(12/8/99)
BURBANK, Calif. (AP) -- NBC and ``The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'' are being sued by an Ohio man who claims he was hurt by a flying T-shirt while sitting in the studio audience.
Stewart Gregory said he was hit in the eye by a T-shirt shot by an air gun into the audience on Sept. 11, 1998. The Superior Court lawsuit claimed Gregory was ``battered'' by the flying freebie.
``It's not frivolous when you get hit with a hard object traveling 800 feet per second,'' the 56-year-old Cincinnati pet store owner said Tuesday.
Gregory, acting as his own attorney, seeks damages in excess of $25,000 for ``pain and suffering, disability, lost wages, emotional distress, humiliation and embarrassment, and extraordinary stupidity.'' He later retracted his request for stupidity damages after finding out that he could not sue NBC for a prior condition.
Free ``Tonight Show'' shirts often are shot into the audience as part of the warm-up before the show is taped at NBC's studios here.
Gregory alleges that Leno, the network and the show were negligent in hiring and failing to supervise the shirt shooter. The suit also seeks punitive damages for allegedly ``using a compressed air gun in a small and enclosed space.''
NBC spokeswoman Carrie Simons said Tuesday, ``As 800 feet per second is just over two-thirds of the speed of sound at 545 miles per hour, we have no doubt that Mr. Gregory is either dead or bad at math.''