The 13 Dumbest Lawsuits in Recent History

"I'll sue the pants off you!"... literally.

A Washington, D.C. judge took his pants to get dry-cleaned at a family-owned business called Custom Cleaners. According to him, they never returned the correct pair of pants, and betrayed their "satisfaction guaranteed" sign in their store.

This served as enough reason to sue the business for 67 million dollars for losing his pants a.k.a. the most expensive pants in the history of pants.

Although later on, he was gracious enough to drop the case down to only, just only, 54 millions dollars -- what a nice guy, right?

Lawsuit language has never sounded so beautiful. Roy Pearson, the offended pants-man, passionately describes his œmental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort at the hands of a business where "never before in recorded history have a group of defendants engaged in such misleading and unfair business practices" to the judge. Basically, life without pants has been hell.

Pearson continued his tirade, always referring to himself as we (until the judge corrected him), in hopes he could get the thousands of Americans who are subject to "satisfaction guaranteed" signs to stand up and fight for their rights for quality service.

The case ended with the dry-cleaner owner holding up a pair of pressed pants, facing the judge, the jury and the plaintiff, and delivering the final blow to Pearson's case. "These are your pants", he said. Pearson ran out of the testimony, tears streaming down his face, shocked at such an injustice. To this day, he denies that those are his pants.

The epic 4 page story on ABC's website .

It's official. Technology has replaced all common sense and brain function. Curse you, Google. We are helpless without you. And especially helpless if you are Lauren Rosenberg.

The specifics of this story involve Rosenberg trying to walk from 96 Daly Street, Park City, Utah, to 1710 Prospector Avenue, Park City, Utah, using Google maps on her BlackBerry as her guide. A part of the Google directions she got involved a half-mile walk down Deer Valley Drive. When she got there, she found that the road itself had no pedestrian pathway or sidewalks. Why? Because Deer Valley Drive was also known as Utah State Route 224.

However, Rosenberg continued following directions and started walking right down a major, major higway with a lot of high-speeding cars. When she got hit by one, she sued Google for leading her there. She demanded 100,000 dollars, claiming the directions were unreasonable and unsafe, despite the fact the road was obviously unfit for pedestrians and that upon the map, Google clearly marks Route 224 as a major thoroughfare. Rosenberg apparently never saw the side roads she could have used. Nor did she pay attention that Google posts a warning about the safety and reliability of its directions with every map search.

To be fair, the warning apparently never shows up in cellphones or when giving directions. And apparently it doesn't show up in people's brains either. It has come to the point where if Google tells you to walk into the middle of a heavily-used highway, so be it.

Source.

A woman sued Universal Studios because it was causing her "œemotional distress". The distress in question happened when Cleanthi Peters and her granddaughter exited a ride to find an employee with a chainsaw leaping out of the dark and chasing them out of the ride.

They swore that Leatherface was attacking them in the middle of public, like any logical human being attending an event at a park that markets itself as the scariest experience you'll ever have at a theme park and often features headlining attractions such as 3D Saw-style torture and a haunted house filled with your darkest fears.

Screaming, they ran out of the ride, out onto the park and slipped on a wet spot, leaving them helpless when Leatherface caught up to them and brandished his chainsaw in their faces. There was much crying and hugging and praying galore and there probably were some clothes that needed to be changed.

Instead of feeling thankful of being alive, the woman turned around and sued the park for $15,000 dollars. Why didn't she win? Well, only because the park was going through "Halloween Horror Nights" and they "alley" where this happened was the Haunted House.

"The line for this bathroom is really long-oooooh My GOD!"

Source.

In 1991, a man named Richard Overton sued Anheuser-Busch, maker of beers like Budweiser and Bud Light, in light that their advertisements featuring guys scoring with beautiful women do not illustrate the reality that consuming beer will not get you laid.

His concern for the public seems to be pretty evident as clause by clause, he accuses the beer maker of lying to society in order to get them to buy their products and promote the false belief that beer is necessary for social interaction between the sexes. This "false" belief is harmful to society, said the naturally-funny-at-parties Samaritan.

But then the lawsuit turns to its last page, where it claims the advertisements caused poor Overton emotional and physical distress along with financial losses of 10,000 dollars. Sounds like a pretty personal case. The compensation demanded 250 dollars for every day Anheuser-Busch continues to air these ads.

The lawsuit never describes what personal damage was inflicted by Anheuser-Busch onto Overton, though its easy to imagine he tried to emulate one of the ads and ended up getting sick of hypothermia when trying to cool beers on icy mountains. Or maybe he tried hitting on women over and over again drunk on Bud Light until one of them finally gave it to him straight-up cold, leaving him brutally exposed to the harsh reality that advertisements are not a real depiction of life.

Read his official complaint here (PDF warning.)

The first time Milo Stephens Jr. tried to commit suicide, he did it by jumping in front of subway train as it pulled into an East Manhattan station way back in 1977. He didn't die, but the aftermath was pretty brutal. We'll just say Stephens didn't emerge from the incident in one piece.

A few months later, the family was able to find an "enterprising personal injury lawyer" who gave a whole new meaning to the term personal injury in legal circumstances. With his help, the family sued the New York City Transit Authority for 650,000 dollars in the guise that the driver of the train did not slow down the car in time and thus was to blame for injuring Stephens, even though he willingly put himself in harm's way.

Astonishingly, they won and the personal injuries weren't so personal anymore.

Strangely, Stephens tried to kill himself again using the same method in 1982, which means that either he needs serious medical help, or burned through that money faster than MC Hammer. Fortunately, New York didn't have anything to worry about as there was no severe "personal damage" this time.

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