OOOh...Sick burn!

Re:Grumpy

[Fluffeh]

"You're grumpy" *beep* OOOh...Sick burn!

I am not *motherfucker*! *Cockbag*! Shit!

Oh my goodness, I don't ever recall speaking like that before. Must have been the scanner!

Re:Grumpy

[aztracker1]

I always knew something was up with the Self Checkout... no wonder I get all angry and stuff... "Please place the item in the bag".. ."Please remove the item from the bag"... it's all the scanner's fault.

Re:Grumpy

[steeviant]

Cue the sound of CIA shredders destroying all evidence of project MKWALMART.

Re:Grumpy

[morari]

FEED ME A STRAY CAT!

Re:Grumpy

[Mooga]

Swearing is not Tourette's Syndrome, but rather coprolalia. As someone who has grown up with Tourette's, this misconception continues to make young people's life hell. As for a price scanner causing TS... it sounds like total bs to me.

Re:Grumpy

[sg_oneill]

I hear ya man. My bro has Tourettes and has perfectly controlled speech, other than the occasional muted yelp. Tourettes is in some sense like an ultra nasty version of obessive compulsive, except with less hand washing, and more twitching.

Living with it certainly requires one to develop bit of a sense of humor about it (and knowing when someone deserves a good punch in the mouth) . Its not a fun disorder, and yeah, nothing we know about its genetics (Gilles De Tourette gene complex on I *think* chromasone 18 (I think!)) , some tell tale signs in cerebral blood flow and EEG scans , and so on.

The notion you can develop in neurotically from PTS is complete bullshit.

Re:Grumpy

[pushing-robot]

coprolalia

Ah, Latin. While we geeks think we're clever with "PEBKAC" and "ID-10-T error", doctors have been using Latin to the same effect for centuries. As have lawyers and clergy.

Fire that Judge

[h4rr4r]

The Judge that let this go to trial should be out of a job. Why waste the time of a jury and tax-dollars on such ridiculous claims?

Re:Fire that Judge

[drachenstern]

"Why"? To have prior case study so that we can debunk future ones by showing frivolity. About the only good reason I can think up.

Then again, this audience probably knows more about the inner workings of such a device than the general public, so we're quick to dismiss obvious BS claims whereas another peer group might not understand what's going on here.

Re:Fire that Judge

[cupantae]

It's even more annoying, considering a judge threw out my case against my city's bus service. I was splashed in the face by a puddle in the bus station, where I was picking up some hookers. Next day: BAM. Herpes.

Re:Fire that Judge

[Omnifarious]

Because judges aren't generally empowered to prevent a case from going to trial because they don't believe the facts alleged. A judge can prevent a case from going to trial because the facts alleged, if viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, don't support a legal cause of action.

And, of course, the light here is definitely not favorable to the plaintiff.

Re:Fire that Judge

[mysidia]

The Judge his doing his job as set out by the laws. It is not generally within a Judge's responsibilities to simply block or prevent a case going to trial just because some people might feel it is a waste of time in their opinion.

"I think the claims are ridiculous" is not a valid legal reason for denying the person of their right to seek justice under the law.

Basically, this Judge is doing his job properly, and any judge which would deny a case going to trial, simply because someone thinks its ridiculous, is not properly executing the role of a Judge...

The Judge's responsibility is to analyze the claims put forward, and the show of evidence, based on the law, not based on some political opinion of the "proper cases" to come before the courts.

Re:Fire that Judge

[sopssa]

Disclaimer: I also believe it's a bullshit cause

But what if not? Just because it hasn't caused problems before? Would it be fair justice to ignore this persons claims and later find out they were true? Then we would have a slashdot story where everyone would say that the judge was biased and asshole because he didn't accept the case.

One should only be banned from making court cases directly by himself/herself if he continually abuses court (like the anti-violent game lawyer). Otherwise he/she should be heard and try to show the proof - not just directly ignore it.

Re:Fire that Judge

[GasparGMSwordsman]

So you suggest that a judge should throw out cases BEFORE hearing any evidence or examining the facts of the case. I question if you really understand the implications of that action. I also question your understanding of the law or history.

The judge did in fact throw out the case, AFTER the facts were examined.

http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100414/NEWS02/304149909

Re:Fire that Judge

[h4rr4r]

Forget that, the simple matter that this is not possible should prevent it. It would be like me suing you for my migraines because I believe your invisible unicorn witch put a hex on me.

Re:Fire that Judge

[ehrichweiss]

I don't think you read GP's post well enough. The wavelength/absorption aren't going to matter if there isn't enough *energy* to cause a problem in the first place, regardless of wavelength. In other words, say it requires 30 milliwatts of power at 800nm and your scanner only supplies 1 milliwatt for its entire spectrum; there will not be enough energy to do any harm.

Re:Fire that Judge

[LearnToSpell]

And give her ebola and plantar fasciitis? Are you out of your mind?

Re:Fire that Judge

[tsm_sf]

Plenty of people live normal, albeit occasionally vulgar, lives with this disorder. Nothing to see here, move on....

Um, I hate to be the first to point this out, but it's pretty obvious that this girl is a vampire.

Re:Fire that Judge

[digitalunity]

Visible light at even extreme levels isn't likely to cause burns any time soon. It's UVA, UVB and infrared that burn.

The fact that fluorescent lights spit out more across the spectrum than a red LED(which fyi is monochromatic) kind of tells me this girl is just making shit up.

I'm not saying people don't deserve their day in court. I am saying though that judges should have free reign to use common sense when dismissing cases for lack of a scientific basis of any kind.

Re:Fire that Judge

[socsoc]

That happened to you too? I smell class action.

Re:Fire that Judge

[nomadic]

Then he did his job. My concern is that it is possible to even bring such a suit without any evidence.

Who do you want to be the gatekeeper? The clerk's office? You'd trust deputy court clerk to decide who gets to sue and who doesn't?

Re:Fire that Judge

[JWSmythe]

    It's the job of the courts to hear arguments and settle them. They're suing. There could be merit. Ok, there isn't, but we actually understand the power put off by these scanners. Experts will testify, and the girl will lose.

    It's the lawyers we need to do something about. Lawyers are taking on frivolous cases, regardless how little merit there is, hoping that there is an out of court settlement. It's cheaper for most companies to just settle, rather than be dragged through court. Unfortunately, this is the nation of litigation, and anyone can sue anyone for anything at any time. It's a huge industry. Every day on the radio, I hear ads for traffic attorneys. If you're in an accident, they want you to sue regardless of which side you were on. You can crash your car into someone else, and I'd bet a lawyer would be more than happy to sue the victim because they were in the way.

    I was in an accident once where something like this happened. A guy was on his bicycle waiting for me to pull out into traffic. He sat there for about 10 minutes. When there was finally a break in traffic for me to pull into, he rode in front of me. He wasn't hurt, and his bike was fine. The cops even ticketed him for being dumb. Ok, the ticket didn't read that, but that's basically what it was. He wanted me to pay for his bent kickstand. Ok, $20, big deal, right? Nope, $200. I asked for a receipt, and he wouldn't produce it. I told him to talk to my insurance company. I had a nice talk with them later. The price had increased to $300. They told me he's pretty well known in the area for doing stunts like that. It was cheaper for them to pay the $300, rather than have their lawyers go to court and argue it through a trial. He did dent the hood of my car, and I didn't even ask for that to be paid. It was a shitty car, I didn't care. It was something to complain about though. Since that happened, I pay extra attention for people like that. I've had several walk in front of me to get hit. It's not accidental either. They'll step out, I'll come to a quick stop, and they'll look at me like "Why didn't you hit me?", and then try the next lane of traffic. I don't know, I'd never see money as a good enough reason to get hit by a few thousand pounds of vehicle.

Re:Fire that Judge

[JWSmythe]

    I think you should clarify, flashing lights may trigger seizures in some people. They are people who already have a seizure disorder, not the random Joe who had no pre-existing condition.

    My step son had epilepsy. We didn't know until 6 months before he passed away because of it. After his first observed seizure we went to a pediatric neurologist, where they did a whole battery of tests, which did include flashing lights. He didn't have a seizure, but he was bored senseless watching the lights. What they were able to detect was that he did have a seizure the night before. They can read lingering signs of a seizure on an EEG.

    Unfortunately, and not commonly explained, is that seizures can cause spasms in any muscle, including the diaphragm or heart. He died during a seizure, which did stop either his breathing or heart. They couldn't conclusively say which, but when we found him, he was still frozen in the same position which was consistent with him having a seizure. I was a trained first responder, so I did everything I could until the paramedics got there. I disregarded the signs of rigor mortis. Lividity had just started (light signs of what appeared to be bruising on what was the lower part of his body). I performed CPR until they arrived about 3 minutes later. CPR on a training dummy is a lot easier than trying to save the life of someone you care about. They pointed out what I had already seen and ignored. At least I was a good witness, and was able to describe clearly what I had seen and done. I won't say I was unaffected, I just did my best to keep my composure while describing it to them for their reports. And oh are there a lot of people who want to talk to you after something like that. Official folks (law enforcement, child protective services, etc) were in and out for 3 days. They were very polite with us, it was just a formality in case there was something unusual about it.

    Sorry, this still effects me. It's only been a few years.

    Back to the topic, if it were to trigger a seizure, that would be a seizure, ranging from petit mal (aka absence seizure) where the person doesn't respond, to grand mal (tonic-clonic) where they fall down in convulsions. It would only happen in a person who had a pre-existing condition, and wouldn't cause a completely unrelated disorder. It is possible that she has both disorders, but that wasn't indicated in the article.

    Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. My first ex-wife suffered from petit mal seizures. Years later my step son (from my second wife) had grand mal seizures. I've listened to everything the doctors had to say when they were explaining the conditions and asked questions at the appropriate times to further educate myself.

I'll Bet

[Mikkeles]

'Attorneys for Ms. Juliano and her guardian say the girl was sensitive to light and burned, and later developed post-traumatic stress and Tourette's syndrome.'

To fix that: "Ms. Juliano and her guardian say the girl deserves a Million Billion Gazillion dolars (and that she [Ms. Juliano] should be trustee)."

Um yeah, ok easy enough

[DnemoniX]

Easy to figure out, shoot her again and again to see if it still burns. Oh and never mind that Tourettes is an inherited neuropsychiatric disorder. Don't let a little thing like that stop you from filing a lawsuit though.

Re:Um yeah, ok easy enough

[binarylarry]

fuck you!

Re:Um yeah, ok easy enough

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Oh and never mind that Tourettes is an inherited neuropsychiatric disorder.

The laser was obviously set to stunt.

Litigation Land

[muphin]

Welcome to the land of the "owe, i hurt myself, lets blame who's near my so i don't look like an idiot"
this is obviously a grab for cash, when genetic disorders like this cannot instantly be created from a flash of light, if she had a pre existing condition, light sensitivity, then i doubt she's gonna get that cash she so hope she would, poor girl is probably stuck in the middle of the greed from her parents.

Re:Litigation Land

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't forgot the old-school favorite, where a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.

If someone would believe that, why wouldn't they believe that a 1-milliwatt laser could burn them?

Re:Litigation Land

[hoggoth]

Whether it's better or not, just because you really want to believe something doesn't make it true.

As Neitzsche said, "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."

Re:Litigation Land

[JohnFluxx]

Richard Dawkins had a chapter on ethics, and I think he puts across a very convincing argument.

At the risk of mis-summarising, the basic idea is:

1) Humans everywhere of all religions have pretty much the same set of ethics.
2) The bible has lots of 'ethics' that we don't follow. We don't stone our children for disagreeing with us, we don't treat women as property, and so on. Even Jesus treated women as second class citizens, yet most christians are above that.

The most logical conclusion from these two bits of information is that ethics is a mixture of nature and nuture, and that we impose our ethics on shaping religion, and choosing the parts of the religion that we wish to believe in based on our ethics. Rather than the other way round.

Re:Litigation Land

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Atheists believe in something that is obviously untrue (the non-existence of self).

Holy batman, that's an impressive strawman. You should take it to the burning man festival, it'll impress everyone there.

Re:Litigation Land

[n dot l]

Atheists believe in something that is obviously untrue (the non-existence of self).

Wha? Who, except for the insane, goes around claiming they don't exist? I'm an atheist. I know lots of atheists. We're all pretty sure that we really do exist.

but this turns out to be the only consistent stance that atheists fall into when they start talking about the afterlife

Assuming I'm not too drunk to see your masterfully subtle point right now, you're talking about "soul" when you say "self". Yeah. About that... If you want me to believe in a soul (immortal or otherwise) then you can start by defining what the damn thing is in concrete terms.

Regardless of my lack of belief in a "soul", let me once again assure you that I am quite certain that the thing which I understand myself to be (my "self", by definition) does in fact exist. Furthermore, I assert that this belief is quite logically compatible with a lack of belief in "souls". I am baffled by assertions to the contrary, though I am willing to listen if you have a reasoned argument to such effect.

the evidence is actually on the side of religious people of various stripes that we'll exist again after we die.

What evidence? Religious fables? Scam-artist mediums cold-reading the dead back into "existence" for their desperate-for-comfort loved ones? I won't deny that there may be actual "supernatural" powers (given the dearth of quality science in the area I'd be a fool to hold an absolute belief) but, even so, unexplained phenomena are a far cry from proof of an afterlife.

I'm summarizing years of arguments here

Then you've been arguing with lunatics for years. I'd stop that if I were you... lunacy can be infectious.

not saying that you believe in whatever, since I obviously don't know what you believe.

Nice. Now I don't even know if you yourself believe any of what you just said. The world would be so much better if people would just say "Speaking in general terms..." in front of general statements instead of tacking on weak apologies for the perceived potential for personal offense at the end.

Re:Litigation Land

[n dot l]

I'm not framing their argument the way they would ("we're just collections of atoms, nothing special about us") in order to highlight the absurdity of it.

Yeah, I'm not seeing the absurdity.

The universe is fucking amazing. If there's anything absurd here, it's looking at the vastness of the cosmos and all of the ridiculously cool shit in it and thinking, "Oh, the fact that I vaguely understand the underlying principles renders this all meaningless. However, I assert (based on nothing but my own whims) that I am not meaningless. Therefore I must be composed of something more than mere energy. Ignore the fact that I'm treating a particularly human concept (meaning) like some sort of real (and for unexplained reasons desirable) substance."

Being reasonably certain that I'm a collection of atoms renders me (or anyone) no more meaningless, worthless, or absurd than being reasonably certain I know how Sol's light is made renders sunsets ugly.

Who else wants to show up with a laser pointer?

[tlambert]

Who else wants to show up with a laser pointer?

I'm betting we can chase her away from entering the court house...

-- Terry

Maggie

[MrEricSir]

Maggie Simpson is going to have a terrible case of Tourette's after being scanned every week for the past ~20 years.

LED + WiFI

[thesaurus]

The article doesn't explain that it was the combination of LEDs and WiFi that causes this psychological problem. That or vaccines plus violent video games.

Re:Frivolous lawsuits ...

[masmullin]

NUTSACK

Wonderous

[Spatial]

Burned by an LED?

What happens if she's exposed to direct sunlight? Presumably it causes her to burst into flame, being tens of thousands of times more energetic.

Re:Wonderous

[ShadowRangerRIT]

And now we know the secret of how vampires never seem to want for money. It's not prudent investments carried out over an endless unlife combined with their ability to derive nourishment from the blood of unwilling victims rather than paying for food and drink. Nowadays they just get a store clerk to burn them with an ultra low power LED scanner, curse a bit, then sue for enough money to support themselves indefinitely.

Could be worse

[glwtta]

She's lucky: if, instead of an LED she was exposed to a microwave and non-dairy creamer, she could've been turned into a mouse!

Sensitive to light

[wisnoskij]

I do not care how sensitive to light you are, if you can survive outside and in a normally lighted room you will have no trouble with a price scanner.

The judge threw the case out.

[regulan]

http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100414/NEWS02/304149909

Tourettes is genetic

[SlightOverdose]

Speaking as someone with a mild case of Tourettes, you can't just "Get" it. You're either born with it or not.

However, many people with the faulty genes go through there entire life without noticing the symptoms until they experience a particularly stressful moment- at which point something "breaks" and it becomes a lot more severe.

I cannot possibly fathom a supermarket price scanner burning someone (It's just not possible), however it's possible the girl believed it did, causing her enough psychological stress to trigger the Tourettes.

However, if that was enough to set her off, she was going to get it pretty soon anyway with several years of stressful High School on the horizon.

Re:While the claim is stupid...

[Idarubicin]

... the cashier's behaviour was inappropriate. That's not how to treat a costumer.

Yeah, but if I were to file a lawsuit every time a minimum-wage slave in a crappy job wasn't as chipper and cheery (or, even worse, showed a hint of a sense of humor) -- particularly if I was going to moan about events that took place over the last six years -- I'd never have time to do anything else with my life.

I'm assuming that the cashier in question is already finished high school, is out of college, and is busy doing something productive with his life. It's a bit late to be giving the old Customer Service 101 lessons now.

Samzenpuss fail - case already dismissed.

[Idarubicin]

I note that a trivial Google News search reveals that the case has already been dismissed: GoErie.com, Associated Press.

Moreover, both of those reports were live hours before this story got greenlighted for the Slashdot frontpage.

Slashdot: Yesterday's News for Nerds. Stuff that Mattered.

RamSAY

[MrEricSir]

It's spelled "Gordon Ramsay" you **** ****ing ***hole piece of ****.

Re:From a neurological standpoint...

[NiteShaed]

Er, putting aside the fact that nearly everything in your post is pure nonsense, the claim is that the girl was burned by the price-gun, and then later developed PTSD and Tourette's. Unless you're trying to say that this burn was caused by the power of suggestion, this girl by all rights should go up in a poof of smoke every time she encounters sunlight, seeing as how the sun puts out a little more energy than your average LED. Assuming she's not a regular Slashdot reader, that's probably something that happens to her on a fairly regular basis.

But in my experience, mental problem are far easier fixed than most people think

I'm gonna guess your "experience" largely consists of talking about things you don't really understand. I've been around plenty of people with mental problems, and no, there are generally no easy fixes for them.

Reality is irrelevant for fixing such a problem. What counts is if that person believes it in her inner model, and if it makes her life bad from that point of view.

Unless of course they're making the story up, and trying to cash in on it. Since the claim involves a physical injury that seems to be impossible to be caused as they claim it was, that's not an unreasonable suspicion.

Re:From a neurological standpoint...

[Bazar]

Now if it happens, that the input signal is just right, it can e.g. raise the sensitivity of one neuron (or lower that of an inhibiting one), which then becomes able to trigger the swearing neurons for a lot of previously irrelevant input.

The signal in this case is just semi-random light. If that was enough for her to develop a problem, then she was a time-bomb waiting to go off.
If i was passing by, and i sneezed, and she "developed" her problem then, would I be libable for her problems.

Even if the scanner developed her problem (which i don't believe for even a second), i can't see how shes justified in persueing the store. Either learn to live with it, or seek help/aid via normal disabilitiy channels.

Not far fetched

[irn]

Electronics causing (or at least triggering) a genetic disorder? It happens a lot. I know several people who have developed Tourettes after a few short hours of Mario Kart.

The case was tossed yesterday

[sjames]

After the plaintiffs presented their case, the judge ruled for the defendant after a motion for no suit (meaning that the plaintiff has failed to present a case that can win, even undefended) from the defense. The sad part is that the defendant is still out money and time and a jury had a couple days worth of their life wasted just to get to that point.