Mary N. Cassidy sued a Boston store after her 4-year-old daughter was allegedly traumatized by a moving and speaking Santa Claus display.

As a good mother, she sued for $100,000, claiming her daughter suffered from “shock, fright, and nervousness.”

No doubt Mary Cassidy hired child psychologists and neurologists to testify, along with imaginative lawyers, to get just compensation.

The Boston judge, not wanting to be a Grinch, dismissed the case. His reasoning: the display was not a live Santa. A mechanical Santa could not be directly attributed in such a way as to hold the store liable for personal injury. A clear victory for Robot Santas.

There are valid cases when a live Santa is a “bad” Santa — or when a child falls off Santa’s lap. These days, Santa’s elves insist Santa carry specific liability insurance to cover risks like drops, trips over boots, or accidental injuries during photos.

BONUS: Guess the year this case was filed in court. If you’re correct, you win a $25 Starbucks card.

Good friend of chiropractic Dennis Beaver, Esq., is a regular columnist for the long-distinguished Kiplinger Newsletter.

Dennis writes that if Uber is successful here in California, the anti-PI movement could go nationwide.

Uber Takes Aim at the Bottom Lines of Billboard Personal Injury Lawyers, by Dennis Beaver.

I’m quoted on why Uber is on the warpath.

First, the phenomenon of gut-wrenching billboard lawyers smothering nearly every freeway in California has created a public backlash. Who are these lawyers, and why are they spending hundreds of millions to get PI cases?

Those lawyers use call centers to screen only the best cases.

Many billboard lawyers openly advertise that they are happy to sue Uber because each Uber driver carries $1,000,000 in coverage — an easy target. Uber doesn’t like it. And it’s bad for their business.

Uber’s second attack is litigation. A bold strategy using RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — a federal law aimed at organized crime) against several Los Angeles-based billboard PI firms.

"I discussed these suits with a friend of this column, Southern California attorney Shawn Steel, who represents personal injury victims and has taught ethics and jurisprudence to doctors-in-training at Cleveland Chiropractic College since 1991.

According to Steel, Uber alleges a conspiracy to artificially inflate claim values by creating evidence of injury, staging accidents, and fabricating damage. Clients are allegedly steered to medical providers who perform or recommend unnecessary procedures to run up treatment bills.

“Uber is using the RICO statute,” Steel notes, “which targets organizations engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity. If successful, this could establish a precedent for corporations to fight back against what they allege — and can prove — is fraudulent activity.”

If you like political ad hit jobs, you’ll be in seventh heaven. The emerging $1 BILLION battle by Uber to destroy personal injury will be the hottest — yet currently under-the-radar — issue on the November 2026 California ballot.

Uber has filed a proposed ballot initiative cleverly titled The Protecting Automobile Accident Victims from Attorney Self-Dealing Act, aimed at stopping “predatory practices” by some PI lawyers.

Recently, the California Attorney General approved the initiative on December 9, 2025, preparing the official title and summary. This allows Uber to begin collecting signatures for the November 2026 ballot.

The initiative would reduce all attorney fees to 25%, to be split among medical providers and lawyers.

The result? Most lawyers would stop taking PI cases. Most doctors would struggle to get paid. Patients would be left on their own for care, forced to pay cash because most insurance plans are not PI-sensitive.

You’ll be hearing a lot about this initiative. Political experts expect over ONE BILLION dollars to be spent on advertising by both sides.

For your copy of the full article, email johntawlian@steeleisner.com.