National Roundup

 Georgia

Allman su­es to stop movie after fatal train crash 
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Singer Gregg Allman is suing to stop movie producers from reviving a film based on his life story after a camera assistant was killed by a freight train while working on the project in southeast Georgia.
A lawsuit filed by the Allman Brothers Band singer in Savannah says Unclaimed Freight Productions lost its rights to make the film “Midnight Rider” when it failed to begin principal photography by Feb. 28. Production was suspended after a train plowed into director Randall Miller’s crew on a trestle Feb. 20. Crew member Sarah Jones was killed, and six others were injured.
The lawsuit filed last week says producers have told Allman’s representatives they intend to revive the project despite the singer’s objections. A spokeswoman for the producers said Monday they had no comment.

Nebraska
Suit ov­er blast from cannon injury is settled 
ELWOOD, Neb. (AP) — A woman injured by a cannon blast in south-central Nebraska has settled her lawsuit.
The Kearney Hub says the Gosper County Board of Commissioners was informed of the settlement last week. The notice had come from the Nebraska Intergovernmental Risk Management Association. The settlement amount has not disclosed.
Authorities say the homemade cannon was positioned in an area where people were coming and going during a community celebration in Smithfield on July 3, 2009. An attorney for the Doyle Daake, who made the cannon, says Kanda Garrelts walked around the cannon after it was lit and that she ignored warnings.
Garrelts had sued Smithfield and Daake, and Smithfield filed a subsequent action against Gosper County.

California
Daughter sues over her veteran father’s remains 
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The daughter of a Vietnam War veteran who died in 2005 has sued county officials, saying they mishandled her father’s remains by burying him in a pauper’s grave when he deserved higher honors.
Michelle Hernandez said she was estranged from her father, Edward Nellis, when he died. She became ill last year and wanted to know about her father. She learned he was buried in a mass grave.
“He was a dad, he was a veteran and he was a grandfather,” Hernandez said. “He didn’t deserve this. Why did they do this to my dad?”
Fred Salanti of the Missing in America Project told the Sacramento Bee this happens too often, but things have changed since a 2012 law gave groups like his authority to step in when relatives can’t be found.
Salanti said his organization based in Redding has performed some 2,000 funerals across the country for veterans who would have gone unnoticed by officials. He said Sacramento County was among those overlooking veterans’ service records, putting them in pauper’s graves.
After his death, Hernandez said her father’s cremated remains sat in storage for nearly two years. He was then buried in a mass grave, but she said count officials knew that his records showed he was a veteran and deserved to be placed in a national cemetery.
Interim Coroner Kim Gin said told the newspaper that she could not discuss details of the pending lawsuit. But she said the county has changed its procedures in light of the 2012 law.
Hernandez says she has since moved his cremated remains to a national cemetery. She’s still traumatized by the ordeal, she said.
“He’s been buried in a mass grave,” Hernandez said. “He’s been left on the shelf at the morgue. These images won’t go away.”

Oregon
Student sues PSU over pornography professor’s work 
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A former Portland State University student who worked as a bondage model is suing the university for more than $1 million, alleging that an assistant professor’s intense interest in her sex work derailed her academic career.
In the federal lawsuit, Whitney “Theda” Orlando says Marcia Klotz used her influence over Orlando’s college opportunities to coerce her to provide sex-related material.
The Oregonian reports Klotz taught a class on “The Erotics of Power” and wrote a paper titled “It’s Not Really Porn.”
Klotz exchanged more than 200 emails with Orlando from 2009 to 2012, including bondage photos.
Lawyers for Portland State University say Orlando never complained before she filed suit.
Klotz left PSU last year for another job. Orlando left in the spring of 2013 without earning a degree.
 
Louisiana
Suit alleges man beaten to death in parish jail 
FRANKLIN, La. (AP) — A lawsuit filed in St. Mary Parish district court alleges that a 41-year-old Baldwin man was beaten to death in the parish jail in April 2013.
Anthony Wilson was arrested for failing to show up in court for a traffic ticket.
“Mr. Wilson was taken into custody and he never came out of jail . He was battered from the top of his head to his knees,” his family’s attorney, Alfreda Bester, told the St. Mary and Franklin Banner-Tribune reports.
The suit alleges that Wilson had no injuries when he was arrested but his autopsy found that he died from blunt trauma to the head and also had multiple bruises, scrapes and cuts to his eyebrow and inside one of his lips, and injured arms and knees.
Sheriff Mark Hebert does not comment on pending litigation, Spokeswoman Traci Landry said.
In a news release just after Wilson’s death, Hebert said Wilson died three days after other inmates told guards he had collapsed.
Bester said the coroner’s report lists blunt force trauma as a cause of death.
“Mr. Wilson was not a violent man and there is no indication he was ever a violent man,” Bester said. “We do not have all the details, but we know that something happened in that jail.”
The suit contends that “the assault and battery . could only have been committed by deputies” or other sheriff employees or by “violent inmates who were not properly monitored and/or supervised by the SMPSO.”