IF INDOOR FIRE BURNS AND NO ONE IS INJURED, SHOULD IT STILL BE A CRIME (ANSWER HINT: HECK YEAH!)

From:New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Queens Accident Lawyer)

File this in the "you can't make up this stuff" department. In the early hours of Sunday, June 13, 2010 New York City Fire Marshals arrested Albert Trummer, age 40, co-owner of the Prohibition-era styled Chinatown bar Apotheke. Trummer was known for pouring high-proof alcohol on the top of his bar and lighting it.

The N.Y.F.D., being party poopers, felt that the indoor ignition of a huge fireball, near customers, indoor decorations and curtains, presented some kind of hazardous condition.

Apotheke, which is German for "pharmacy," opened in 2008, and was featured -- along with Mr. Trummer's flame show -- in an episode of "The Real Housewives of New York City," when one of the characters, LuAnn de Lesseps, went there on a date.

Undercover fire marshals visited the bar Saturday night. They report that the fire was set around 2 AM along the 15-foot-long bar, and burned about six feet in width; the flames jumped two to three feet into the air.

The fire blazed for several minutes and then went out. No one was hurt or injured. Mr. Trummer was arrested and charged with reckless endangerment and criminal nuisance, both misdemeanors. The bar closed, but reopened the next night.

Comment:The idiocy of people never fails to amaze me. If that fire burned and injured a bar customer and that person brought a lawsuit for personal injury, would all trial lawyers still be greedy and driving business out of New York?