That reminds me of one, not the most expensive revenge, possibly a contender for best value for money actually.
Near where I used to live, there’s a town with a viewpoint described by some famous poet as the finest view in the country. In the middle of that view, maybe 3 miles from the viewpoint, is a farm. Some years back, the lady living there decided she wanted to expand the small decorative garden at the back of the farmhouse a bit, just a few metres, into one of the fields. Legally, this requires a change of use permit, but something like that is normally a simple box check, who would object to a farm using a few metres of land to grow flowers instead of grass? So, her and her husband sent in the application, like they were supposed to, and… it was refused, due to the local preservation society claiming that any change to the historic ‘finest view’ would be an eyesore, even a barely visible 3 miles away change from grass to flowers.
Guess what you don’t need a permit for? Repainting a barn. In fact, if you want, you can paint it like a drunk toddler with a rainbow obsession. They didn’t do the whole barn like that, just the bit pointing towards the viewpoint, the bit they can see from the house is fine
Probably some of the most expensive private acts of revenge are hidden from public view - both parties too embarrassed to mention what happened. Filthy-rich people get drunk (or whatever) and do very stupid things, just like everyone else - it’s just that both the intoxicants and the stupid actions are ones that cost far more money.
Not THAT expensive, not for the giver. But when social rules dictate that you can’t give away or dispose of a certain gift, and that gift has costly upkeep…
A bit like an average modern American being given the (non-transferrable, non-discardable, usage-prohibited, maintenance inspected yearly) gift of the USS Nimitz, after it’s decommissioned.
Several years ago, the library I volunteer at received a large donation of art and other rare books from a local college professor. In time, we sold a lot of them at auction, and one of them sold for $2,000, which was a pleasant surprise.
I later found out that the professor may have donated them so his colleagues wouldn’t have access to them. Someone who worked at that college said that while he was in another country on a sabbatical, a rival professor gathered up priceless artifacts like 1,000-year-old Chinese scrolls, that kind of thing, and had a big bonfire. The professor had no recourse, because he couldn’t prove that he owned them, etc.
Making twin brothers co-counts didn’t work out too well for one of them; officially, Ramón Berenguer II died in a hunting accident leaving his brother Berenguer Ramon II as sole Count of Barcelona. Unofficially damn but hunting accidents were so frequent among royalty of the time that if I’d been a queen I would have asked my husband to take up embroidery.
Note that at the time Barcelona was an independent realm: neither a Prince needs to be a King’s son, nor a Count or Duke is necesarily some King’s vassal.
And while it didn’t at the time cost him the realm, part of the reason Ramiro II of Aragon eventually gave up the crown was regret over the massacre of the nobles who’d tried to ignore his authority. But that’s not really private, I think.
The northwest coast natives had a very hierarchical system, so some chiefs could get very “rich”, if that concept meant anything in the days before money. But without the equivalent of money there was no way to store wealth. You could only personally use so many blankets or cedar chests or decorated canoes at once - so the socially acceptable thing was to establish status by giving away what you had… and start accumulating all over again. Rinse and repeat. Of course, as a status thing, that meant anyone else had to do something similar to keep up with the Joneses.
The problem was that attitude was carried over to the later monied society - natives who managed to earn money working, or selling their produce, then instead of saving for the future and building their personal household wealth, instead still tended to compete to give it all away with wild parties (since consumables were included in the giveaways). This activity running counter to the norms of white society offended the authorities - missionaries and government - who wanted the natives to act like white people. When it go to the point where natives were ordering large numbers of items like washing machines and other appliances in order to simply give them away - the authorities decided this was too much and stepped in. Goods they though were destined to potlach were regularly seized.
The Getty foundation is much larger, but it reminded me of Leona Helmsley’s will. I know it’s much smaller in scale than the question in the OP, but still worth a mention: 12 million to her dog Trouble, 5M each to her brother and 2 grandchildren, nothing to 2 other grandchildren, for “reasons that are known to them,” according to the will.
It seems to me that any revenge you get only after you die is the cheapest form of revenge. It costs you nothing.
I came back to post about a self-made tractor manufacturer who decided to buy a Ferrari with his hard-earned money. Unfortunately, the Ferrari he got was loud and uncomfortable and his clutch kept failing. He told Enzo Ferrari about the issues but, rather than help a dissatisfied customer, Enzo insulted him and told him that his lousy driving caused all his car troubles. That customer launched his own car company to compete with Ferrari. And thus, the lowly tractor maker Ferrucio Lamborghini got his revenge on Ferrari .
It seems Ferrucio made some money on the deal, so maybe this too is cheap revenge.
Generic wills leaving the “normal” heirs without anything don’t really seem to cost anybody anything. So if Getty left all his money to a foundation, it doesn’t cost him much and the heirs aren’t out any money from their own pockets.
Now, flushing the money down the toilet may be another matter.
This sounds very much like the plot of a Frederick Forsyth short story, A Careful Man. It’s well worth the read. It was also adapted as one half of a TV movie in 1984. Two by Forsyth (TV Movie 1984) - IMDb
A lot of that is post J. Paul Getty’s will and involves later generations. Plus no one is forcing anyone to contest a will. J. Paul Getty is not wasting his money (directly) and has no choice in that matter. He’s dead.
Stupid stuff other people do after you die is on them.
