50 Ridiculous Lawsuits and Their Unexpected Outcomes – Part 5

From a barking dog and a flying bread roll to radioactive oatmeal and a fake first name planted in a trivia book, almost anything can become the center of a legal battle. This fifth collection follows celebrities, corporations, governments, and ordinary people into court, where multimillion-dollar demands ended in surprising settlements, reversals, dismissals, and rulings. Some cases changed policies or clarified the law, while others proved that winning a verdict does not always mean walking away with the money.

Catch up on the earlier collections: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

1 Jack Thompson’s Shoulder Battery Lawsuit

In 1988, American attorney Jack Thompson, who was later disbarred, handed Dade County State Attorney Janet Reno a letter asking her to identify herself as homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual. Thompson said Reno placed a hand on his shoulder and replied, “I’m only interested in virile men. That’s why I’m not attracted to you.” Thompson later sued her for battery for placing hands on his shoulder, prompting Reno to request a special prosecutor. The prosecutor rejected the charge as “a political ploy,” and Reno won re-election with 69 percent of the vote.

2. In January 2024, Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a 2011 bombing and shooting rampage, sued Norway to end his years of prison isolation. His attacks killed eight people with a car bomb in Oslo and 69 others at a Labour Party youth camp on Utoya. Breivik claimed that his isolation since 2012 amounted to inhuman punishment and violated the European Convention on Human Rights. Norway maintained that the restrictions remained necessary because he continued to pose an extraordinary danger.

3. In 1988, Tom Waits sued Frito-Lay after its advertising agency modeled a SalsaRio Doritos radio jingle on his 1976 song “Step Right Up” and hired a singer to imitate his gravelly voice. The choice was deeply ironic because Waits described the song, a parody of commercial hucksterism, as an indictment of advertising. The commercial aired on more than 250 radio stations, leading listeners to believe Waits had endorsed Doritos despite his public opposition to commercial endorsements. A jury ruled in his favor and awarded him more than $2 million, exceeding everything he had earned from his previous albums combined.

4. In 1998, the Quaker Oats Company and MIT agreed to pay $1.85 million to settle a federal lawsuit over experiments that fed radioactive oatmeal to boys at the Fernald State School in Waltham, Massachusetts, during the 1940s and 1950s. Researchers gave oatmeal containing radioactive iron and calcium to more than 100 students, some of whom had intellectual disabilities, to study how the digestive system absorbed those minerals. Fifteen former students filed the class-action lawsuit in 1995, arguing that the experiments violated their civil rights because parental consent forms never disclosed the radioactive ingredients. MIT designed the study, while Quaker provided funding and oatmeal, although MIT maintained that the radiation caused no health problems.

5. When Pennsylvania’s Lower Merion School District loaned MacBooks to students, it installed security software that could remotely activate their webcams. The district claimed the software switched on only when a laptop was suspected of being stolen, but it captured more than 56,000 images without disclosing the capability to students or parents. A high school student named Blake Robbins sued for invasion of privacy after a teacher accused him of dealing drugs based on one photograph, which Robbins said showed him eating Mike and Ike candy. In 2010, the district settled his case and a second student’s lawsuit for $610,000, including $175,000 for Robbins, $10,000 for the other student, and $425,000 for Robbins’s lawyer.

6 Evel Knievel Sued Evel Kanyevel

In December 2006, American daredevil Evel Knievel sued American rapper Kanye West over his “Touch the Sky” music video, in which West played a rocket-riding stuntman named “Evel Kanyevel.” West wore a star-spangled white jumpsuit resembling Knievel’s trademark costume and attempted a canyon jump modeled on Knievel’s failed 1974 Snake River Canyon stunt. Knievel claimed the video’s vulgar, sexual, and racially charged content damaged his reputation and infringed his trademarked name and likeness. He said, “That video that Kanye West put out is the most worthless piece of crap I’ve ever seen in my life.”

7. In July 1985, Fantasy Records sued former Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman John Fogerty, claiming his solo song “The Old Man Down the Road” copied the band’s 1970 song “Run Through the Jungle.” Although Fogerty wrote both songs, Fantasy owned the copyright to the earlier recording, turning the case into a surreal accusation that he had plagiarized himself. A jury rejected the infringement claim in 1988. After the Supreme Court changed the standard for awarding fees to successful copyright defendants in 1994, a district court awarded Fogerty $1,347,519.15 in attorney’s fees, which an appeals court upheld in 1996.

8. In March 2024, parents of 10 students at Westwood Junior High School in Saint-Lazare, Quebec, filed a $1.575 million lawsuit against art teacher Mario Perron and the Lester B. Pearson School Board. According to the lawsuit, Perron assigned 96 students a project called “Creepy Portrait,” asking them to draw portraits inspired by the style of American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Students later allegedly found their artwork offered on Perron’s personal website as prints and on mugs, T-shirts, and cellphone cases, with some items priced as high as $174. The parents accused Perron of using the work without permission and sought $5,000 for each of 31 merchandise listings per student, plus punitive damages.

9. Minnesota still keeps the Confederate battle flag of the 28th Virginia Infantry, which a Union private named Marshall Sherman captured during Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg in 1863. The Minnesota Historical Society stores the flag out of public view and withholds its exact location for security. Virginia groups and officials repeatedly demanded its return, while reenactors threatened legal action in 1998 without ultimately filing a lawsuit. When Virginia legislators tried again in 2000, Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura refused, saying, “Why? I mean, we won. We took it. That makes it our heritage.”

10. In 2020, Apple filed a trademark opposition against Prepear, a five-person recipe and meal-planning company that used a green pear as its logo. Apple claimed the minimalist pear resembled its famous bitten-apple symbol closely enough to confuse consumers, despite the companies operating in different industries. A man named Russell Monson, who founded Prepear, said Apple demanded that the company change its logo and that the legal expenses had already forced it to lay off one employee. He launched an online petition to publicize the dispute, which attracted nearly 35,000 signatures.

11 Celine Dion Challenged Topless-Pool Story

In 2001, Celine Dion and her husband, Rene Angelil, filed a $5 million defamation lawsuit against the Quebec tabloid Allo Vedettes. The tabloid claimed that the couple paid $5,001 to reserve the swimming pool at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas so Dion could sunbathe topless and Angelil could swim nude. Dion and Angelil denied the allegation and took the publication to court.

12. In 2002, 16-year-old American football prospect Brian Banks accepted a plea deal and spent nearly six years in prison after a girl named Wanetta Gibson, his classmate at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, falsely accused him of rape. Gibson and her mother later sued the Long Beach Unified School District over campus safety and received a $1.5 million settlement. In 2011, Gibson admitted before Banks and a private investigator that she had fabricated the allegation, while Banks secretly recorded the conversation, although the recording itself could not be admitted in court. A judge overturned Banks’s conviction in 2012, and the school district won a $2.6 million judgment against Gibson in 2013.

13. In 1984, a Michigan man named Frank Ferlito and his wife, a woman named Susan Ferlito, dressed as “Mary and her little lamb” for a Halloween party. Susan created the lamb costume by gluing Johnson & Johnson cotton batting to Frank’s long underwear, but Frank set his left arm ablaze while lighting a cigarette and suffered burns across more than one-third of his body. The couple sued Johnson & Johnson, and a jury awarded Frank $555,000 and Susan $70,000 in 1989. Johnson & Johnson secured a new trial in 1991, and an appeals court ruled in the company’s favor in 1992.

14. By February 2015, a Seattle man named Woodrow Thompson had secured a default judgment worth more than $500,000 against his neighbor, a woman named Denise Norton, over her dog Cawper. Thompson accused Cawper of “raucously, wildly bellowing, howling, and explosively barking” and claimed that the noise caused him profound emotional distress. Norton considered the lawsuit a joke and failed to show up to the court, prompting the court to enter the judgment against her. After the sheriff posted notices warning that her home could be sold, Norton began fighting to have the judgment dismissed.

15. Former Minnesota governor and professional wrestler Jesse Ventura sued American Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle after Kyle described punching a man in his 2012 autobiography, American Sniper, and later identified that man as Ventura. Ventura denied the incident and continued the lawsuit against Kyle’s estate after Kyle died in 2013. In 2014, a federal jury awarded Ventura $500,000 for defamation and $1.345 million for unjust enrichment, bringing the verdict to $1.845 million.

16 Apollo 8 Bible Lawsuit Failed

After the Apollo 8 astronauts read from Genesis during a 1968 broadcast from lunar orbit, American atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair sued NASA. She argued that government-employed astronauts should not conduct public Bible readings during spaceflights. In 1970, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed her appeal for lack of jurisdiction in orbit around the moon.

17. After American disco group Village People released “Y.M.C.A.” in 1978, the YMCA threatened to sue the band for trademark infringement. The organization ultimately settled with the song’s composers out of court and later described the track as a tribute to the YMCA. The song became the group’s biggest hit and sold 12 million copies worldwide.

18. Lambert’s Cafe, a restaurant chain with two locations in Missouri and one in Alabama, is famous for throwing hot bread rolls to customers. In August 2015, a woman sued the restaurant after claiming that a staff member struck her in the eye with a thrown roll and caused permanent damage. A Lambert’s spokesman confirmed that other customers had previously sought damages over similar incidents and that medical expenses had sometimes been paid.

19. In 2013, a man named Benjamin Careathers filed a class action against Austrian energy drink company Red Bull over advertising surrounding its famous “Red Bull gives you wings” slogan. He alleged that the company lacked scientific support for claims that its drinks improved performance, concentration, and reaction speed beyond ordinary caffeine. In 2014, Red Bull agreed to a $13 million settlement that offered eligible customers either $10 in cash or $15 worth of Red Bull products. Its slogan was later changed to “Red Bull gives you wiiings.”

20. In 2010, a Spanish woman named Maria Angeles Duran from Vigo, Galicia, claimed ownership of the Sun by arguing that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibited countries, but not individuals, from claiming celestial bodies. She registered her declaration with a Spanish notary, threatened to bill solar energy users, and later sold square-meter plots on eBay for one euro each. When eBay blocked her account, Duran sued the company in 2015 for 10,000 euros, claiming it collected commissions but prevented her from receiving payments. A Spanish court allowed the case to proceed but did not rule that Duran legally owned the Sun.

15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History

21 Marvin Horne Defeated Raisin Seizure

Beginning in 2002, a California raisin farmer named Marvin Horne and his wife, Laura Horne, refused to surrender part of their crop to a federal raisin reserve program. The program required growers to provide 47 percent of their raisins in 2002 and 30 percent the following year without guaranteed payment to restrict supply and stabilize prices. The USDA sued the Hornes for $695,226 in raisin value, penalties, and unpaid assessments, sending the dispute to the Supreme Court twice. In 2015, the Court ruled that the requirement constituted a physical taking under the Fifth Amendment and relieved the Hornes of the assessment.

22. In 1999, a male Chicago family physician named Richard O. Phillips had a four-month affair with a female internal medicine physician named Sharon Irons. Phillips alleged that although they never had intercourse, Irons secretly retained his semen after oral sex and used it to impregnate herself, while Irons claimed they conceived the child through intercourse. Nearly two years after the child’s birth, Irons filed a paternity lawsuit, DNA testing confirmed Phillips as the father, and a court ordered him to pay about $800 per month in child support. Phillips then sued Irons for theft, fraud, and emotional distress, but an Illinois appellate court dismissed the first two claims in 2005 while allowing his emotional distress claim to proceed.

23. In January 2014, developers launched a Bitcoin alternative called Coinye West that used a cartoon likeness of rapper Kanye West without his involvement. West’s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter alleging trademark infringement, unfair competition, cyberpiracy, and dilution. The developers renamed the currency Coinye and replaced the West references with “an unnamed half-man-half-fish hybrid,” referencing a South Park joke about the rapper. West sued anyway, prompting the original developers to abandon the project and replace its website with the message, “Coinye is dead. You win, Kanye.”

24. In 1994, American film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg was forced out of Disney after CEO Michael Eisner refused to promote him following company president Frank Wells’s death. Katzenberg had helped oversee Disney’s animation revival, which produced The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King, before he co-founded DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. In 1996, Katzenberg sued Disney for a contractual bonus tied to profits from projects produced during his 10-year tenure. Disney reportedly could have settled for $90 million, but the dispute ultimately cost the company nearly $270 million, excluding tens of millions in legal fees.

25. In 1985, Lucasfilm, founded by George Lucas, sued High Frontier and the Committee for a Strong, Peaceful America for calling President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative “star wars.” The two advocacy groups stood on opposite sides of the political debate but both used the nickname in television messages about space-based missile defense. Lucasfilm argued that associating its registered trademark with nuclear conflict could damage the brand’s reputation. A federal court dismissed the lawsuits, ruling that the groups used the phrase descriptively in political speech rather than to sell competing products or services.

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