Truth Is Stranger Than Tallest Tale

Dear Readers: Ever since I began writing about ridiculous lawsuits and nutty judges, readers have inundated me with stories from their local papers. I have been dumbfounded by some of the crazy lawsuits that have come to my attention, and now I have one that ranks with the looniest of them. It was written up in a column by Chuck Thomas in the Camarillo, Calif., Star.

It seems a lawyer who attended a Billy Joel-Elton John concert at a San Diego stadium was drinking beer and had to go to the bathroom. While he was in there, a woman who couldn’t wait in the long lines for the ladies’ bathroom decided to use the men’s facilities.

The lawyer became so startled at seeing a woman in the restroom that instead of doing what comes naturally, he was unable to do anything at all. Soon after, he filed a suit not only against the city of San Diego, which owns the stadium, but against the beer vendor as well. Crazy? Well, the federal judge apparently thought so, too. He ordered the lawyer and his associate, who filed the suit, to pay the city and the beer vendor $20,000, which was the estimated cost of defending themselves.

My hat is off to that judge. If more judges would penalize people who file wacky lawsuits, attorneys would not be so quick to encourage their clients to sue.

In his column, Chuck Thomas went on to suggest another candidate for a Loony Lawsuit Award. It seems a woman married her psychiatrist, divorced him and then sued him for malpractice. I guess she thought if he were a competent psychiatrist, the marriage would not have failed.

Thomas also told about a gentleman who was denied entrance into the dining room of a California hotel because he was not wearing a necktie. The maitre d’ offered to lend him one, but the gentleman refused. The patron then filed a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the inn on the grounds that women were not required to wear ties and he was being treated unfairly. The judge decided the case had merit, and the man was awarded $18,000.

Chuck Thomas cited his favorite - a San Francisco woman who was riding a cable car when it rear-ended an auto. She claimed the injuries turned her into a nyphomaniac. Nutty? The jury didn’t think so. She was awarded $85,000.

The next eye-opener came from a reader in Santee, Calif. It appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune in a piece by Joseph Perkins.

“Patricia Geressy, a former executive secretary for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, claimed that she developed a chronic condition of carpal tunnel syndrome - a repetitive stress injury - from typing so much on her computer keyboard.

“No dummy she, Geressy didn’t bother to sue the Port Authority. She went after the deep pockets of the keyboard maker, Digital Equipment. And a New York jury came down in her favor, awarding her a $5.3 million judgment.

“It was not because the jury decided that Digital’s keyboard design was defective and therefore led to Geressy’s injury but because the computer maker ought to have posted warnings on its keyboards alerting users to the dangers of typing too much.”

So, dear readers, again we see evidence that truth is stranger than fiction. And people accuse me of making up letters. Why in the world would I have to?

Gem of the Day: For people who want to succeed in life, I strongly recommend some four-letter words: work, risk, guts and zest.