The city of Chicago will reportedly pay a $55,000 settlement to a woman who claimed she was shocked with a stun gun while eight months pregnant, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Tiffany Rent, 31, filed suit against the city after she was shocked with a stun gun by a police officer in front of her two young children in June. 

Rent said she pulled into a handicapped parking spot in the Walgreens lot on the 110 block of South Michigan Avenue while her fiance ran into the store. She then got out of the car to re-seat her 3-year-old when a Chicago police officer began writing her a ticket.

Police said she tore up the ticket and threw it at the officer. When the officer asked her for identification, police said she refused to comply.

Police said the officer deployed his stun gun when Rent tried to put her car in gear and drive away.

"I don't think that it should have went this far," she said. "It just makes me afraid of the Chicago Police Department because there's other women that may have went through this or that's going through this."

Attorney Keenan Saulter further argued a parking ticket is not a reason to use a stun gun.

"A parking ticket," he said. "Not even a moving violation, but a parking ticket should not involve someone pulling out a Taser."

The accused officers claimed they did not know Rent was pregnant, but the officer who deployed the stun gun is under review.

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said stun guns should be used when overcoming assault or preventing escape and “you can’t always tell if somebody’s pregnant.”

Rent gave birth in July to a baby boy named Joseph.

Seven students forced to eat lunch on their New Jersey school's gymnasium floor for two weeks as punishment won a $500,000 legal settlement, their attorney said Tuesday.

The 2008 incident involved fifth-grade students at Charles Sumner Elementary School in Camden, N.J., who were disciplined after one child spilled water as he tried to lift a jug onto a cooler, according to lawyer Alan Schorr.

The students filed a federal lawsuit against the Camden Board of Education, which agreed to the settlement, Schorr said.

Discord
He said the incident took place against a backdrop of discord between the black and Hispanic populations in the impoverished southern New Jersey city. The children were Hispanic.

Schorr said the vice principal, who was African-American, punished all 15 students in a bilingual class by making them eat off paper liners normally used on lunch trays. (While there were 15 students in the class, only seven sued.)

"The African-American kids were eating at tables, with trays, taunting these Hispanic kids who were forced to eat on the ground," Schorr said.

The vice principal has since transferred.

CourierPostOnline.com reported that the board of education had approved the settlement but not admitted any guilt.

It added:

"Under the settlement, the students will split $280,000, which works out to $31,428 each. Their attorney, Alan H. Schorr of Cherry Hill, will get $220,000."

The children's teacher was fired after encouraging them to tell their parents about the punishment. The teacher won a $75,000 settlement earlier.

Neither school officials nor their lawyers could be reached for comment.

Reuters contributed to this report.

More content from NBCNews.com:

• Illegal immigrants are warned of scammers as new Obama policy takes effect
• Chasing a 'dream': Immigrant youth seek legal status
• Video: Texas shooting gunman had stockpile of weapons
• Errant skydivers land in high-security Georgia submarine base
• Emergency well drilling brings relief to farmers stricken by drought

Follow US News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

US Forest Service

The so-called Moonlight Fire charred 65,000 acres in September 2007. "What was lost was priceless and will not return for over a century," U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California Benjamin B. Wagner said in a statement.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Logging company Sierra Pacific Industries agreed to pay the United States $122.5 million in damages to settle a lawsuit over a 2007 wildfire that was among the most devastating in California history, the Department of Justice said on Tuesday.

The settlement is the largest ever received by the United States for damages caused by a wildfire, the so-called Moonlight Fire that charred 65,000 acres in September 2007.

The blaze was sparked by employees of the logging company and a contractor who struck a rock with a bulldozer, prosecutors said, sending sparks into the dry ground on a day the National Weather Service had issued a red flag warning, indicating a high fire danger.

The smoldering fire went unnoticed because the employees skipped a company-required fire patrol, prosecutors said.

'No relief' from drought as sweltering temperatures return to Midwest, Northeast

"Instead, the designated fire watch left the work area and drove 30 minutes away to get a soda. When he returned over an hour later, there was a 100-foot wall of smoke billowing from the work area," the Department of Justice said in a statement.

Sierra Pacific Industries denied responsibility for the fire, and the company's attorney William Warne said that the government's investigation into the fire "was seriously off the rails," Bloomberg Businessweek reported. 

"Typically, a settlement signifies the end of a dispute, but this is just the beginning," The Record Searchlight newspaper quoted Warne as saying.

15 million trees killed
The settlement will include a $55 million cash payment and 22,500 acres of land in California owned by Sierra Pacific. The U.S. Forest Service will choose the land, which prosecutors said is expected to bridge gaps between existing national forests and will support critical watersheds and sensitive species habitats.

The Moonlight Fire scorched more than 46,000 acres of national forests in September 2007, killing more than 15 million trees on public land, some of which were more than 400 years old. It also destroyed thousands of acres inhabited by sensitive species including the California spotted owl.

"The Moonlight Fire was a devastating blow to National Forest land here in California," U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California Benjamin B. Wagner said in a statement.

"What was lost was priceless and will not return for over a century. The recovery in this case will help start the process of making the public whole."

According to The Sacramento Bee, Warne said the U.S. sought as much as $791 million in damages, but Wagner disputed said the figure was actually $200 million or less.

Sierra Pacific Industries owns nearly 1.9 millions acres of timberland in California and Washington state and is the second largest lumber producer in the United States, according to the company.

NBC News staff and Reuters contributed to this report.

More content from NBCNews.com:

• Kerry Kennedy says car accident caused by seizure
• Airplane banner tells Penn State: Take Paterno statue down
• US tough on saving elephants from slaughter? Hardly, says WWF
• Uncloaked: Army testing new camo to replace flawed design
• 'No relief' from drought as heat returns to Midwest, Northeast
• Boy Scouts: We're keeping policy banning gays
• Video: Bus driver catches girl, 7, in three-story plunge

Follow US News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook