Frivolous lawsuits are a tradition as american as apple pie and baseball, but these folks are just ridiculous!
Getting The Weather Wrong
“The weather topic introduced by Poorna Chandran, deserves expanding. We should note that negligent weather reporting has indeed led to lawsuits in the U.S. Brown v. United States, for example. Gary Brown was a 27-year-old fisherman. In the early morning hours of November 2, 1980, Brown kissed his pregnant wife goodbye and headed off for a weekend of lobster catching. The weatherman — the Nat’l Weather Service — had issued a beautiful forecast. A sudden squall however caused Brown’s boat to sink and he was killed. His wife sued, and won. The weatherman appealed. There was no exact science to forecasting weather, he said. It was a prediction, not a guarantee the weather would be nice. Reversed. The tale became a book by Michael J. Tougias, Fatal Forecast” (source)
Cigars
“A lawyer owned a $7,500 box of Arturo Fuente cigars. After smoking them, he made a loss claim of his insurance carrier for the total amount, stating that the cigars were destroyed in a fire. The law being the law, common sense took a back seat to legal verbiage and the insurance company was ordered to pay the claim. They were insured for loss due to fire, after all. But that’s not the good part. The insurance company then filed a counter claim against the lawyer, claiming that the loss was due to an act of arson, perpetrated by the lawyer. The lawyer lost. I believe he was sentenced to suspended jail time” (source)
Some Thorns
“Try the Thorns case, Hulle v. Orynge 1466. Y.B.M. 6 Edw. IV, folio 7, placitum 18. i, Case of the Thorns, a very famous case that is credited with establishing tort law. The defendant had a thorn bush and cut the thorns from it, but they fell across the property line on the plaintiff’s property. The plaintiff sued for trespass when the defendant retrieved the thorns. Goes to show that what looks like a silly case can have incalculable legal and social precedent” (source).
Shorter Subs
“Recently Subway (the sandwich maker) was sued and lost (settled), because the ‘footlong subs’ were slightly less than 12.0 inches. It is bread; it bakes imprecisely even if measuring and stretching out an appropriate weight of dough. Now the part that really irked me was the settlement award. $1,000 was awarded to the ‘victims,’ while $500,000 was awarded to the attorneys who pursued this. These are situations where ire towards lawyers is justified” (source).
A Drunk Driver’s Safety
“In 1992, 23-year old Karen Norman accidentally backed her car into Galveston Bay after a night of drinking. Norman couldn’t operate her seat belt and drowned. Her passenger managed to disengage herself and make it to shore. Norman’s parents sued Honda for making a seat belt their drunken daughter (her blood alcohol level was .17 – nearly twice the legal limit) couldn’t open underwater. A jury found Honda seventy-five percent responsible for Karen’s death and awarded the Norman family $65 million. An appeals court threw out the case” (source).
Being A “Mystery Client”
“The 32-year-old man says he was forced to sample food products each day to ensure that quality standards remained high because McDonald’s hired ‘mystery clients’ to randomly visit restaurants and report on the food, service and cleanliness” (source).
Elephant Decorations
“Dispute over how a temple elephant in India should be decorated, that spans 150 years in various lawsuits. Starting from the time when the British introduced courts and rule of law in India” (source).
Building A Fence
“In California there was a construction site with a fence surrounding it that was 12 feet tall and it blocked a alley a women regularly used to get home. She decided to ignore the no trespassing signs posted every 15 feet on the fence and climbed over then proceeded to fall and break her leg. She sued the construction company for and I quote ‘not having a fence tall enough to keep me out.’ She won the case on the basis that the fence didn’t have enough preventive measures to keep her out such as barbed wire, more signs or being taller” (source).
Making The Same (non)Song
“My vote would be the two musicians who sued each other. Each had published a CD with a silent track. Each, of course, claimed that their silence was more evocative and artistic the other person’s base copy” (source).
Uneven Numbers Of Matches
“I saw once on tv that a million years ago someone sued a matchbox company because the box said it contained 50 matches and each box had a different amount (52, 48, 51…). The litigant actually won, and it is probably since then that companies in general use the ‘approximately’ addendum for referring to its contents. That is the most bizarre lawsuit I’ve ever seen, by far” (source).
“False Advertising”
“In 1991, Richard Harris sued Anheuser-Busch for $10,000 for false advertising. Harris claimed to suffer from emotional distress in addition to mental and physical injury. Why? Because when he drank beer, he didn’t have any luck with the ladies, as promised in the TV ads. Harris also didn’t like that he got sick sometimes after he drank. The case was thrown out of court” (source).
Occupational Hazards
“In 1996, Florida physical therapist Paul Shimkonis sued his local nudie bar claiming whiplash from a lap dancer’s large breasts. Shimkonis felt he suffered physical harm and mental anguish from the breasts, which he claimed felt like ‘cement blocks’ hitting him. Shimkonis sought justice in the amount of $15,000, which was denied” (source).
Non-Autopiloting Cruise Control
“So once apparently this couple set their RV on cruise control and went back into the RV to make some coffee. They thought the cruise control could drive the RV by itself, but when there was a turn in the road, the RV crashed. They sued the RV company and won somehow” (source).
The Original
“How about the case that pretty much started the state of litigiousness in this country, if not the world? I’m referring to the case in the 1970s where a man sued the makers of Cracker Jack because a box he bought for his son had no toy surprise. He claimed emotional trauma was caused his son, and sued for $1,000,000, if I recall correctly. Most people would have simply gone out and spent another 75 cents on another box” (source).