Yes, Mardi Gras parade goers still sue even though most locals and many tourists know that you cannot sue from being hit by a throw in New Orleans in almost all cases.

Daisy Johnson Palmer, a 74-year-old retired Orleans Parish public schoolteacher, wants the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club to pay for the bloody cut, and ensuing trauma, she says came from a coconut lobbed in her direction Feb. 28, 2006, as Zulu paraded down Canal Street.

Four years later, though, a Louisiana appeals court tossed out her case after finding that her claims of trauma from a hollowed-out Zulu coconut thrown underhanded into the French Quarter crowd didn’t merit a trial at Orleans Parish Civil District Court. Palmer’s attorney, Edwin Fleischmann, said he is awaiting the final decision from the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Zulu’s rules say that the throwing of coconuts is “positively forbidden,” as is tossing any throws to the rear of a float. In 2004, Vice president Naaman Stewart was one of Zulu’s most vocal advocates for the adoption of a lightweight coconut, hollowed-out, shaved coconuts purchased in bulk from a Vietnam supplier and shipped to New Orleans where members decorate & paint them.  An average store-bought coconut filled with milk & meat can weigh up to 1 1/2 lbs.