Wacky Lawsuits

Judge Rejects Lawsuit Against God

A federal judge has once again rejected a lawsuit filed by a Pennsylvania man who claims that his life was ruined by USX Corporation after they fired him more than thirty years ago. This same person also sued God for taking "no corrective action" against his enemies and demands that God compensate him by returning his youth and granting him guitar-playing skills.

Woman Sues Nike Over Poor Shoe Design

The Nike Corporation is reviewing a complaint by a woman who argues she fell while running when her shoelace hooked on the back of her right shoe tab.  Due to the permanent injury to her right wrist, the woman, who is an orthopedic surgeon, claims she can no longer perform operations by herself.  The claim, which seeks an award upward of ten million dollars, has been filed in the State of New York.

Watch what you call me

An Indiana death-row inmate has sued jail officials for discrimination and religious persecution, saying they fail to call him by the name Zolo Agona Azania, which he legally adopted in 1991, and instead go on addressing him by the name he was given at birth, Rufus Averhart, which he terms his "slave name".

Sheriff Jim Herman said jail employees use the older name because that's the one under which charges were filed, besides which: "No one can pronounce his new name."

Azania, 46, was sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of a Gary police officer during a bank robbery. ... [He] has filed at least 27 other lawsuits against various officials since 1980. 'I imagine it's not going to end,' Herman said, 'until Rufus is executed or becomes a free man.'" "Inmate on Death Row Sues Jailers For Using His 'Slave Name'".  (AP/Fox News, March 1, 2001).

Customer offense

The Michigan Court of Appeals is considering a disability-rights claim by supermarket bagger Karl Petzold, who has Tourette's Syndrome and was dismissed by the Farmer Jack chain after his coprolalia (involuntary utterance of obscenities and racial slurs) offended blacks and women who were present. The store believes Petzold's utterances might subject it to liability under fast-spreading "customer hostile environment" doctrines.  ("Court to decide if bagger is disabled", Detroit News, May 1, 2000).

Update: Massachusetts golf club case

Last fall a Boston jury returned a whopping $1.9 million judgment in a sex discrimination case brought by discontented women who said the Haverhill Golf and Country Club wasn't allowing them prime tee times, full memberships, and other privileges.

Presiding judge John C. Cratsley, among other dictates, mandated that the members of the club's board enroll in six hours of gender-sensitivity training. Now the atmosphere at the club is icy in the extreme, with both the litigants and their husbands shunned as fairway partners. "We thought [the lawsuit] would make it better," says one of the women who sued. "But it made the atmosphere worse." Was this really supposed to have come as a surprise?  (Lynn Rosellini, "'Those women' vs. the 'Neanderthals'", U.S. News & World Report, June 12).

"Foreman Who Slept on Job Wins Reinstatement"

"Douglas County District Judge Gerald Moran has ruled that John Hauschild should get his job back because the city did not properly disclose the evidence against him before a pre-termination hearing. Hauschild was fired last June [from his job as foreman at the city of Omaha's wastewater treatment plant] after being caught taking naps at work by a tiny camera that was secretly installed in his computer. In 15 days, the city alleged, the camera caught him sleeping during part of every day." Hauschild appealed the firing to the city's personnel board, saying he had a sleeping disorder, and then to court when he lost before the board.  (Angie Brunkow, Omaha World-Herald, June 6, 2000)

"The man who is serving a life sentence for the shooting of Pope John Paul II is requesting clemency, following the Pope's revelation that the third secret of Fatima was a prophetic vision of his assassination attempt. Mehmet Ali Agca argues that since his crime was "preordained," he should be absolved of all responsibility." Experts in both canon law and Italian criminal law are skeptical about the 43-year-old Turk's claim. (Marina Jimenez, "Assailant asks Pope's clemency, cites Fatima". National Post (Canada)/Reuters, May 30).

This page was last updated on 07/26/05  

© 2001 San Diego County Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse