A former NetJets flight attendant filed suit in New York late last week against Jennifer Lopez and her company, Nuyorican Productions, Inc., alleging that a dog belonging to the actress attacked her during a flight between Farmingdale, NY and Burbank, CA on July, 3, 2006. The flight attendant says that the dog, a German shepherd named Floyd, lunged at her as she passed by in the passenger cabin of the Gulfstream IV, and bit her pant leg. When the flight attendant twisted to get away from the dog, she fell, injuring her back.According to documents filed in court, the flight attendant began treatment for back pain within days of the incident, but was unable to achieve relief from her pain. As a result of the injuries, the flight attendant had to have major surgery on her back in April of 2007, and she continues to undergo treatment.
The lawsuit alleges that the flight attendant's injuries are permanent and will require additional treatment. She has been unable to return to work. She is seeking $5 million in compensation. The flight attendant's attorney was quoted in a number of news reports such as this one in the New York Daily News, saying she is not out to capitalize on J. Lo's celebrity, and had made attempts to settle the case that were ignored. NetJets is not named in the suit.
Predictably, this story quickly went viral, spreading like wildfire around the Internet, especially on celebrity gossip websites. Once that happens, stories begin to mutate and become sensationalized, like an earlier story about Jennifer Lopez and a flight attendant that I wrote about nearly two years ago.
If you are interested in the details of this incident, I suggest that you read the actual court documents (8-page 'pdf' file), posted to the Internet by TMZ.com, and that you take many of the accounts in the entertainment media with a grain of salt.
My sympathies are with the injured flight attendant.
