ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, January 11, 1997             TAG: 9701130042
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-3  EDITION: METRO 

IN THE NATION

Cabbage Patch suit asks a lot of lettuce

SAN DIEGO - The parents of a 9-year-old girl filed a $25.5 million lawsuit claiming their family will need therapy because of an ``attack'' on their daughter by a Cabbage Patch doll.

Mattel pulled the Cabbage Patch Kids Snacktime Kids doll from the market this month after about 100 reports of children getting hair and fingers caught in the battery-operated mouths. The company offered a $40 refund to doll owners.

In their state civil lawsuit Thursday, the parents of Jessica Wells said the doll gnawed the child's hair to her scalp four days after Christmas. They said the entire family will require psychological help for ``mental and emotional injuries.''

Thomas and Genie Taylor's lawsuit names Mattel and Wal-Mart, where they bought the doll. The family's lawyer, George Najjar, said he came up with the $25.5 million figure by estimating the doll's profits and tripling them.

- Associated Press

Back on stand, O.J. denies hitting Nicole

SANTA MONICA, Calif. - For three hours Friday, O.J. Simpson told the jury and a packed courtroom about his troubled relationship with Nicole Brown Simpson - the stormy marriage, the fights, the divorce, the failed attempts at reconciliation.

He vehemently denied testimony that he struck his wife outside a veterinary clinic or on a beach in Laguna in 1986. He again maintained that he had never struck his ex-wife, despite the photographs taken of her bruised face after a 1989 New Year's Day brawl that ended in his arrest.

Under questioning by his own lawyers Friday, Simpson sought to dispel the notion that he was obsessed with his ex-wife and killed her and a friend in a jealous rage. On the contrary, he said, after their divorce in 1992 he was aware that Nicole was dating other men. He said she often sought his advice, confiding in him on one occasion that she was pregnant by a man she was seeing and was contemplating an abortion, which she later obtained. At one point Baker confronted Simpson on his claim that he had never struck Nicole.

``If I had hit her with a closed fist, she'd look different than she did in those pictures,'' he said.

- Newsday

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