Michael Moore, the poster boy for anti-establishment doc makers with woeful personal grooming habits, must be feeling extremely relieved today, as the amputee war veteran who was suing over some interview footage of him shot for an NBC Nightly News segment, but which turned up in Fahrenheit 9/11, has had his case thrown out of court:

The aborted O.J. Simpson If I Did It confessional book and TV special has already claimed the livelihood and reputation of publisher Judith Regan—who may or may not have hubristically blamed her downfall on the machinations of a secret society of dreidle-spinning ill-wishers—but that brings little comfort to the victims' families; particularly Fred Goldman, who watched in disbelief as Simpson told interviewers he'd already spent whatever blood money he'd made from the deal, yet has seen none of the $38 million awarded to him in the civil ruling over his son's wrongful death. Goldman filed suit against Simpson today, and, according to the court papers posted by The Smoking Gun, he's coming for News Corp. next:

On the off chance that you haven't been following the saga of troubled™ American Pie actress Natasha Lyonne that's been dragging on since last April, CNN.com's helpful "Story Highlights" box on today's update should get you all caught up. There is, however, a pitfall to taking the easy shortcut offered by the above bullet points: if you don't read on into the body of the article to discover that Lyonne barged into the apartment and actually had the canine in hand when she said, "I'm going to sexually molest your dog," you lose almost all sense of the hilarious, poodle-diddling jeopardy in which the quivering animal suddenly found itself.

It seems Factory Girl, the Edie Sedgwick biopic Harvey Weinstein promised us would establish Sienna Miller as a Major Actress, instead of just "that chick who's all pissed and shit about Jude Law banging his nanny," is well on its way to laying claim to the title of Hollywood's Doomed Production of 2006. As additional scenes are being shot, presumably to tighten the narrative while making it stink less than the trailer suggests it currently does, now comes news that Bob Dylan has unleashed his gang of scary lawyers on Girl producer Bob Yari—himself no stranger to the art of the threatening legal missive—over what they are claiming to be the film's thinly veiled characterization of the singer, played by Hayden Christensen:

Even after spending countless hours yesterday completely immersing ourselves in the virtual reality of local news outlet KABC 7's RichieTracker7000 , we were unable to fully inhabit Nicole Richie's consciousness and formulate a plausible excuse for why she ingested Vicodin and marijuana before embarking on her wrong-way trip on the 134, coming back again and again only to our own reasons for mixing prescription narcotics with recreational drugs: to temporarily blunt the pain of our sad existence. Us Weekly now releases us from the torment of trying to put aside our own problems long enough to puzzle through why Richie popped that fateful pill, reporting that "she's telling friends" (who, we're sure, have no connection to either her publicity or legal teams) that she "occasionally" Vikes up because of menstrual cramps. And in a truly helpful bit of unnamed pal-chatter, the Us source further claims that Richie is upset at the police department's underreporting of her weight by ten pounds; replacing the lost body mass she's "proud" to have supposedly gained over the last two months bumps her up to a meatier, seemingly eating-disorder-free 95 lbs, a level at which she can probably sustain the cramp-inducing menstrual functions she treats with that Vicodin. Well played, anonymous friends who demonstrate enviable PR savvy!

Determining that the $1.6 million in fines that his company was ordered to pay for not keeping accurate records on the ages of drunken 17-year-olds they may have accidentally filmed in the act of baring their breasts after funneling pints of Goldschlager on Spring Break would hardly put a dent in Girls Gone Wild jailbait-titty-flash mogul Joe Francis's private jet catering budget, much less make him pause for reflection about preying on drunken co-eds, a Florida judge tacked on some community service for Francis and his cohorts, then publicly chided them for the cowardice built in to their business model:

Following quickly after yesterday's ruling against the slave-owners'-rights-espousing frat boys seeking to have their scene in the Borat movie removed from the DVD release, comes another lawsuit brought against the filmmakers by a South Carolinian claiming to have been duped by the prankster now famous the world over, Sacha Baron Cohen. In a scene that never made it to the movie's final cut, Borat earns some money as a bathroom attendant at an upscale restaurant. It's a short sequence that has made the rounds on TV and online (but has since been pulled down by YouTube 2.0, Lame Edition), and now its full-bladdered mark is suing to ensure his Pee of Shame never sees the DVD extras light of day:

Sacha Baron Cohen has much to celebrate today, as not only has he been named best actor by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, but one of his lingering legal headaches—the lawsuit brought about by the two frat boys who took issue with their (mostly accurate) screen depiction as drunken, insensitive louts—is now fake-Kazakh history:

As Nicole Richie (mugshot pictured, though far too flattering to warrant anything more than a thumbnail) embarked upon her wrong way joyride up the exit ramp of the 134, wondering in her narcotic-induced stupor why all the brake lights of the cars up ahead had turned white and were quickly increasing in size, two passing motorists had enough wits about them to dial 911 and describe the dangerous, bizarre circumstances to an operator. Celebutard scandal completionists TMZ have obtained the calls made by the baffled and deeply concerned citizens, who surely never imagined that their good deed would ultimately net the authorities 85 drug-addled pounds of troubled reality TV sidekick.

We enjoy little more than the hilarious mismatch of news headline and illustrating photo, especially one that misidentifies, however briefly, an eighty-five-pound reality TV star as a rippling-torsoed Mayan high priest. The LAT quickly fixed the error (screen-captured above by an alert reader), by replacing it with Nicole Richie's actual, far inferior mugshot, but not before we imagined the notoriously frail star, still in the throes of a Vicodin-and-THC-induced high, threatening to cut out her booking officer's heart and show the still-beating organ to the entire Glendale Police Department, promising that the affront of a DUI arrest would spell their doom at the hands of Kinich Ahau, the Sun God.

While lesser celebutards rack up utterly mundane DUIs by swerving away from the Hyde valet stand after a long night of washing down plates of delicious chocolate chip cookies with entire bottles of Grey Goose, skeletal, discarded Hilton sidekick Nicole Richie shows the amateurs how a substance-abusing pro earns a traffic stop: according to TMZ, Richie was popped very early this morning for driving the wrong way on the 134 in Burbank after two motorists, understandably alarmed by the sight of an SUV piloted by what seemed to be an eleven-year-old girl traveling against the flow of traffic, called 911. Richie further distinguished herself from the Single Margarita crowd by passing a Breathalyzer but telling cops that she'd taken Vicodin and pot, a chemical cocktail not known for enhancing one's ability to read the signs that would direct them into freeway lanes less likely to result in head-on collisions. With a listed weight of just 85 lbs, Richie's attorneys can probably claim that her client didn't willingly ingest the illicit substances, as her innocent handling of a prescription pain medication bottle was enough to impart the pills' mind-altering effects to an individual with such a dangerously low body mass; failing that, they can adopt the preliminary, vehicular-malfunction-based defense tactics seen in the Lane Garrison case, blaming her directional misadventures on a renegade GPS system that seized control of her car and steered it into oncoming traffic.

We're always amazed when a sexual harassment lawsuit is filed in Hollywood, as it's always been our understanding that all employer-employee relationships in the industry—if not contractually, then at least on a handshake basis—revolve around the exchange of intimate favors for the advancement of one's show business career. Still, every so often, a lone crusader files such a suit, the potential success of which threatens to plunge the industry into an anarchic state where hard work becomes more valuable than one's willingness to endure a little grab-assing from a handsy boss. The AP reports that the former personal assistant of Superman Returns producer Jon Peters is taking legal action against him, claiming that he harassed her in the following clumsy fashion:

We know that you want us to tell you that fugitive from tax-code-justice Wesley Snipes' arrest for the fraud charges filed against him back in October involved some kind of dramatic stand-off at the Orlando airport, with Snipes finally being dragged off the private jet that returned him to the States from Namibia after ten frantic hours of repelling wave after wave of IRS goons while armed only with eating utensils found in the plane's galley. Unfortunately, Snipes quietly turned himself in, made a brief court appearance in Ocala, Florida (sorry, he didn't wrestle a weapon from a momentarily distracted bailiff, admonish his captors for "not betting on black," then escaping in a stolen police car) and plans to immediately return to the African set of the low-budget zombie flick he's shooting while waiting for Hollywood to come to its senses and restore him to his mid-1990s stardom. Reality, as it so often is, is far less action-packed than the high-paying, shitty movies that got Snipes into this trouble in the first place.

Like so many others for whom the Hollywood dream has gone sour, Sable, Cody, and Angel probably started in the business with high hopes, but wound up mostly living hand to mouth, forced into wearing close to nothing and swinging on poles for other's amusement when they weren't being terrorized by a physically abusive svengali. But now comes happy news, as a lawsuit settlement has granted the three hard-luck showbiz vets an early retirement:

When Lane Garrison's attorney announced that his client had consumed a single drink at the high school party he stumbled into Saturday night after randomly befriending three teenagers—then offered a Variety Pak of defenses for the ensuing fatal crash—surely he must have known that it wouldn't be long before the many party attendees would come forward with their own, eyewitness accounts of events. And short of developing a "they all drank from the same hallucinogen-laced punchbowl!" tactic, it seems that his One Drink Defense is not going to hold up:

A reader directed us to Lane Garrison 101, the "very first and only Lane Garrison fan site" (well, with the possible exception of this one) which has put itself on hiatus following the Prison Break actor's well-documented, tragic car crash. We understand the impulse to temporarily take the site down, but we'd argue that he needs his fans—especially ones dedicated enough to erect a web presence celebrating a performer we'd never heard of before yesterday—now more than ever to provide much-needed moral support while his lawyer valiantly battles to prove that the unfortunate combination of faulty brakes, bad alignment, and a possibly spiked cup of keg beer was responsible for the accident.

TV producer impostor and charlatan Joseph Medawar, who swindled 50 people out of millions of dollars by convincing them they'd have a stake in an nonexistent Department of Homeland Security drama, has been handed down a far more lenient punishment than federal prosecutors had hoped for—a single year in prison:

It has now been determined that it was indeed actor Lane Garrison behind the wheel of the tragic accident that claimed the life of Vahagn Setian, a popular 17-year-old student at Beverly Hills High School, and injured two other 15-year-old girls Saturday night. (For those unfamiliar with Garrison's work as Eminem-wannabe inmate Tweener on Prison Break, a fan posted this highlight reel on YouTube, in which he demonstrates a repeated reluctance to being made many an inmate's bitch.) Garrison has retained attorney Harold Braun for his defense, who, despite offering several alternative scenarios to counter the currently popular "drunkenly plowed into a tree" theory, is still having trouble getting around the whole "my client picked up a bunch of teenagers at a supermarket and accompanied them to a party" part of the story. The LAT reports:

Truth be told, the details of Rip Torn's DWI arrest this afternoon in upstate New York don't really interest us, as much as we admire the actor for getting liquored up in the middle of the day. His mugshot, however, is breathtaking, a combination of vintage Nick Nolte dishevelment and Gibsonian insouciance, with a puckishly raised eyebrow that seems to say, "Go ahead and take my picture, sugar tits, but both of us know that I'm gonna beat this rap, just like the last one."

The coalition of human rights groups insisting on a full review of the circumstances surrounding Madonna's relatively swift adoption of an African demi-orphan have won a crucial legal victory, allowing them to join the court in ensuring David Banda wasn't traded for an autographed copy of "Confessions on a Dancefloor" with a starstruck orphanage guard with a Chichewa nickname that translates roughly as "the Gay One":