(2010) It’s a Tish-grace! Councilwoman Letitia James sues over scratch
Brooklyn Paper | 3/17/10 | Stephen Witt

Councilwoman Letitia James has filed a personal injury suit against an itinerant laborer after she allegedly injured herself walking into his legally parked truck.

The Democratic lawmaker, who makes $122,500 a year as the people’s representative in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, is seeking an unspecified amount of damages for wounds she claims to have sustained on July 11 when she walked into a four-inch trailer hitch protruding from David Day’s parked car.

James sustained “serious, severe and permanent [injuries] to her limbs and body” and “she will be caused to suffer … continuous pain and inconvenience,” according to court papers filed last month in Brooklyn Supreme Court by James’s attorney Robert Mijuca of the powerful law firm of Rubenstein and Rynecki.

The court documents also allege that the injuries caused James to be unable to attend to her usual occupation – though the alleged pain and suffering occurred on the eve of the councilwoman’s re-election campaign, one that she waged with her typical vigor against two primary rivals.

She bounced to an easy victory. Additionally, several of James’s Council colleagues told this newspaper that they did not recall James limping or using crutches during the summer.

But court papers paint a very different scenario of the events of July 11 on Fulton Street between S. Portland Avenue and S. Oxford Street.

The lawsuit claims that James “came into contact with the exposed, unprotected hitch,” contact that led to “great physical and mental pain” — though the actual body part that was damaged is not cited.

James claims that Day’s hitch is illegal and that her injuries resulted “solely [from] the careless and negligent manner in which [he] owned and maintained his motor vehicle.”