A southern California surfer that wiped out and cut his leg on his board’s fin is suing the maker of the board, saying that the fins were too sharp and that the board was “unsafe for its intended use.” The defendant calls the suit highly unusual, given that it’s the first and only product-liability suit he can remember facing in 20 years.
A former student is suing the university where he started a master’s program for $3 million. The student, who was studying to become a family counselor, says the school dismissed him instead of working with him to improve his empathy.
Lawyers who represented the plaintiffs in an unsuccessful lawsuit to prevent the merger of two energy companies have asked the judge to award them $900,000 for 729 hours of work, which comes to $1,234 per hour. For comparison, the national average billing rate for lawyers is just $284 per hour.
There’s no doubt about it – state courts are jam-packed and getting worse. In fact, the budget crisis in some states has gotten so bad that they will begin closing courthouses and reducing staff, which will lead to even more delays in already backed-up systems. Frivolous lawsuits filed with little or no legal foundation only make the problem worse.
For example, a failed bank robber from Michigan has filed a lawsuit over the prison’s ban on pornography. The inmate, Kyle Richards, claims that the ban amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
And just in case you think that Richards’ incarceration and legal games aren’t enough of a financial burden on the taxpayers, here’s another possible one – he adds that if a prisoner cannot afford to purchase their own porn, the taxpayers should foot the bill.
By way of background, Richards is serving up to 20 years for the failed robbery. He handed a note to a teller demanding money, and he made off with about $900. The police tracked him down by following his footprints in fresh snow and the trail of bills he dropped on the way back to his apartment. There’s one get-rich-quick scheme that fell flat.
As to his pornography lawsuit, a judge dismissed the suit after Richards failed to pay Michigan’s required fee for plaintiffs that file multiple frivolous suits. So that’s two get-rich-quick schemes that fell flat. What’s next?
Is this the most ridiculous lawsuit of the month? Or is it one of these other nominees?
A waiter who tested positive for hepatitis A called to notify his boss of the disease and hasn’t been back to work since. The restaurant quickly notified the health department, which offered free shots to customers (even though hepatitis A is hard to transmit in a clean environment). That didn’t stop a healthy customer from suing the restaurant for the “inconvenience” of having to go get the shot.
A video-gamer who thinks that he was entitled to “unilaterally” change the terms of his Xbox-Live contract with Microsoft has invoked a “forfeit victory clause” and is demanding the company pay him $500 billion in damages. The man says he sent a legal notice to Microsoft requiring them to reply within 24 hours. Since they didn’t respond, he claims he should automatically win the dispute.
Whenever a frivolous or ridiculous lawsuit is allowed to move forward through the court system, we ask ourselves why the judge didn’t toss it at the beginning. Well a judge in New York has taken a welcome but all-too-rare stand and dismissed a questionable class action lawsuit, writing that a plaintiff’s claim assumes that consumers have reached “a level of stupidity” that the court cannot accept.
It all started back in 2010, with a New York woman looking for tickets to a Yankees game at their new stadium. The team’s website redirected her to StubHub.com, an online marketplace that connects people who want to buy tickets with ticket resellers. The woman bought 6 tickets to a game for $33 each, plus $24.75 in service charges. She later found out that the tickets had a face value of $20 each.
So she filed a lawsuit against the Yankees, StubHub, and eBay (StubHub’s parent company), alleging unfair business practices and demanding that resellers publish the price of the tickets.
The court quickly dismissed the team from the suit, finding that they cannot be held liable when a third-party resells a ticket.
The judge also dismissed the deceptive practices claim against StubHub, noting that every single webpage “included a disclaimer that ‘You are buying tickets from a third party; neither StubHub.com nor StubHub, Inc. is the ticket seller.’” He added that “if a consumer is forced to pay more than face value for a Yankees ticket, it is due to the economic forces of supply and demand, not StubHub’s business practices.”
Kudos to the judge for holding customers to a basic level of intelligence, and boo to the plaintiff and her lawyer for announcing that they intend to appeal and take another swing.
Is this the most ridiculous lawsuit of the month? Or is it one of these other nominees?
Vote!
A rookie lawyer reportedly “burned bridges” when he sent an e-mail to his bosses that read “it has become clear that I have as much experience and ability as an associate many years my senior, as much skill writing and a superior legal mind to most I have met” – he was fired shortly after. The lawyer is now suing the firm for $77 million, saying they hurt his career.
An Illinois woman is suing the company that manufactures Shape-up athletic shoes, saying that the round-bottom shoes are unstable and inherently dangerous. The company rejects the claim and says that millions of other customers use the shoes safely.
From the WSJ Law Blog: “Two lawsuits seeking class action status were filed today against Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Michigan and New York Law School. The several plaintiffs, who are all graduates of the defendant schools, seek $250 million from Cooley and $200 million from NYLS in tuition refunds, as well as other damages and reformed employment statistic reporting practices.”
How many friends do you have? Real friends, I mean – the ones that you watch the game with, that will pick you up when your car breaks down, or that you simply like to spend time with.
How many Facebook friends do you have? The ones that post pictures of their dogs and kids, let you know when they got a new job, what they’re doing this weekend, and when they’re doing the dishes.
Can you tell the difference? Because some people can’t.
Like the Michigan woman who met a man playing an interactive online game and somehow managed to fall in love with him, despite the fact that they never met in person. They would talk online and on the phone. She would send him gifts. He would write sweet-nothings on her Wall. She even booked a trip to visit him on the west coast.
It was just like a fairy tale. Until he broke her heart. He met another woman at an actual bar – go figure – and broke off their romantic(?) relationship.
So the scorned “girlfriend” filed a lawsuit against her ex-“boyfriend” demanding he refund the gifts she sent. She claimed that he led her on. He said that they were just friends and the suit is frivolous, adding that she seemed fine after the “break-up.”
A judge in Michigan dismissed the suit, citing lack of jurisdiction. The “boyfriend” wasn’t required to show up at the hearing. The erstwhile couple still hasn’t met.
This suit is one of the candidates for The Most Ridiculous Lawsuit of the Month. The other nominees are:
Vote for your favorite at FacesOfLawsuitAbuse.org.
A Philadelphia Eagles fan is suing the team and their youth partnership organization after she was injured while watching training camp in 2009. The suit says an unknown fan tried to throw a football back onto the field but missed and hit the plaintiff, breaking her wrist.
The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences announced in April that it would reduce the number of Grammy award categories from 109 to 78. A group of musicians responded by filing a class-action suit demanding that the academy reinstate the Best Latin Jazz Album category. The musicians worry that they will be lost in the shuffle if several categories are lumped together.
A man who mistakenly thought a hotel copy of USA Today was complimentary is suing Hilton Hotels over the 75 cent charge that was added to his bill. The guest claims that millions of other guests have also been deceived by the company, and is filing a class-action suit in federal court.
In 2009, a woman who was high and drunk drove the wrong way down a highway in New York, causing a horrific accident that killed herself and seven others. Now, her husband is suing the state, alleging that they “negligently allowed” the conditions that led to the crash, including poor highway upkeep and insufficient signage. A relative of some of the victims calls the suit “pathetic and an insult.”
A convicted murderer who stopped breathing due to sleep apnea is suing the prison after staff members rushed in to save his life, alleging that they violated his ‘do not resuscitate’ order. The convict, who claims he is innocent of the crime, thinks his suit is worth “a million dollars” in damages for each day he spends locked up.
A few years ago, a group of five peacocks mysteriously arrived in a Michigan neighborhood. No one has ever found where the birds came from, but 80 members of the community recently signed a petition to let them stay. Why the petition now, after years of peaceful squatting? It’s in response to a lawsuit filed by a resident who thinks the birds are a nuisance that have created “dangerous, offensive, or hazardous conditions.”
The suit accuses a local wildlife rescue organization of feeding the birds and sheltering them during the harsh Michigan winters, which the birds would supposedly not be able to survive otherwise. The rescue group responds that they do occasionally feed the birds (as do most of the people in the neighborhood) but do not provide them any shelter, and the peacocks simply roost with native species during the colder months.
Animal control officers have put out traps for the birds but so far haven’t caught any, so the plaintiff now wants to force the wildlife rescue group to remove the birds. Oh yeah, and they want monetary damages too.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources obviously doesn’t consider the peacock an indigenous species, but it does have a list of 29 other birds native to the state that can pose as much of a nuisance threat as the peacock, none of which are mentioned in the plaintiffs’ suit (so far). They also have a list of hardier animals like cougar, moose, and badgers (oddly enough, the famous Michigan wolverine isn’t named – maybe the “dangerous” peacocks scared them off?).
So is this the most ridiculous lawsuit of the month? Or is it one of these instead:
A woman with an extreme fear of dogs sued after she aggravated an injury while fleeing a dog in a grocery store by leaping on top of a freezer. What type of dog? A 4-pound Daschund puppy. A Mississippi appeals court recently tossed the suit, saying it was the plaintiff’s own overreaction that led to her injury.
A woman in Michigan is suing her former Facebook “boyfriend” for $8,000 in gifts and unused airline tickets after their online “relationship” ends – he says her suit is frivolous.
We all have our own preference for coffee. Some of us are happy with a simple cup of joe, while others can’t wake up without a 7-pump soy hazelnut macchiato (or something like that) or have made the jump to Keurig coffee makers. One Illinois woman who made the latter switch isn’t happy about it – and she’s going to court because of it.
She has filed a potential class action lawsuit against the makers of the ‘K-cup’ pods for her machine over their claim that they deliver a “fresh, hot, and delicious” cup of coffee. The plaintiff alleges that the pods contain instant coffee as opposed to fresh coffee, and it tasted “absolutely horrible.” In a later interview, she went on gripe to a reporter that “if you shake the cup, they hardly have any coffee in them.” So she has two complaints: (1) the coffee is terrible, and (2) there’s not enough of it.
Well at least she got the order right (that is, buy a product based on alleged false advertising, then hire a lawyer, then file a lawsuit). The same cannot be said for another false advertising lawsuit filed in New Jersey against AriZona Beverage Company. The plaintiff in the case says that she purchased some AriZona drinks in early 2008 based on claims that they are “All Natural.” When she realized the drinks actually contained high-fructose corn syrup, she naturally hired a lawyer to file suit.
However, AriZona’s lawyers found that she had an agreement with the law firm dating from 2007, months before she actually made the purchases. Some might call it a minor detail, but not the judge overseeing the case. He rejected the plaintiff’s attempt to have the case certified as a class action, calling the agreement “evidence that Plaintiff’s counsel are too careless about key facts to effectively represent the interests of a class of potentially tens of thousands of absent class members.”
So are either of these cases the most ridiculous lawsuit of the month? Or should it be one of these?
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