Opinion
The most ridiculous lawsuits to ever reach any court system happen to be in the U.S. and it’s nothing to be proud of.
Lawsuits are made up left and right and are made over the stupidest reasons. Americans need to stop, look, and listen to what the world is thinking of us.
Last week, an aunt in Connecticut found out the verdict in a lawsuit she made citing her nephew for $127,000 dollars in medical expenses for a hug that went wrong.
According to CNN, Jennifer Connell broke her wrist when her nephew jumped into her arms at his eighth birthday party at his family's home in Westport, Connecticut, causing her to fall.
Connell’s attorneys said she filed suit after her nephew's parents' insurance company offered her $1 over the accident.
This incident is not the only time a lawsuit like this has happened in the U.S.
Just last year, the energy drink company Red Bull agreed to a settlement of $13 million for not promising its consumers wings. The widely known advertisement run by Red Bull promised its consumer wings if they drank their energy drink.
According to NBC News, consumers who bought the product from Jan. 2, 2002-Oct. 3, 2012 were not required to provide proof of purchase of the energy drink and were able to claim $10 dollars in cash or $15 dollars in Red Bull credit.
In 1991, Michigan resident Richard Overton sued Anheuser-Busch, makers of popular beers Budweiser and Bud Light, for false advertising.
A commercial for one of the company’s products depicted the beer’s magical ability to attract “beautiful woman and engage men in unrestricted merriment,” according to the complaint for damages report from the State of Michigan Judicial circuit court.
Overton sued the beer company for $10,000, claiming the beer did not bring beautiful women to him. In the case, Overton said that the commercial “allegedly caused emotional distress, mental injury and financial loss.”
In 1997, a man named Robert Craft changed his name to Jack Ass, as part of a movement to spread awareness about drunk driving, according to Time magazine.
Three years later MTV’s popular TV series “Jackass” debuted and “Mr. Ass” sued Viacom Inc. (owners of MTV and other media properties) for plagiarism and defamation.
The plaintiff filed a claim for $10 million on the grounds the TV series was damaging his “good name and reputation.”
The U.S. Financial Education Foundation estimates that more than 40 million lawsuits are filed every year in the United States.
In 2005, Roy L. Pearson, Jr., an administrative law judge in D.C., sued the owners of Custom Cleaning over a lost pair of trousers and false advertisement of a satisfaction guaranteed sign.
The pants were mistakenly taken to another dry cleaning shop and Pearson demanded over $1,000 dollars as compensation, according to the Financial Education Foundation.
By the end of the case, D.C. court Judge Judith Bartnoff ruled in favor of the dry cleaners and Pearson walked away with nothing.
According to the opinion of the court, “the appellant failed to establish either that the Chungs’ ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’ and ‘Same Day Service’ signs constituted false or misleading statements, or that they lost his pants.”
Lawsuits such as Pearson’s, Overton’s and many more should not be considered because of such outrageous demands.
According to the Washington Post, Judge Lawrence Burman of the Arlington Immigration Court had an average of seven minutes per immigration case. Judge Burman hears 1,500 cases a year while federal judges decide just 440 cases a year.
U.S. court systems need to flush out stupid cases and focus on the much more serious and important ones that require attention.
According to the Los Angeles Times, 445,000 immigration cases are currently pending and could spend four years on the backlogs.
Louis Ruffino, a spokesman for the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, said in the LA Times that part of the solution to get more cases filed is to hire more judges since many of them will be retiring soon.
“We’re waiting for the tsunami to come,” said San Francisco-based immigration Judge Dana Leigh Marks in an LA Times article.
Hiring more judges and dropping frivolous cases will help solve the immigration problem.
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