Outrageous & Strange Lawsuits III

A Click Followed By A Whoosh

Extremely FlammableGregory Roach and Gordon Falkner were carpet installers and on September 28, 1998, they were on the job, in the basement of a clients house. Installation required gluing the carpet the floor surface. Unfortunately, the glue of choice was Parabond M280, a highly inflammable adhesive, 35% of which was hexane and naphtha. On the label where the words: “All Weather Outdoor Adhesive. Extremely Flammable. Do Not Use Indoors, Because Of Flammability."

They carpet layers were dutifully spreading the adhesive on the basement floor when the gas water heater clicked on. Messrs. Roach and Falkner heard the "click" followed by a "whoosh" just as they were engulfed in an explosion of flames. They both emerged running onto the street, both in flames, their lives saved only by an alert neighbour who managed to hose them down before they burned to death. But they were severe burn victims. They sued Para-Chem and won, with the Court deciding that given the volatile nature of the product, the warning labels were insufficient.

Illiterate Tatoo Artist

In 1996, Lee Williams, a Marine from Roseville, Michigan, lied down and injured the pain but felt the tattoo was worth it. After all, what could be better than having the word VILLIAN tattooed on his forearm.

What could be cooler? What could possibly be sexier?

Unfortunately, both Williams and the tattoo artist were word-challenged and spelled the word wrong. The tattoo company, Eternal Tattoos later claimed that Williams settled on the incorrect spelling himself when the artist raised the question. Williams himself was none the wiser as he walked out proud as a peacock … until a friend pointed out to him that the word was misspelled. On his forearm: VILLAIN, a word unknown to the English language.

Of course, shocker! - tattoos do not come off with soap and water.

Williams needed plastic surgery ($1,900) to remove the typo. Then, as if to attract our attention, he sued Eternal Tatoos. He hired a lawyer, Paul Clark. The case appears to have petered out, not an unlikely result given the similarities between stupid and stupider.

The Fat Lady Sings

Virgin AtlanticBarbara Hewson's case was not as outrageous as it was strange and completely avoidable. The day started normally as she sought out her seat on the Virgin Airlines flight from Wales to Los Angeles.

She was crushed, literally and figuratively, when she saw that her seat was beside a very fat female passenger. Hewson's new neighbour was so fat that the armrest between them had to be raised, opening up the floodgates of fat and flesh which then pressed against Ms Hewson for 11 hours.

She complained but no luck; the flight was full.

Poor old fat person? The morbidly obese's husband sat quietly behind them and only later revealed himself but refused to trade places with Ms Hewson.

Hewson suffered severe injuries including torn leg muscles, a hematoma in her chest and acute sciatica. She had to sue Virgin for compensation which she finally received.

British Weights & Measures R.I.P.

Steve ThoburnThirty-six year-old grocery store owner Steven Thoburn, of Sunderland, England committed a high crime. He should have been aware of the United Kingdom 1985 law, Weight and Measures Act. Under that statute, produce sold in England on the basis of weight had to be presented pursuant to the metric system. Horrors for Thoburn and his small clientele. Damn be that Euro-crap, French-bent decimal weights and measure; long live king and country and the pound and the yard and the Union Jack!

On February 16, 2000, the "properly authorized inspector" handed him a piece of paper confirming his worst fears: he had to alter his scales to display metric weights. Thoburn found a use for the piece of paper but it wasn't what the inspector had in mind. On March 31, 2000, the inspector returned and was not happy. He used the powers vested in him by her Majesty the Queen to obliterate the Imperial measure stamps on Thoburn's machines. Still, Thoburn ignored this and so he was served with a summons for selling bananas by the pound. He plead not guilty and was hauled before District Judge Morgan in the Sunderland Magistrates Court over five days in January and March 2001.

Thoburn's case became a cause celebre and others took to defying the metric dictate and Thoburn was soon joined in the box for the accused (Thoburn was voted as England's Man of the Year in a 2002 ITV poll). Thoburn he was convicted by Morgan notwithstanding the grandiose constitutional case his lawyer made in court. The decision was appealed to the Supreme Court of Judicature, Queen's Bench Division, before two quaintly styled "Lords Justice", there being no metric equivalent titles, where the wigged Lords dismissed the appeal and the Imperial system of weights and measures took its first step into the graveyard of law.

Sadly, Steven Thoburn became a metric martyr when he died in 2004.

Mr. Christiansen's Mental Day Off

Mr. Christensen sued Dr. Thornby for breach of contract. Because it was considered dangerous for his wife to become pregnant, Mr. Christiansen had a vasectomy. After the vasectomy, his wife became pregnant and both mother and child survived the birth fine.

Still, Christiansen decided to sue the doctor but thank God for small judicial mercies, the case was dismissed with the judge concluding:

"... instead of losing his wife, the plaintiff has been blessed with the fatherhood of another child."

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Published: Friday, October 20, 2006
Last updated: Monday, February 27, 2012
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