Hall of Shame: What will they think of next?
Just when you thought you'd heard it all, personal injury lawyers and their plaintiffs find new and creative reasons to clutter our courts with questionable lawsuits. Whether PR stunts or an attempt to win big money in the lawsuit lottery, these lawsuits earn a spot in our Lawsuit Hall of Shame.
After eight years and three trials, a group of protesters whose eyes were swabbed with pepper spray during an anti-logging demonstration, won their case against the Humboldt County Sheriff and Eureka Police. The protesters had blocked a public road by locking their arms together inside metal pipes to form a barrier. In their case, they argued that the police should have used a grinder to cut through the metal. The plaintiffs and their lawyers had sought compensatory and punitive damages. The judge awarded each of the protesters exactly $1. The lawyers in the case have indicated that they plan to ask for $1 million in attorneys fees. -San Francisco Chronicle, 4/29/05 An attorney has filed a suit on behalf of an 18-year old Orlando, Florida man who, after attempting to make a jump from one parking structure to the next— a distance of just 2 ½ feet— missed, fell six stories and knocked himself unconscious. What grounds were given for filing a lawsuit? The attorney contends that the fence at the edge of the structure was “very, very short” and inadequate to prevent a teen from (deliberately) making the jump. -St. Petersburg Times, 1/1/05 A San Francisco woman sued McDonalds claiming that the oil used to cook french fries was too fatty. -The Associated Press, 7/704 A New York man sued four leading fast food chains, seeking unspecified damages, claiming the restaurants were to blame for his obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. The man had been eating fast food for decades, thinking it was good for him, despite the fact that the restaurants had been posting nutritional information on their food. -The Daily Recorder, 7/30/04 A man in West Bend Wisconsin threatened to sue a local cable company blaming it for him being addicted to TV, for his wife being overweight and for his kids being lazy. Apparently the man cancelled his cable service and was not billed, but after receiving free cable for four years, the man brought a small claims complaint to the cable company office stating, "I believe the reason I smoke and drink every day and my wife is overweight is because we watched TV every day for the last four years. - The Reporter, 1/7/04 A high school student from Memphis, Mich. sued his school principal, the superintendent and all seven school board members because he received an "A" instead of an "A+" in one of his classes. - AP/CNN February 6, 2003 A family of four sued the Los Angeles Dodger for "false imprisonment and battery" by security guards after one of the plaintiffs assaulted a female usher. - California Bar Journal, June 2002
A Florida woman, who was taken off an airplane in Dallas and asked to pull a vibrating sex toy out of one of her checked bags, has sued Delta Airlines citing public humiliation. She claims she had to hold it up for visible viewing. She was then allowed to repack and return to her seat for the flight back to Florida. -The Dallas Morning News, 7/28/02 A Pennsylvania woman put a cherry Pop-Tart in her toaster at home one morning and forgot about it as she drove the children to school. Upon her return, smoke was billowing from the home and firefighters were already on-scene. The couple then proceeded to sue the Kellogg company for $10,000 for damages to their home. -Reuters, July 30, 2001
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