Fake Saudi princess-model countersues American Express
Taking responsiblities for your own actions and/or shortcomings is SO 1950s. Why would anyone feel compelled to take responsibility for their illegal behavior when you can hire an attorney who can spin an insanity defense out of whole cloth? Why, indeed? This is America, damnit, where anyone with enough available cash can attempt to wheedle their way out of anything. It’s the American way….
NEW YORK (AP) It’s not my fault. I’m mentally ill. That’s the argument a woman is using to sue American Express for two (M) million dollars after she ran up nearly one (M) million dollar in charges and couldn’t pay the bill.
Prosecutors say the woman - 40-year-old Antoinette Millard - posed as a Saudi princess to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise. She is now suing America Express saying she was mentally incompetent when she opened her account and the company should have known it.
The woman is free on 100-thousand dollars bail and awaiting trial on attempted grand larceny charges. Besides the phony princess the woman is also accused of posing as a Victoria’s Secret model, which she was not.
Millard’s lawsuit says American Express gave her a prestigious Centurion “Black” card at a time when she was suffering from anorexia, depression, panic attacks, head tumors and by reason of such illnesses was mentally incompetent. The card is for people who charge more than 150-thousand dollars a year, and carries a 25-hundred dollar annual fee. Her lawsuit says American Express should have known that Millard was acting impulsively and irrationally at the time she accepted the card.
So Ms. Millard’s argument here is that AmEx should have a forensic psychologist on staff, as well as a Gypsy woman with a crystal ball? Since when do credit card applications contain sections asking an applicant to detail their medical and psychological history, as well as their personal peccadilloes? The ACLU would have a field day with that sort of thing, and yet Ms. Millard is contending that AmEx should somehow have been able to intuit her proclivity for antisocial and criminal behavior?
You know, if you hadn’t baked those cookies, I never would have been tempted to stick my hand into the cookie jar. Ergo, it is your fault for placing that temptation in front of me.
Whatever….
This is a case which illustrates to me that perhaps Shakespeare’s Hamlet was onto something: First, we’ll kill all the lawyers….
Hang ‘em high, Judge.
