Excerpt: An El Sobrante restaurant has agreed to pay $250,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a 50-year-old woman who had the tip of her finger chopped off in a freak accident with her chair, her attorney said Thursday.

Joyce Palega was eating lunch with her husband at PJ's Restaurant on San Pablo Dam Road on July 18, 2006, when she grabbed the seat of her chair to move it closer to her table.

Palega didn't realize that her seat wasn't attached to the chair's metal frame, said her attorney, Steven James Choi of Oakland. When she sat down, the tip of the middle finger of her left hand got caught between the seat and a metal tube that was part of the chair's leg, Choi said.

"She felt a sharp pain and had no idea what happened," Choi said. "She lifted her hand up, and blood was pouring from her finger. The tip was missing."

Her husband, Tripler Palega, rushed her to Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo. Then he returned to the restaurant, where the quarter-inch tip...