You will be pleased to know that the plaintiff who accuses Rick Springfield of assaulting her with his butt has not given up despite an earlier mistrial. According to the Syracuse Post-Standard, lawyers for Springfield and plaintiff Vicki Calcagno were back in court a few months ago to discuss future proceedings, and the report says that a retrial is still the plan, but will happen in January 2015 at the earliest.
As you may recall, but are encouraged to read about again (the mistrial, a followup), Calcagno sued Springfield in 2007 claiming that the singer’s buttocks (right) made contact with Calcagno during a 2004 concert, knocking her down and causing “serious, permanent and disabling injuries,” although oddly enough she did not seek medical help at the time. Nor was she able to locate any witnesses—until, in a dramatic late-trial development, somebody posted a comment on a website claiming that she indeed remembered Springfield acting negligently, and not only that, he had fallen on one of her family members too. Somehow, this development led to a mistrial.
Because it may apparently matter, though, perhaps it’s worth noting that the comments on Syracuse.com were 100% in favor of Springfield, one of which even articulated the assumption-of-risk doctrine. Springfield is known for “crowd-walking,” it appears, so the possibility of contact with all or part of him is well-known to fans, as this argument goes. In fact, it sounds to me like if he quits doing it because of this, a lot of people are going to be upset with a certain someone.