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Video: Martha Stewart Lounge Chairs Chopping Off Fingers!
By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 2, 2009
Modified Apr 2, 2009
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By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 2, 2009
Modified Apr 2, 2009
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Oh yes, it's time for more "Shame Shame Shame!" When we last left crusader Arnold Diaz at My Fox NY, he was unleashing his faux-populist outrage on the infamous "Drunken Negro Face Cookie" baker. And everyone was wondering, Arnie, how can you possibly top that? By moving up the food chain, of course, and revisiting one of his old targets: Martha Stewart, who he previously confronted about her line of glass patio tables and their funny tendency to shatter into a thousand jagged pieces.
This time, he's sending Stewart into a shame spiral over her company's lounge chairs, which have cost some people the tips of their fingers! People like little Jessica Berrera from New Jersey, who severed her finger last June after sitting down in the chair with her hand underneath. As Diaz demonstrates on a pencil, the bottom legs of the chair can act as a guillotine under the "right" circumstances. But two-time Hall of Shamer Stewart doesn't seem to care that her chairs are deforming kids whose parents buy her patio set at Kmart—when Diaz approaches her outside her building, he gets a face full of umbrella for his troubles.
Jessica now has no feeling in the fingertip, "can't play many of her favorite sports, and has emotional scars as well." Naturally, her family's hired an attorney, because a big cash settlement is just the thing for that vague emotional trauma. Then there's professional magician and (former) hand model Patrick Albanese from Iowa; he lost the "top half-inch" of a finger last June, and he's currently suing Stewart and Kmart. A third victim of the finger-chomping chairs is a grandmother from upstate New York who lost two fingertips last July! She was rushed to the hospital with her "fingertips in a baggie."
Kmart has since redesigned the chair, adding another bolt so that the legs don't snap forward and cause injury. In a statement, Stewart remained shameless, claiming that her company does "not oversee the mechanical design, engineering or manufacturing of the products." And in court this week, lawyers for Stewart's company and Kmart blamed the magician's in-laws for his lost fingertip, arguing that they should have done a better job maintaining their chair.
Tagged
arnold diaz
lounge chairs
martha stewart
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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