Reparations Sought from Public Libraries Nationwide

Representing nearly a quarter-million plaintiffs across the continental United States, Gaudy and Garish, LLP, has filed a historic class action suit on behalf of adults crippled during their youth by traumatic shushing at their local public libraries. “The men and women we’re representing range in age from 19 to 76, and most suffer debilitating physical and mental impairments as a result of their collective ordeal,” said Randall Garish, co-partner of the high-octane legal firm. Suing for damages in excess of $168 million, the plaintiffs are allegedly connecting the shushing to a host of later afflictions and intend to corroborate those claims through a gaggle of expert witnesses. “Going to the library as a youngster was so difficult for me because I loved and still love to read, but I was terrified by the librarian demanding absolute silence with her wicked index finger pressed against those desiccated lips,” recalled Jim McCusker, 57, of Santa Paloma, CA, who has worn adult diapers his whole adult life due to blistering incontinence. Some younger members of the class attribute their present eating disorders to the dunning sibilations of fanatical booktenders too, though in fairness many have gone on to become some of this country’s most successful supermodels.

Legal observers agree the charge of shushing is hardly in question, but add that linking it to later psychological and physiological maladies will be a tough sell unless the case is tried in Massachusetts. “We could have filed in the Bay State,” noted Garish, “but we decided to take this case right to LANA’s (Library Association of North America’s) backyard and filed in Ohio instead.” With polls indicating popular sentiment having turned against the library community, Eugenia Baker, President-Elect of LANA, has thrown her profession on the mercy of the court of public opinion. “Maybe we as librarians did go overboard hushing and shushing patrons in years past, especially before the Internet offered any competition to our stranglehold on information services. But paying out this kind of settlement would shutter a huge number of public libraries across the country and in the process devastate entire communities which depend on our indispensable services,” pled Baker tearily at a press conference. “Unlike the Catholic Church, we simply don’t have the resources to shell out for past injustices.” Whether the novel gambit will pay off remains to be seen, but several thousand members of the class have since dropped out of this case and joined pending Church molestation suits, according to recent reports.