An FBI agent was awarded $95,000 in a settlement for a federal lawsuit over a gun-toting toll booth clerk. The case started in 2008 when Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority officer Daniel Bell refused to take crumpled $1 bills as a toll payment. "Dude, you can't come up here with folded money and give it to me," Bell told agent Wilfred Rattigan. The argument escalated and ended with Rattigan filing a complaint after guns were pulled on both sides. Rattigan's lawyer told the Post, "This case will send a message to officers in the TBTA that they must act responsibly and respectfully toward the customers they serve." Even if it means tediously unfolding dollar bills. more ›

A Brooklyn judge decided that the onetime fiancee of a firefighter killed by the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center will continue to receive half of his pension—$35,000 annually—but said she owes the fireman's parents a "heartfelt apology." The court battle between the family of Kevin Prior and former girlfriend Doreen Noone has been raging since 2003. It was complicated by Noone's mid-case marriage to her slain beau's best friend, NYPD Sgt. Edward Wheeler in 2004. more ›

After poring over NY State data, the NY Times suggests that "courtrooms are now seeing the delayed result of the country’s economic collapse... New York’s judges are wading into these types of cases by the tens of thousands, according to the new statistics, cases involving not only bad debts and soured deals, but also filings that are indirect but still jarring measures of economic stresses, like charges of violence in families torn apart by lost jobs and homes in jeopardy." Chief judge Jonathan Lippman said, "Society’s problems come to us. We are the emergency room for society.” And another judge, who has seen many credit cases, said of the future, "I would describe it as a train wreck and I think it’s going to get worse for the next couple of years.” more ›

The State Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a transgender person seeking a name change does not have to provide proof of any medical procedure justifying the change, striking down an earlier ruling. The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, a nonprofit advocacy organization, had brought the case to New York Civil Court in February on behalf of Olin Yuri Winn-Ritzenberg, a transgender man who wanted to change his first name from Leah. more ›