Whenever the subject of our over-litigating society comes up, the first case I always hear about is the McDonald’s coffee cup incident. And not much else. I personally think this particular case is a proverbially overbeaten dead horse. If we really are suing each other at the drop of a hat, there must be many more such cases. Are there examples from the personal experience of members of this board?
I have only been involved in one lawsuit. An employee left our business owing money, and after numerous attempts for reimbursement, we took her to court and won. As I sat in court that day waiting for our case to be heard, I witnessed one claim after another–none of which seemed frivolous to me, even when the defendent won.
How about it folks, are any of you personally involved in the alleged mountain of trivial litigation?
I was in active training for football. The professional kind. It just so happens that I have a knack for kicking a football a great distance, with lots of hang time and deadly accuracy. My proximity to their training field allowed me to practice my punting in the field across the street from the Denver Broncos.
Unfortunately, Tom Rouen was having a career year, so the best I could have done was get a backup position. Still, NFL League minimum salary is like 200k, or something ridiculous like that.
Anyway, I’m on my way back from doing my thing one night. I’m stopped at a red light. A woman plowed into me from behind doing about 45. She was only in a houserobe, and had been playing with her puppy, who was running free in the car.
Long story short: due to the lower back injury I took, I can’t get my foot over my head anymore. The range of movement just isn’t there. My punts dropped down to 50-60 yards, tops. That’s not good nuff.
So, I got my car fixed, my medical bills paid, and that’s really about it. How could I have ever begun to prove that I would be a Pro?
I did sue a customer for $50. It cost me $15 to file.
The payment came in the next mail after the notice of suit.
It will affect his credit rating for years, as I told him in my 4th demand letter, so I felt he had it coming.
** Biotop, ** this is more just an ironic suit, rather than one in which I actively participated. I got a huge batch of papers in the mail telling me that we were included in a class action lawsuit against Sears. [doesn’t sound very classy though, does it??] I never could figure out exactly what the collective gripe was, and would’ve forgotten when six months later, I received my ‘settlement’, care to guess what it was?
Yep, a ten dollar coupon to shop at Sears. * THAT * sounds like a pretty big waste of somebody’s money.
AntiPro, I’ve had the same experience a couple of times. Receiving reams of paperwork informing me that I had, unbeknownst to myself, been a party to a class action suit; once the outcome was such that if I managed to learn to speak Swahili in reverse I could enjoy a $5 rebate on my next airplane ticket and the other time I received a coupon, that upon notarization, was good for a $20 discount on my next computer purchase from Gateway.
I used to wonder if these involuntary associations (I used the Gateway coupon) required that I answer yes to the jury duty questionnaire’s inquiry as to whether I had ever sued anyone.
Then I sued someone. Pretty straightforward deal - no pain and suffering or mental anguish claimed (although plenty experienced). Acting as a broker in the seismic data business, I had one client order and receive data that he failed to pay for. The seismic business is a bit odd - whereas a real estate broker would never have to buy a building when the client failed to perform on an agreement - the previous owner or the finance company would have control/ownership, the information contained in seismic data is considered unrecoverable once its possession has been turned over to a client. So, NO returns. That situation has created an environment where the standard deal is that the broker pays when the client doesn’t. So, we paid.
And sued. And won. And the nifty part is, we collected, with the help of the sheriff. It was not at all esoteric (abstract suffering) nor were we pounding down tiny folk (this was a rich kid who crashed his business and has since started several more). We just were not going to go to the cleaners for someone else’s folly.
Yeah, I sued a Columbia University fraternity. Here’s the SHORT version:
I won a lottery they held.
The prize – a travel voucher to Hawaii – was bogus.
I told 'em so, and they agreed to deposit $1400 in my name with a local travel agent, which they did. But…
When I went to use the bucks, months later, it was gone; they had taken it back.
The odd thing was, the kids at the frat were pretty cool about the whole thing and wanted to pay me so I would go away. But their ADULT SUPERVISOR was a stonewalling prick. So I sued 'em in Small Claims Court and won.
Of course they still did not pay. So I had to rattle Columbia’s cage. They got sick of me, blowing me off with the line that it was none of their business.
Things were going nowhere until one day the school decided that I had been strung out long enough. They told the frat to pay me PRONTO or they would suspend their charter. Needless to say, I got a check personally delivered to me my the frat president – signed by the prick supervisor.
Well, actually, I sued him for the security deposit and my last month’s rent, but it never would have gone that far if he wasn’t such a prick.
He bought the property from my old landlord (who was very cool), and immediatley began cutting down trees. Needless to say, this PO’d me royally. Then we had an earthquake, and the house was damaged severely, but he worked for the city, and managed to get it off the condemned list (houses on either side were condemned). I had to move, but he wouldn’t give me my last month’s rent or security deposit.
He then began harassing my neighbor (whose house had fallen down in the earthquake) because he was living in a motor home in my driveway (with my permission). Then he was talking trash about me for allowing it, and I decided, why get mad when you can get even?
I filed a small claims suit against him, and had the papers served to him and his wife, his partner and his wife at their places of work by a uniformed marshall.
By the time he showed up in court, he was fit to be tied. He accused me of all sorts of awful behavior, to no end. The judge heard my story, ruled in my favor and awarded me damages. The icing on the cake was, as the bastard was making out the check, the judge reminded him that he also had to pay all my court costs. That vein on his forehead is permanently throbbing.
Yes, it was a harrassing lawsuit. Yes, I did it just to piss him off. Yes, I would do it again. In a heartbeat.
Seems like a weird experience, to be part of a lawsuit and not know why.
Really odd because you don’t know if the suit is just a big waste of time, or should you too feel outraged and be going for blood? Did the company waste a lot of time over something trivial, or did they get away with murder albeit short a few gift certificates?
We’re seriously considering suing a drug company. My hubby took Propulcid, which has been determined to cause heart damage. He has chest pains and faintness sometimes, and has had to go to the doctor for all kinds of tests. The only thing that makes me hesitate is the stigma of suing someone. We discovered that the drug may have caused his problems from one of those ambulance-chaser lawyer commercials (which makes me feel even wierder about suing.) Hubby says they poisoned him with their crappy product and that we are entitled to at least a little compensation, considering his life span may be shortened by this, but still, I feel strange about proceeding. What do you guys think?
Lissa, money is the only thing some people understand. Your suit could protect others from another drug that is released on the market without the harmful side effects being known. (In other words, they might be more careful next time.)
I’ve never sued anyone. I’ve never been sued. We were witnesses to an accident though. Two tractor/trailors hit head on right in front of us. The truck in front of us was at fault. The driver was drunk. The other driver was injured so badly he couldn’t drive a truck any longer and had to go through physical therapy in order to walk and all of that. He sued the driver and the company which employed him (J. B. Hunt). Hunt’s attorney’s defense was that the driver signed a contract that said if he ever drunk and operating a vehicle he was automatically fired, therefore he was employed by them at the time of the accident. :mad: They made us give depositions and we were going to have to travel to St. Louis to testify, because we didn’t see the driver making any strange moves before he crossed the center line and crashed into another semi.
Anyway they finally settled out of court. I hope he got them good. My husband, daughter and I all had nightmares for months about the accident. We were merely inches from being smashed by debris and I still cannot drive behind a tractor/trailer without feeling panicked. I cannot even see a JB Hunt truck driving down the highway without breaking out in a panic sweat. Their making us give depositions 2 years later caused me to have nightmares again. We did think about suing for mental aguish or something but we didn’t want to be frivolous.
My high school math teacher used ot be a lawyer for the city of Philadelphia. He dealt with many of the lawsuits that were filed against the City of Brotherly love and thus has many great stories.
He told us that once, a SEPTA (SouthEastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) bus smacked one of its mirrors on a pole as it was driving. The mirror cracked a bit and the cover was dented on the back, but nothing else.
When it hit the pole there were 4 people on the bus. By the time the police arrived there were 12 people on the bus claiming to be suffereing from severe whiplash.
None of them ever collected and I think a few of them had outstanding warrants that came to the attention of the courts when they tried to file suit. Just desserts in my opinion.
