My favorite frivolous litigator is Pants Lawyer. Many newspaper and blog articles got to indulge many bad puns. I think the oddest thing, for me, was:
“Pearson broke down in tears during an explanation about his frustration after losing his pants, and a short recess had to be declared.”
That and his fixation on a “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign in the shop.
According to the articlehere, he began his excessive litigation during his divorce. I’m sure there’s more that could be googled up.
There are also a lot of litigious inmates. They have a lot of time on their hands, an attitude of entitlement, and almost unfettered access to the legal system. Some of them also have a vague tie to the sovereign citizens movement. I know this because I opened a box that contained 2,037 pages of the Uniform Commercial Code when I worked for the state parole board. Said information was to be used to harass various public officials, so it was confiscated and sent on to me, for whatever reason.
I have always wondered the same thing. After spending most of the last decade working in the insurance industry (as an independent agent for four years and an auditor for the last three), I have some of the answers. Litigious people are greedy, lazy and often think they are superior to everyone else (I’m sure many of them are sociopaths)!
From childhood, I was taught that people who sue for frivolous things or even pursue ‘pain and suffering’ or punitive damages from a legitimate injury are basically scum. Asking for anything more than reimbursement for medical expenses, lost wages and property damage (with a few exceptions) was basically immoral and akin to stealing. BTW, I was taught this by my non-religious parents, so it wasn’t a matter of religious belief, just one of human decency.
I was severely injured in 2001 (when I was 26) by an employee of a major utility company driving a company vehicle. I could have sued for hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions, of dollars. I reluctantly hired an attorney, just because I was going to be dealing with a large corporation and it scared me. I had countless arguments with my attorney about the matter. But ultimately, I only accepted reimbursement for what the accident actually cost me. The attorney doubled the figure (without telling me, because he knew they’d gladly settle the amount) and took 40%, so I ended up with about $14k more than I expected. I put it in savings because I didn’t know what to do with it and didnt’ feel right spending it.
Four years later, it was discovered that I had damage to my cervical spine that could only have occured in that accident. Two discs in my c-spine had to be removed and the three surrounding vertebrae were fused together. My medical insurance paid for most of the surgery, but I was left with a bill of $12k and the missed work for diagnostic tests (and the test themselves) cost another $2k…the total was within $300 or $14k…and that was my sign that it was okay to use the money. I haven’t had any additional problems and the surgery was 11 years ago. I like to think that karma paid me back for not being greedy white trash and suing for a huge amount!
I’ve also learned that sometimes, the only option is to fight fire with fire (or with venom, in a few cases)! Habitually litigious people have learned that they can threaten to sue and get whatever they want. But they’re not prepared for someone to fight back and refuse to settle! I’ve had several of my insurance customers sued in the past for frivolous (or outright false) reasons. Each time, the insurance company has provided one of their attorneys and only two (out of 50+) have actually resulted in the insurance company settling or the court deciding against them and the policy was required to pay for the judgement amount.
Or the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council!
There is a dentist in the Midwest somewhere who has been making some cash doing class action lawsuits against people who send unwanted faxes. My business still has/needs a fax, and I’ve been contacted by the guy four times to join the class over the past six or so years.
I’ve joined each time and end up with anywhere from $100 to $175 each time.
New York is considering a bill where if a lawsuit is declared frivolous, the plaintiff is liable for the defendant’s legal costs. There was a press conference yesterday about it, where they brought out this case.
The Plaintiff tried to organize a P!nk cover band. It didn’t get off the ground, and the singer and another formed their own. They’re being sued for $10 million. The thing has dragged out for years, and cost the defendant thousands of dollars. The plaintiff is a lawyer, so it only costs him his time.
That nutter being what he is, the pleadings would have read: “ST. LAURENT AND GARSON WERE AND ARE IN ILLEGAL COLLUSION IN CRIMES AGAINST HUNANITY!”
A couple of years ago here in Ontario the regs were amended to make it a lot easier to toss frivolous, vexatious or abusive matters. Now instead of having to go through a formal motion, you just sent a nice letter to the judge (if the judge doesn’t beat you to it and toss the matter first), and white magic happens.
Because they can.
Recently, that has been taking over as the universal answer to nearly all questions relating to motivation. (Along with “Follow the money”".)
We live in an enabling economy, where more and more people have the means to do more and more things, and there will always be people who will do what they can, because they can.
That’s obviously not the reason. Look at any person who’s filing numerous lawsuits. You can find a hundred other people with the same resources who aren’t filing lawsuits. Any one of those hundred people could be filing the same number of lawsuits if they wished but isn’t doing so. So clearly the mere ability to file lawsuits isn’t enough to make people do it. There’s some other motivating factor that separates the people who can file lawsuits from the people who do.
Our small HOA has one of your typical pricks who thinks he’s special. We had a huge fight last year, and this guy went to the police with a complaint he had been slandered by a number of people, including my wife and I.
Slander is a criminal matter here, so the police investigated. My wife and I were interviewed and eventually the police decided to not file charges against anyone.
It actually was easier to have it handled as a potential criminal case since we didn’t bother hiring an attorney.
Thanks for posting this. I remember having tremendous interest in that case, but I’d never heard the ultimate outcome. He’s a special guy, that one.
I did business with one of these. A friend was doing a video for an “Independent Media Company”… which turned out be just a guy named Rooney. So I pitched in and drew some manga for Rooney. Mostly for fun, thank God, because I never saw a cent.
I never did buy into his dreams of greatness for his main character.
But I have dozens of emails detailing how he’s going to pay me. (See, he would have by now, except for this one line I put in there, so if I could erase that, except I’ll be presenting my anime to Studio Ghibli all next week, but when I get back…oh, and I’m still waiting for you to FedEx me your original art, or i can stop over and pick it up next week). Dude, it was a couple hundred dollars, you’ve spent more than that coming up with rationales for not paying it.
Turns out, Rooney didn’t own the rights to the main character of his video/comics/merchandising. His whole schtick was to get tons of work in print before the creator did, to try to get the original owner of the property to pay him to go away!
Wha…?
This guy would do anything to tie people up in court, in hopes of a bit of power and attention … and dreams of a big payoff (and big fame) maybe decades down the line.
One of his higher profile tricks was to trademark hundreds of sports team’s names, like The Tampa Bay Packers™, so that if the Green ‘N’ Gold ever get tired of snow, they’ll have to pay him millions of dollars.
He hit pay dirt once. Sure enough, Ol’ Rooney must’ve been so excited when it was announced that the Colts were moving to Indy. He mailed a big packet of “Cease And Desist” papers and sued the Colts’ owners for an outrageous amount (probably adding Mental Anguish to the charges)… and a judge immediately threw it out. Undaunted, he refiled everything and… summarily got the boot. So he appealed…and got thrown out again.
Every once in a while I google him just to see the latest doomed lawsuit he’s filed…
(ok, just did – the latest? Someone posted a photo online and Rooney’s truck is in the background. Well, he painted that truck himself, so that’s Original Art© and he deserves thousands of dollars if you’re going to disseminate his copyrighted Art online!)
One of the best frivolous lawsuits - well, just a threat, really, as it never went to court - was the conflict between The Oatmeal and FunnyJunk. After Inman was served with a claim of defamation and a demand for $20K in damages, he responded by raising TEN TIMES that amount, taking a picture of the cash, and sending it (the picture) to the asshole lawyer before donating all of it (the actual cash) to charities. The asshole lawyer dropped the initial claim, but continued to do his best to cause legal trouble for Inman and others after that. In the end he dropped all his legal claims and declared “victory” and self-praise for his own role in helping to raise so much money for charity.
Speaking of Mr. Trillion Dollar Pants…
I recently read (a recent blog of the Votemaster) that Trump has made several thousand lawsuits.
Well, that’s obviously where some of the puns happened.
The number going around is 3500. They’re counting lawsuits where a company he owns is involved as well ones he’s individually in. And also counting all suits whether he’s defendant or plaintif.
I have a former student who managed to work, into every single writing assignment, a proclamation of who she was currently suing and why. This was an English course, not a “LAWS400: How to Litigate with the Entire World” class.
Apparently she is in the midst of suing Apple, Microsoft, Sony, the state prison system, Wal*Mart . . . and the list goes on. The complaints ranged from claims about faulty OS, unlawful imprisonment of a friend, and the standard “I slipped on a banana peel at your 7-11 and YOU WILL PAY FOR IT FOREVER AND FOREVER, BY GOD!!”
This was in an online course and I never met the student in person; everything about her writing and other interactions with me and fellow students screamed KRAZY LADY, STAY AWAY! She also liked to share her multiple health and mental illness diagnoses (surprise, surprise).
Believe me, my commentaries on her work were very, very carefully considered. I can’t afford to be sued for noting a missing topic sentence 
(Somewhat sadly, she was a talented writer whose work was compromised by the litigating obsession).
Maybe you should grade with the necessary severity, but after first fully forwarding her work to the academic dean and superiors so that they can have your back. 
I thanked the Flying Spaghetti Monster that none of her work was plaigarized and was really well-written. The gnarliest crap that gets elevated relates to charges of plagiarism; this has happened to me just once and the student eventually went away when they realized I wasn’t going to budge. I’ve had colleagues who have been sued by students for charges of academic dishonesty.
Last semester I had a moment of rainbows and golden unicorn horns when a student whose paper I flunked for plagiarism wrote me a responding note (paraphrased here): “Dear Dr. Shark: I apologize for my actions and take full responsibility for using uncited material. My paper should be flunked, this is what I get for trying to take the easy way out.”