A lawsuit against Continental Airlines claimed the company’s “no cash” policy is discriminatory against people with low incomes who don’t have credit cards. The suit, filed by a passenger who couldn’t purchase booze or headphones on a flight from Hawaii to New Jersey because he left his card in his checked luggage, was recently tossed by a court in New Jersey.
A 32-year-old New Yorker is suing his parents for $200,000, saying that they have been “indifferent” to his problems. The suit recommends the parents mortgage their home so the son can invest in franchise restaurants, but the parents have a different idea: “get a job.”
A proposed class action settlement over “price floors” has been rejected by an appeals court after it became clear that the class members would only receive $3 million, while their attorneys stood to make $14 million in fees. A lower court accepted the arrangement without knowing that the payout to the class would be so small compared to the fees.
A Texas man who slipped on a rain-soaked ramp is suing the building’s owners for not warning him that wet surfaces are, in fact, slippery.
A graduate student who claims that her future career was ruined after she received a C+ is now suing the university for $1.3 million. The student, who was attending for free because her father is a professor, says she was the target of a conspiracy to hold her back, but her professors say the poor grade is due to her unprofessional behavior that included swearing in class.
39 Orange County gas stations have been sued by a serial ADA plaintiff who claims the card readers or fuel pumps are too high for wheelchair access. One owner says the pumps – which were placed on concrete platforms to prevent accidents & explosions – comply with federal environmental regulations, and he is always willing to pump gas himself for anyone who needs assistance.
A judge has dismissed a lawsuit against a bank from a group of customers who claimed that the bank should have informed them that they had to report their Swiss bank accounts to U.S. tax authorities. The judge likened the suit to “suing one’s parents to recover tax penalties one has paid, on the ground that the parents had failed to bring one up to be an honest person,” adding that the bank “has no duty to treat the plaintiffs like children or illiterates.”
A Pennsylvania man sued the IRS for not offering him a job 24 years ago. The plaintiff claimed that he has been waiting that entire time for the IRS to hire him, resulting in “starvation, heart attacks, heart failure, kidney failure, liver failure, pneumonia, seizures, cancer [and] mental illness.”
A school in Alexandria, VA has banned students from using a new jungle gym in the fear that an injury could lead to a big lawsuit. Parents raised $35,000 to purchase and install the unused equipment.
A New Jersey man who says he eats 50 Subway footlongs per year is suing the chains, alleging that the sandwiches are really only 11 inches. The lawyer in the suit is seeking class action status.
The maker of Red Bull energy drinks is being sued by a long-time customer who claims the drinks offer no more energy than a cup of coffee, adding that a can of Red Bull costs more than $2 while coffee and caffeine pills are available for less.
A Missouri appeals court has revived a suit against Sluggerrr, the mascot of the Kansas City Royals, by a man who claims he was injured by a hot dog at a game. A court had dismissed the suit, finding that fans accept a risk of being hit by flying promotions when they attend games, but the appeals court overruled the decision.
An irate Miami Heat fan is suing the San Antonio Spurs, alleging that the team “intentionally and surreptitiously” sent their best players home to Texas instead of playing them against the Heat during a game on Nov. 29, adding that he should not have to pay “premium” ticket prices for a game where the stars didn’t play. For what it’s worth, the defending champion Heat eked out a close 105-100 win against the Spurs backups.
A teacher is suing her school district for discrimination when it reassigned her from her from a high school to a middle school. The teacher claims that she suffers from pedophobia, an extreme fear or anxiety around young children, and had to resign when she started working younger students.
“Nonsense” suits from prisoners are getting “out of control” and costing the city of New York millions. Sources say that defending the ridiculous suits from inmates and their lawyers would be more expensive then settling.
A California doctor went to court after her amusement park bumper car was involved in a head-on collision with another car. The California Supreme Court recently dismissed the case, finding that “a small degree of risk inevitably accompanies the thrill of speeding through curves and loops, defying gravity or, in bumper cars, engaging in the mock violence of low-speed collisions, and those who voluntarily join in these activities also voluntarily take on their minor inherent risks.”
It’s not everyday that we’re able to report good news for our readers, but the tail end of 2012 did indeed bring something to celebrate – particularly if you’re a fan of elephants. On Dec. 28 a decade-long lawsuit came to end when the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) agreed to pay a $9.3 million settlement to Feld Entertainment, Inc., which produces Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus.
The good news? Feld Entertainment was the defendant, not the plaintiff. About nine years ago, ASPCA and several other activists groups sued Feld under the absurd claim that Ringling was abusing its elephants. All too often in a case like this the targeted company settles the matter out of court by writing an elephant-sized check. That’s because fighting the case could lead to a precedent-setting ruling that endangers the entire industry. But not this time.
The linchpin of the activists’ case was a former Ringling employee, whose participation was supposed to give the case standing. The employee claimed that Ringling’s abuse of the elephants caused him an “aesthetic or emotional injury.” Unfortunately for ASPCA and its allies, they were paying the employee — $190,000 over eight years — which pretty much rendered his views on the case suspect.
As the federal court wrote in its ruling: The former employee “is essentially a paid plaintiff and fact witness who is not credible, and therefore affords no weight to his testimony regarding the matters discussed herein, i.e., the allegations related to his standing to sue.”
And for good measure, the court rejected that any of the other parties in the case had standing to sue: “because the organizational plaintiffs have not established an injury in fact, traceable to FEI’s actions that can be redressed by the Court, the organizational plaintiffs have no standing to sue under Article III of the United States Constitution.” In other words, take your paid witness and phony charges and quit wasting the court’s time – and compensate Feld for nearly 10 years of frivolous litigation while you’re at it.
However, while $9.3 million might seem like a good sum for any company, it’s less than half of what Feld has spent defending itself from this onslaught of litigation, according to the Wall Street Journal. As numerous studies and government reports have dutifully shown, Ringling exceeds all federal regulations in its treatment of its animals. In fact, there’s a good case to be made that releasing the elephants back into the wild as the radical animal-rights clowns want – where they would be prey to the poachers – would only lead to their eventual extinction.
And so ends on a positive note a case that might have led to the eventual extinction of that mainstay of childhood fascination – the circus. Tort lawyers are only too happy to take up the causes of extreme activists when they see a corporation in the cross hairs. Had the court ruled differently, it would have set a dangerous precedent that likely would have seen any entity housing animals sued out of business – other circuses, zoos, theme parks, etc. That’s a lot of money just waiting to be divvied up.
A party to the case probably summed up the entire fiasco best when it wrote after the settlement was announced: “this litigation has stopped being about the elephants a long time ago.” The party? ASPCA.
A group of Idaho inmates are suing 8 brewers for not warning them of the dangers of alcohol. “I have spent a great deal of time in prison because of situations that have arose because of people being drunk, or because of situations in which alcohol played a major role,” one inmate wrote. “At no time in my life, prior to me becoming an alcoholic, was I ever informed that alcohol was habit forming and addictive.”
An agreement to split season tickets to the Oklahoma City Thunder ended up in court, with the participants arguing over how many seasons the agreement covered and accusing the other side of deceit. Ultimately, the lawyer who filed the suit dropped the cases, saying his “desire for the Thunder tickets is not worth the pettiness.”
We are pleased to announce the Top Ten Most Ridiculous Lawsuits of 2012 from votes cast throughout the year by visitors to FacesOfLawsuitAbuse.org. The lawsuits were selected from those featured in the website’s monthly polls for 2012.
The Top Ten Most Ridiculous Lawsuits of 2012 are:
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