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Sounds like Dougherty had a horrible day, right? Not necessarily. You see, Dougherty is hoping to turn that really bad day into a really big payday. About two years after the incident, Dougherty wrote to Home Depot demanding $3 million in damages. When the company offered him just $2,000, he sued. Dougherty argued that the store was slow to help him and paper seat covers should have been available. Was he laughed out of court? Hardly. The lawsuit is slowly moving forward. Meanwhile, the jerk who actually put glue on the toilet was never caught.
Three million bucks over toilet-seat covers? That's what passes for a legitimate lawsuit these days. People think the courtroom is the proper place to take any beef, no matter how petty, embarrassing or absurd. "This is a country where it's hard to satirize what people sue over, because it tends to be overtaken by the reality," says Walter Olson, a Manhattan Institute fellow and the editor of Overlawyered.com. "And the message some of these lawsuits send is that if something bad has happened to you, it must be someone else's fault, and you must be owed compensation."
It's not just ridiculous -- it affects all of us. Our society has become so sue-happy that the average federal district judge fields 400 new cases a year. With dockets so clogged with junk, it can take years for any legitimate case to wind its way through the courts. Justice delayed is justice denied.
All of these loony lawsuits hit our wallets too. Insurance premiums skyrocket as everyone scrambles to cover his behind, court costs rise, and astronomical settlements depress corporate earnings and shareholder value. According to a White House Council of Economic Advisors estimate, the United States suffers an excessive "litigation tax" of $136 billion per year. Meanwhile, the personal-injury lawyers -- whose smiling faces are plastered everywhere on ads encouraging us to join the lawsuit parade -- are laughing all the way to the bank.
These days, even people behaving in reckless or flat-out illegal ways want to blame someone when their own stupidity burns them. Take Juan Alejandro Soto, who, after a night of drinking, arrived with his friends at a closed New York City subway platform. Rather than return to street level, the men decided to trek to the next station along a nonpublic catwalk. (Ever hear of a taxi, guys?) Sure enough, a train came along. But instead of standing as far from the tracks as possible, Soto tried to outrun it and, tragically, was struck, losing both his legs.
Soto didn't curse his foolishness and give thanks he wasn't killed, however. He sued. Soto argued that the conductor should have been able to stop before hitting him, a theory he bolstered by describing the typical speed he previously reached on a treadmill. Incredibly, last March, a jury awarded Soto $1.4 million, despite a dissenting judge who said that Soto's injuries were "entirely his own fault."
But in our upside-down legal system, the word fault can mean strange things. For instance, in May 2003, a trucker was driving on a public road near Cedar Springs, Michigan, when a small Cessna clipped the top of his landscaping vehicle and crashed into a field. Miraculously, no one was hurt, and it all seemed like a freak accident. So imagine how the owner of Dean's Landscaping felt when he found out that the plane owners wanted him to pay $21,000 for damages to the Cessna. The plane owners contended that, under the state's no-fault insurance law, they weren't technically operating a "vehicle," and because the plane was in the air, the incident didn't occur on a road -- which meant they were entitled to compensation. It's a kooky argument, but two judges agreed, and the landscaper's insurance company coughed up the damages.
And nothing takes the cake like someone who actually tries to sue himself. That's what happened recently in Lodi, California. Curtis Gokey was driving a city dump truck when he managed to back the truck into a car -- his own car. Incredibly, Gokey filed a claim against the city seeking $3,600 in damages. His claim hilariously stated that "my personal vehicle was parked and backed into by a city vehicle," neatly skipping the fact that he did the backing into.
There is a small glimmer of hope: Abusing the courts can backfire. One night in 2004, two Colorado teenage girls knocked on a neighbor's door and dashed off, leaving behind a gift of cookies and a friendly note. Sounds sweet, doesn't it? But for Wanita Renea Young, it was a traumatic experience. Young was terrified by the mystery knock; she spent the night at her sister's house and went to the hospital the next day with an anxiety attack. All over a knock and some cookies! After gently scolding the girls for being out late (it was after 10 p.m.), a judge ended up awarding Young $900 for her hospital bill. But in the ensuing media flurry, the girls were celebrated as heroes -- and Young looked like a scrooge.
You can almost go on forever. There's the pimp in Florida who sued his clients for getting him arrested. Or the New Mexico woman who took out a restraining order against David Letterman after claiming he was harassing her by code on his TV show. Or the woman suing Seminole County, Florida, after she tripped over a pine cone in a county parking lot. Got any shame, people?
With greedy lawyers poised to take advantage of every goofy mishap, dreams of big bucks have replaced common sense. To rein in this lawsuit abuse, some members of Congress have proposed putting caps on lawyers' fees and damage awards, and switching class-action suits from state to federal courts. But until that happens, my advice is that you retain a good lawyer -- and try not to drive into any airplanes.
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