Councilwoman Letitia "Tish" James (D-Fort Greene) is suing a day laborer for causing "serious, severe and permanent [injuries] to her limbs and body" after she walked into a four-inch trailer hitch protruding from the back of his parked car. According to court documents cited in the Brooklyn Paper, James says she suffered "great physical and mental pain" when she brushed against the hitch and cut her leg in Fort Greene last July.

After parking behind the itinerant worker's car on Fulton Street between S. Portland Avenue and S. Oxford Street, James says she hurt her leg while walking between the vehicles. "It's a public safety issue," said James, who claims the incident left her with a seven-inch scar. "My car was parked and his car was parked. His hitch was exposed." The politician claims the hitch is illegal, and is seeking an unspecified amount of damages from laborer David Day. "This lawsuit could be ended today if he removed it."

But Day swears he did nothing wrong, and has begged James to drop the suit. "Please don't go forward with it," he wrote in a letter to James last month. "You are famous and powerful while I'm a nobody without means who's done you no harm." He insists the hitch is legal, and says that if he loses in court, James won't win much because he only earns about one-tenth of the politician's $122,500 salary.