June Most Ridiculous Lawsuit Poll -- The 'It's Good to Have a Hobby' Edition

By Bryan Quigley
June 18, 2009

To kill time in jail, some prisoners take up a hobby.  In "The Shawshank Redemption," Andy Dufresne carved rocks into chess pieces. Paul Newman’s character in "Cool Hand Luke" plotted and attempted numerous escapes from prison. And in "The Longest Yard," Burt Reynolds put together a team of inmates to take on the guards in a game of football.

One nominee in this month’s Most Ridiculous Lawsuit Poll has his own way of passing his prison sentence – he files lawsuits.  In fact, this Lexington, Kentucky inmate has filed so many lawsuits (against everyone from Britney Spears and New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, to everything from the Eiffel Tower and Black History Month), that the Guinness Book of World Records wants to name him the most litigious person in the world.  But there’s one catch: he’s filed a lawsuit against Guinness to prevent them from crowning him the king of lawsuits.  

While this lawsuit might seem like an obvious winner for June’s Most Ridiculous Lawsuit poll, before voting for your favorite, check out the other suits:

• A lawsuit filed by a Kenyan man against women's organizations over the damages he’s sustained (including "mental anguish, stress, backaches, lack of concentration") due to their week-long national sex boycott;
• An ADA suit filed by a law student against his school after it expelled him for failing classes (his claimed learning disability only caused him to fail some classes, but not others); and
• And a lawsuit filed against a personal injury lawyer when one of the law firm’s chairs collapsed, injuring a potential client that was looking to file a different lawsuit.

We’ll see if any of these nominees can surpass the winner of last month’s Most Ridiculous Lawsuit poll, which earned nearly one out of every two votes cast. Congratulations to the lawsuit filed by a woman who suffered burns while handling wax that she had microwaved herself, claiming that the product should not be in the stream of commerce.