Outrageous Lawsuits, 4-8

Enjoy the rest of our list of outrageous lawsuits.

4. Bubbles Aren't Always Fun

Early on the morning of July 7, 2001, a prankster dumped detergent into a public park fountain in Duluth, Minnesota, creating a mountain of bubbles. A few hours later, passerby Kathy Kelly fell down and suffered several injuries. She sued the city because it had not cleaned up the suds (on Saturday morning) or posted warnings to citizens urging them not to walk through the slippery wall of bubbles. A jury in March 2004 found the city 70 percent responsible for Kelly's injuries -- leaving her with only 30 percent of the blame -- and thus awarded her $125,000.

5. School Responsible for Bad Break-Up

In February 2004, a New York court ordered a school district to pay a former student $375,000 when his two-year affair with a school secretary ended. The young basketball star claimed that the break-up brought "emotional and psychological trauma," ruining any prospects for a professional hard-court career. The jury determined that the school was culpable for failing to supervise the secretary properly. It also ordered the secretary to pay the student another $375,000 -- even though she had not been named in the lawsuit.

6. Trespass at the Owner's Risk

Let's say you're illegally sneaking onto a railroad's property so you can get a view from the top of a boxcar -- and then an electrical wire above the car electrocutes you. What do you do? Obviously, you sue the railroad! In October 2006, a jury awarded more than $24 million to two young men who were severely burned while atop a parked railroad car in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 2002.

The jury said that, although they were trespassing, the 17-year-old boys bore no responsibility. Instead the blame fell entirely on Amtrak and Norfolk Southern for failing to post signs warning of the danger from the electrified wires that power locomotives. For medical costs, pain and suffering, and "loss of life pleasures," one boy received $17.3 million and the other $6.8 million.

7. Sue the Pants Off Them

In 2005, in one of the most outrageous lawsuits of recent times, Roy Pearson, a Washington, D.C. judge, sued a small mom-and-pop dry cleaner for $54 million for misplacing his pants. The shop's owners, Jin and Soo Chung, returned the pants a week later, but Pearson refused them, saying they were not his $800 trousers but a cheap imitation. He also sued the Chungs and their son $1,500 each, per day for more than a year, claiming that the store's signs, which read "Satisfaction Guaranteed" and "Same Day Service," were fraudulent. In 2007, a judge ruled in favor of the Chungs and ordered Pearson to pay the couple's court costs, and possibly their attorney fees as well.

8. Spilling the (Coffee) Beans

This list can only end with the most notorious of lawsuits: Stella Liebeck, of Albuquerque, sued McDonald's in 1992 after spilling a cup of the restaurant's coffee, which burned her lap severely and hospitalized her for a week. Two years later, a jury awarded her $160,000 in direct damages and $2.7 million in punitive damages, which a court later reduced to $480,000. Both parties appealed, and they eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed amount -- surely enough for her to buy McDonald's coffee for the rest of her life. Liebeck inspired the creation of the Stella Awards, which highlight particularly "wild, outrageous, or ridiculous lawsuits."

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS:

Helen Davies, Marjorie Dorfman, Mary Fons, Deborah Hawkins, Martin Hintz, Linnea Lundgren, David Priess, Julia Clark Robinson, Paul Seaburn, Heidi Stevens, and Steve Theunissen