People and Events

The Palace in Hollywood and some other local rock clubs are now posting signs, notes the Daily Journal, warning patrons that the decibel level may be harmful to their health. This apparently is in response to at least two Los Angeles lawsuits (and one in Florida) that break new legal ground in the area of personal injury law: rock concert ear damage.

One action was filed by attorneys Gloria Allred and Nathan Goldberg on behalf of Linda Duke, 24, of Canoga Park, who claims she lost part of her hearing attending a David Lee Roth concert at the Forum in December, 1986.

Another was filed by attorney Michael Totaro for 30-year-old Victor Salas of Hacienda Heights, who says that going to a Neil Young concert at the Universal Amphitheatre Nov. 17 caused the same problem for him.

The plaintiffs contend that the musicians and the club management ought to at least warn fans of the danger. Not surprisingly, the defendants argue that anyone who doesn’t like loud music should leave.

When Duke filed her suit last July, she said she tried to leave, but “the aisles were packed. People were pushing right into us while we were sitting in our seats. There was a fistfight in the aisle. Somebody threw beer. We were drenched and we couldn’t even get out to wash the beer off. . . . There was no way we could leave.”

Apparently everybody else was having a good time.

The death in a Zagreb prison hospital of 88-year-old Andrija Artukovic, convicted in Yugoslavia on murder charges, brought to an end the long episode that began 40 years ago, when the Balkan nation asked the War Crimes Commission to put him on the list of wanted Nazis.

In 1951, Artukovic was reported to be in Los Angeles, keeping books for his brother’s contracting firm. Federal agents were sent to fetch him. When they got to the construction company offices, the agents looked around, unable to spot the man they were looking for.

With them was a reporter for the old (not the present-day) Daily News, who had seen a photograph. He pointed to a meek-looking little man sitting at a desk and said, “That’s him.” It was. The feds grabbed him.

Artukovic, of course, was free in Southern California for years after that as international legal maneuvers dragged on.

J. D. Walters’ mistake, say Long Beach police, was pawing a bag of ginger snaps he was pretending to buy when he held up a day-old bakery last month. He should have taken the bag with him. He left behind enough of a fingerprint that the cops were able to identify him through the new Cal-ID fingerprint system.

They were waiting for him when he got home.

The 40-year-old Walters, who had been convicted twice before, was soon charged with a string of recent robberies and pleaded no contest a few days ago. He is to be sentenced Feb. 5 and faces 20 years in prison.

Joanne Stathoulis had an exciting time when she and her husband, Pakis, went to Reuben’s restaurant in Redondo Beach for dinner Sunday night. As the waves got higher and higher, pounding at the windows, the waitress said:

“If the ocean comes in, the meal will be free, because I’ll be getting out of here.”

The ocean did, indeed, come in. The waitress did get out.

But then so did the Stathoulises, so they never got the meal.

Mars is scheduled to squeak past Earth in September with a mere 36.5 million miles to spare, so the Pasadena-based Planetary Society would like to have you break out the old binoculars or backyard telescope.

“Mars Watch ‘88” is supposed to raise public awareness of the red planet, increase knowledge about it and advance the chances of exploring it, says Lyndine McAfee, spokeswoman for the society founded and headed by astronomer Carl Sagan.

The idea is to coordinate the observations by amateurs with those of professionals.

The Planetary Society is circulating a Mars Declaration to the general public and to its 120,000 members, trying to make the exploration of Mars a specific goal. Thousands of would-be space

travelers have expressed interest in going there.

They range, McAfee says, from very prominent figures to just common folks “who are excited by the idea.”