America's Dumbest Lawsuits

Have crybaby clients and lawyers led Lady Justice astray?

By Andy Simmons

From Reader's Digest

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Sorry about the above statement, but our legal department insisted on it. You can't be too safe. After all, while Americans hate lawyers, we love lawsuits, especially the crazy ones.

Take the case of the Lodi, California, city employee who accidentally drove a dump truck into Curtis Gokey's parked truck a few years ago. Gokey sued the city, even though he was the one driving the dump truck.

For some injured parties, no law need even be broken before they wield the lawyer card. In Jurupa, California, a retired Navy Reserve captain is threatening to sue her colleagues on the school board if they don't start addressing her by her military title. And a while back, a father took his son's Little League coach to court over a losing season.

Protect Me From Myself
The two prisoners waited to make their move until the guards left Wing 4B, the maximum-security section of Colorado's Pueblo County Jail. Then they slid open their defective cell doors, collected bedsheets and mattress covers from other inmates, and headed to the showers. There they pried off a broken ceiling tile and climbed into a vent, which led them to the roof via a door that was latched from the inside. Once on the roof, the prisoners, Scott Anthony Gomez Jr. and Oscar Mercado, tied the sheets and mattress covers together into a makeshift rope, secured it to a gas pipe, and began to rappel down the northwest side of the jail.

That's when the Great Escape of '07 went to hell in a handbasket. Gomez slipped and fell 40 feet, injuring himself; he was rushed to the hospital, and Mercado was caught soon after.

So how did Gomez while away the hours during his recovery? By filing a lawsuit against the county board of commissioners, sheriff, and guards—for as much as the law would allow—on the grounds that they made it too easy for him to escape. He should know, since this was his second attempt. In his suit, Gomez claimed that the cell doors opened too easily and that guards vacated their posts and ignored information that a jailbreak was nigh. They were practically begging him to break out, he insisted. And who was he to disappoint?

"The defendants knew or should have known that the jail was not secure," read his complaint. "Furthermore, defendants knew that the plaintiff had a propensity to escape."

Disposition: Gomez couldn't escape the fact that he didn't have a case, which the judge tossed out last September.

Just Desserts
Prison, it turns out, is a great place to learn about tort law. Three inmates from the Kane County Jail in Illinois sued the county sheriff and Aramark food services in 2007 for supplying prisoners with subpar food, including soggy cookies and cakes. The $2 million they sought would buy them a nice drying rack for their desserts.

Disposition: No Mrs. Fields for these prisoners—the judge dismissed the case.

Blonde Ambition
Charlotte Feeney says blondes have more fun, and that's why she sued cosmetics giant L'Oréal for $15,000. Feeney insisted her life was ruined when she accidentally touched up her naturally flaxen locks with brown dye from a mislabeled box.

"I was sick to my stomach," she said in an affidavit. "I have a bad hair day every day. I had headaches. I don't like myself. I stay home more than ever in my life. I wear hats most of the time." What's more, she told her doctor that she doesn't know how to dress now that she's no longer a blonde—one reason her doctor prescribed medication to treat anxiety and depression.

So why didn't she dye her hair blonde and wait for her natural color to grow back? Who knows, but the real question is, What's wrong with being a raven-haired beauty? "Blondes get more attention than brunettes," she said. "Emotionally, I miss that."

Disposition: No doubt an Audrey Hepburn fan, the judge dismissed the suit last October, ruling that Feeney never proved that L'Oréal was to blame for the mix-up.

ePay Up
Ask Steve Shellhorn and he'll probably tell you that if you have nothing nice to say about someone, lie. Shellhorn, a Seattle native, bought coins on eBay from Charles Burgess, who then asked for feedback, a regular practice on the site. Was the service good or bad? Shellhorn was torn. The Morgan silver dollars were in fine shape, and the price was fair. But the packaging left a lot to be desired.

"The coins were hanging out of the envelope," he later told Seattle's King 5 News. There should have been proper packing to keep them in place. With that in mind, Shellhorn left neutral feedback, neither good nor bad.

The lukewarm response got a hot one from Burgess. Charging "fraud" and "extortion," he sued Shellhorn for $10,000 over his "childish and vindictive" behavior, which, he feared, could harm future sales.

Disposition: Misery loves company, and Shellhorn had plenty. It turns out that Burgess made it a habit to go after less-than-thrilled customers. The judge sided with Shellhorn but not before he'd spent $500 for an attorney.

Suing in the Rain
You may recall the Washington, D.C., judge who, two years ago, filed a $67 million lawsuit against a dry cleaner for allegedly losing a pair of his pants. Now, in that fine tradition, comes Nello Balan, who sued a Rothschild and a supermodel for $1 million over the loss of an umbrella.

It all began on April 25, 2007, when a model named Le Call dined at Balan's Manhattan restaurant, Nello. When she left, it was raining. Since supermodels have been known to wither in such conditions, the restaurateur kindly lent her an umbrella. Not the cheap kind, manufactured to break at first gust. No, this one was leather. A gift from fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier, it was valued at $5,000.

Cut to a month later, and the umbrella is AWOL. A quick call to Le Call revealed that she'd lent it to Nathaniel Rothschild, the future fifth Baron Rothschild. But when Rothschild's chauffeur returned the umbrella, it was in two pieces, matching Balan's emotional state upon seeing his beloved umbrella.

Disposition: Balan eventually lowered his demand to $30,000. But even that was too much for the judge, who tossed water on the umbrella suit and fined Balan's lawyer $500 for filing a frivolous claim.