Can I tell you something?
I’ve never sued anyone in my life, nor have I ever been sued, likely because I never worked for or with Donald Trump.
My personal belief is that most disputes can be avoided through better communication and almost all resolved entre nous by mutual agreement if both parties are willing to accept responsibility and agree to a settlement that, while not giving either party all they want, strikes a fair and equitable balance. But that would be possible only in an alternative universe because in this one there are far too many people like Donald Trump who sue others out of sheer animus or avarice, and deserve to be sued because they are lying, thieving, scumbags.
But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.
There are more than 300,000 civil lawsuits filed every year in this country. And that doesn’t count the millions of cease-and-desist letters drafted which threaten lawsuits but don’t result in a court filing because somebody decided to, well, cease and desist whatever it was they were doing. And what they did or are still doing is known as a tort.
Anything rich, chocolatey and delicious can’t possibly be wrong in my book, but apparently these torts cause actual harm or loss to people. And although torts can involve a criminal offense as well, most lawsuits are civil wrongs that are adjudicated in a very uncivil manner.
Aside from chocolate, torts come in three different flavors – negligence, or failure to act with reasonable care like Steven Seagal; intentional, or deliberate harmful actions like anything the current administration does; and strict liability, a product or service which causes harm or loss regardless of intent like cigarettes and assault rifles.
The most common reasons people sue other people are personal injuries and contract or property disputes. Other popular reasons are divorce and child custody, business disputes, employment issues, civil rights violations, landlord and tenant turmoil, debt collection, product liability, and trademark infringement. Some suits ask only for a legal injunction to stop the alleged bad behavior, but the vast majority ask for monetary compensation. Sometimes a lot of it.
Despite being good fodder for television and movie drama, it may surprise you to learn that 98% of all suits are settled out of court. The reason is that unless you are awarded a very large sum of money by a jury, you’re likely to have legal bills which dwarf the size of your settlement making any judgment in your favor a Pyrrhic victory.
On top of that, if you take a civil suit all the way to trial and lose, which many claimants do, you might have to pay all of the court costs and defendant’s attorney fees to boot. And then you get to be the defendant because you’ll likely get sued for not paying.
But going one-on-one isn’t the only way to play the blame game. Class action suits address widespread issues and represent a group of people with similar claims, in many cases too small to claim individually but taken together represent some tangible and even grievous harm.
The most famous case and best example of this, and the largest class action settlement in history, was the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement in 1998 which awarded $206 billion in damages paid by the four major tobacco companies because they had poisoned people with cigarettes and pretended not to know that nicotine was highly addictive and smoke and tar caused lung cancer. Which they did. And had for a long time.
Most of us at some time have received some important looking letter from some important sounding law firm offering the opportunity to join some important class action against some important corporation guilty of some important tort. Usually the harm is not serious illness or death, but more likely dishonesty in advertising or mishandling private consumer information or miscalculating credit interest or payments. The cost to the company can be in the millions or even billions of dollars, but be warned that your claim will be settled for a bit less. I joined a class action in the 1990s against Visa for incorrect interest calculation, filled out a long form, supplied statements and other bank records, waited three years, and got a check for $1.73.
But that’s not what I wanted to tell you either.
Civil lawsuits can and do make history, and not always for the right reasons. The notorious 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford determined that African Americans weren’t U.S. citizens and had no legal standing, thereby protecting slaveholders and the practice of slavery.
Even after the Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation, the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case affirmed Jim Crow laws and held that racial segregation was perfectly legal. On the other side of history, Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 outlawed racial segregation in public schools and started a steady march toward equal rights and justice for all.
And the band’s still marching.
Miranda v. Arizona in 1966 established the right to an attorney for anyone accused of a crime and prohibited self-incrimination, leading to mandatory readings of the so-called Miranda rights during all arrests. The next year in 1967 Loving v. Virginia struck down prohibitions on interracial marriage, and in 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges finally recognized the federal right of gay and lesbian couples to marry.
And certainly, the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement served notice that corporations would have to take responsibility for products which harmed the health of and killed customers. Unless they manufacture guns of course, but that’s another essay.
What I really wanted to tell you is this.
People sue other people because people sometimes do bad things. Because they’re people. Or they sue because they’re petty or pugnacious or both. Or just because they think it’s easy money. But sometimes people sue not because of a cause célèbre like public health but for a contretemps or cavil so categorically stupid that it’s ample cause to start over again on another planet.
Prima facie evidence of how many frivolous lawsuits have been filed for all the wrong reasons are the warning labels attached to just about every product under the sun. Common sense should dictate that we don’t take medication we’re allergic to, or use a microwave to dry our pets, or hold the wrong end of the chainsaw, or eat urinal cakes, but evidently sense is not as common as you’d think.
But some lawsuits are so strikingly idiotic they merit mention individually. For example, a TV weatherman was sued by a viewer for giving a faulty forecast which caused her to be dressed improperly, subsequently catch a cold, and miss work. A Korean K-pop star was sued by a group of fans for being too handsome, which they deemed egregiously unfair. And an inmate sued the Utah Department of Corrections for religious discrimination claiming he was a Druid Vampire being denied the required regular ceremonial sex with a ‘vampress’.
My personal favorite is a man with a split personality who actually sued himself for religious discrimination. You can’t make this shit up. Oh, and the naked baby pictured swimming in a pool of money on the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind album sued the band many years later for using him as child pornography. And asked for a pool of money.
In the food world, Subway has been sued because a foot-long sandwich was a few centimeters short of a foot, which not only is laughable but was probably thrown out of court for mixing the metric system with our Imperial one. A customer sued Burger King because he didn’t get his Whopper his way and it made him sick. Sonic Drive-In and Whataburger have been sued by the same man for ignoring a ‘no onions’ request. And, of course, McDonalds has been sued for all kinds of reasons ranging from ‘they serve unhealthy food which makes people fat and causes heart disease’ – now there’s a class action for you – to ‘putting too much pepper in a burrito’.
But in 1994 a woman named Stella Liebeck spilled hot coffee in her lap after leaving the drive-thru, sued Micky D’s because it was too hot, and was awarded $2.9 million in damages by a jury of her peers. You read that right.
The case was eventually settled out of court while on appeal, and the amount of the final settlement never revealed, but the case lives on in legal lore, and inspired a book and website called the True Stella Awards giving attention and proper credit to the most ludicrous lawsuits filed every year.
Finally, a man named Jonathan Lee Riches is enshrined in the Guinness Book of World Records for filing the most lawsuits in history with more than 5,500, including one accusing the publication of inflating the number which he insists is only 4,500.
I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t single out Donald Trump for dishonorable mention. Despite not holding the record, which he claims was stolen, Trump and his businesses – most of which are now bankrupt – were party to over 4,000 lawsuits between 1973 and 2016. So, I guess we have to thank him because as Charles Dickens once famously said, “If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.”
Thanks for listening. Talk soon.