A 34-year-old claw-machine enthusiast had four teeth knocked out in a scuffle with an arcade owner over flawed and malfunctioning products, resulting in the latter being sentenced to three months in prison for causing bodily harm.
According to the 34-year-old man from New Taipei City (新北市), identified only by his family name, Liang (梁), his obsession with crane machines began more than a year ago and he had since been frequenting a claw-machine arcade on Nanya W Road Sec 2 in the city’s Banciao District (板橋).
A loyal customer, Liang soon became acquainted with the arcade owner, surnamed Liu (劉).
Photo: Lee Chung-hsien, Taipei Times
However, Liang became unhappy after he spent tens of thousands of New Taiwan dollars on crane machines in October last year alone, only to discover that three China-made cellphones he had won did not work.
According to the verdict issued recently by the Banciao District Court, Liang was overwhelmed by anger on Oct. 23 last year when he again discovered that a product he had just won from the claw machines was faulty.
Liang called Liu and yelled obscenities at him, saying that he was “pissed off” because, in addition to the malfunctioning cellphones, the product he had just won was also defective.
“On top of everything, I have spent NT$1,000 on your machines, but still could not grab anything. How are you planning to solve the matter?” Liang was quoted in the verdict as saying.
Some pushing and shoving occurred when Liang rushed to Liu’s shop to ask for an exchange or a refund, the verdict said. Liu then hit Liang over the head with a foldable chair, causing multiple facial and head injuries.
Four false teeth fixed between Liang’s upper left canine and the first molar also fell off during the brawl after a crown fracture of the abutment, while the remaining roots were too short to have fixed false teeth reattached.
Liu also sustained minor injuries to his left cheek.
The two men refused to settle the matter and accused each other in court of causing bodily harm.
During the trial, Liu confessed to the judge and withdrew the charges against Liang, expressing an intention to reach an out-of-court settlement.
However, because Liang rejected the idea of having removable dentures and insisted on receiving dental implants, which are expensive, they failed to reach an agreement on the settlement amount.
Discontent with the ruling, Liang said Liu was willing to give him only NT$30,000 in compensation, which was far less than the estimated NT$300,000 he needed for implants, and that he was likely to file an appeal.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater