26Steven Jay Russell
American con artist Steven Jay Russell once impersonated a prison guard to simply walk out of prison. Upon recapture Russell lowered and paid his bail by pretending to be a judge, escaped his next capture by impersonating a doctor, and did so again by faking his death, eventually landing him a 144-year sentence.
27. A group of friends faked a case to get on Judge Judy and got $1500 out of it.
28. The line "drugs are bad, m'kay?" from South Park's Mr. Mackey, was referenced by a judge in a marijuana-related court case who said Mr. Mackey's words were immortal.
29. A German biologist named Stefan Lanka claimed measles is psychosomatic and offered 100,000 Euros to anyone who proved measles is a virus. A German doctor named David Barden presented evidence of the virus. The biologist dismissed the evidence, but the local court ordered him to pay up.
30. Daniel Balsam is a US man who got so infuriated with constant email spam that he quit his job, got a law degree and has so far earned over $1 million in court judgments against the spammers.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
31Dentures
In the 1920s a Chicago man convinced his wife to pull out all her teeth then refused to get her dentures because it was 'cheaper to feed her with soup than solid food'. She took him to court and he was ordered to get her 2 new sets of teeth and a beefsteak a week.
32. In 1960, a 5-year-old orphan named José Luis Painecur was sacrificed in the coastal village Collileufu, Chile after the largest earthquake ever recorded. The two charged were released after 2 years, as the judge ruled they "acted without free will, driven by an irresistible natural force of ancestral tradition."
33. A Colorado judge named Paul Sacco sentenced violators who were brought to court for blasting loud music to an hour of listening to Barry Manilow at high volume.
34. In 1971, a woman petitioned a Judge for permission to sterilize her "somewhat retarded" daughter. Without a hearing, evidence, or representation for the daughter, the judge granted permission. The daughter later tried to sue the judge, but the Supreme Court voted 5-3 to grant the judicial immunity.
35. In 2008, two judges named Mark Ciaverlla and Michael Conahan were found to be accepting money from two juvenile detention centers in return for increasing the number of residents, offenses were as minimal as mocking a principal on Myspace, trespassing in a vacant building, or shoplifting DVDs from Wal-mart.
