No one is forced to visit a particular establishment in the private sector. If a restaurant plays music you don’t like, you can eat somewhere else. If a grocery store arranges it’s product in a manner you find stupid, you can shop elsewhere. If a bookstore has uncomfortable chairs, you can choose not to sit in them, either by buying books and reading them at home, learning to read while standings, or going to a different store.

All of these things are plainly obvious to sensible people in a free society, and none are typically fodder for legal action. Why should the size of seating in a fast food joint be any different?

290lbs Martin Kessman, 64, is suing White Castle over claims he could not fit in booths at the chain’s restaurant in Nanuet, New York.

He claims White Castle offered him free hamburgers in responses to three separate complaints – but he still had to pay extra for cheese…

Mr Kessman claims he hurt his knee after knocking it against a metal support bar on the table and complained to company headquarters.

‘There were no tables and chairs that could accommodate a person that merely wanted to sit down and eat his meal,’ he alleged.

So don’t eat there! This guy says he complained three times, which means he went back even after he knew he couldn’t fit in their chairs. Why? Probably because he wanted to file a frivolous lawsuit and steal their money.

Private choice already provides all the social recourse that is possibly needed in such situations. Not only can Mr. Kessman find other locations that offer him more acceptable backside compensation, but he can contribute to the most important information a business can get regarding the quality of their service: sales. If enough people can’t fit in chairs, then the store will either realize why they are losing business and fix it, or go out of business. No one’s rights have been violated, and so at no stage of this process is government, via the judicial system, needed to intervene.

Ridiculous lawsuit alert:

A Montana jury has found the maker of Louisville Slugger baseball bats failed to adequately warn about the dangers the product can pose, awarding a family $850,000 for the 2003 death of their son in a baseball game.

…Brandon Patch’s family argued that aluminum baseball bats are dangerous because they cause the ball to travel at a greater speed.

They argued their 18-year-old son did not have enough time to react to the ball being struck before it hit him in the head while he was pitching in an American Legion baseball game in Helena in 2003.

Pitching is dangerous, as I can attest after more than my share of close calls in my now finished career.  This is not news to anyone, and no silly little warning label that no one will ever read is going to make this more obvious than it already is. Anyone who has ever taken their life in their hands and stepped on the mound knows this already.  It’s a statistically small but very real risk that comes with the game, of that same type that comes with any sport.

The death of a young player is tragic, but so are silly lawsuits that seek to assuage grief by falsely assigning blame.

A ridiculous lawsuit ends justly, for once:

Earlier this year, we wrote about a woman named Beverly Stayart, who had sued Yahoo over what she found when she did a search on her name. Her complaint was that some of the links advertised porn sites and possibly contained malware, and that this was a violation of her trademark and privacy rights. After the posting, we received a number of comments on that post, and more recently, received a legal letter from the woman’s lawyer, demanding that we remove many of the comments or get sued. With the help of Paul Alan Levy at Public Citizen, we replied to the letter, refusing to remove the comments, and detailing our reasons why. To date, we have not been sued over this, but you may want to take our reporting on the subject with whatever caveats, given these facts.

Earlier this week, the court dismissed the lawsuit against Yahoo and denied Stayart’s request to refile. The court had trouble with the idea that this was a trademark claim, noting that just because she does not like how her name is shown, it does not create a trademark violation. There are two major problems: (1) she doesn’t appear to be using her name in commerce in this particular field and (2) there is little to no likelihood of confusion. From the ruling:

Now if only we can make her pay for her frivolous harassment of Yahoo, techdirt and who knows who else.

Here’s some sue bait: Beverly Stayart is a boob.

Woman who slipped at dolphin show sues zoo

A Chicago woman on Tuesday filed suit against Brookfield Zoo claiming she was injured after she slipped and fell on a wet walkway at a dolphin show at the zoo in August 2008. The plaintiff, Allecyn Edwards, is seeking more than $50,000 in damages for her injuries.

According to the lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court on Aug. 18, Edwards visited the zoo on Aug. 20, 2008, and attended one of the dolphin shows. While walking in the bleacher section of the exhibit area, Edwards fell and sustained injuries not specified in the lawsuit.

…

In this latest lawsuit, Edwards alleges that the zoo was negligent in “recklessly and willfully” training its dolphins to splash water at spectators and onto the walkways, not warning spectators to beware of the slippery floor and not providing slip-proof mats or strips for spectator safety.

How embarrassing it must be to admit that you need someone to inform you to be careful on a slippery floor.

A commenter at Overlawyered asks if there is still liability if they didn’t do it on porpoise.  I hate myself for chuckling.

The moron is also suing his wife:

A family demands $10 million from Honda, claiming a side window shattered and injured them when a tornado picked up their Honda Odyssey, which “remained airborne for a few seconds before plummeting to the ground and landing on all four wheels. Upon impact, the driver’s side passenger window shattered and glass flew into the car.”

Two girls suffered eye injuries from the glass and three other family members suffered face, chest and head lacerations, the family says in Prince George’s County Court. One girl lost her left eye and another one needed eye surgery.

The father says he warned his wife – a defendant – not to go to the “back to school night” because there was a tornado warning, but she “was upset at the program for not properly caring for her child and decided it was necessary to drive her children to the program. … A few minutes after her departure, defendant Achumba felt a shove from the rear of the Odyssey, and it was lifted into the air.”

The Achumba family says the tempered glass Honda uses in side windows to reduce costs is not strong enough. They say Honda should use laminated glass, as it does for windshields.

Frivolous lawsuits are out of control.  We desperately need a loser pays system, though even that won’t solve the mess itself, as many of these frivolous lawsuits are rewarded by idiotic juries.

Hat-tip: Overlawyered

This is ridiculous:

Convicted last year of intoxication manslaughter for the death of her boyfriend, the 21-year-old daughter of a state district judge is suing the truck driver she ran into during a drunken driving crash.

Elizabeth Shelton, the daughter of juvenile judge Pat Shelton, is accusing truck driver Lance Bennett of negligence in the Oct. 23, 2007, wreck that killed her boyfriend Matthew McNiece.

Shelton had a blood alcohol concentration more than three times the legal limit, two tests showed. She was sentenced to eight years’ probation and had to serve four months in jail.

Shelton, her family and the family of the boyfriend who was killed are suing for $20,000 for the destruction of the Lexus SUV she was driving and an undetermined amount for mental anguish, pain and suffering.

Bennett was driving the box truck that Shelton rear-ended on the Southwest Freeway near Kirby around 2 a.m.

Bennett’s attorney, John Havins, said the lawsuit, filed in October, was the last chance to make a claim before the statute of limitations ran out.

He noted that Shelton named 16 defendants, including insurance companies and banks. “They’re just throwing everything against the wall to see if anything sticks,” Havins said.

Throwing everything against the wall is a common legal tactic for money-grubbing ambulance chasers.  The problem is that our system does absolutely nothing to discourage this behavior.  The people who are penalized are the victims of frivolous lawsuits who must pay their legal fees regardless of the outcome.  The obvious answer would be to adopt a loser-pays system, where the loser in a suit pays the legal fees of the other party.  It’s bad enough that this horrible excuse for a human being only spent 4 months in jail for killing her boyfriend, but now the legal system will condone hero victimizing all over again the people her reckless behavior negatively affected?  This is unacceptable.

…of frivolous lawsuits:

A man says he was so consumed by the spirit of God that he fell and hit his head while at a Knoxville church.

Now he wants Lakewind Church to pay $2.5 million for medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering he says he’s endured from his injuries.

Hallelujah!

Hat tip: Crush Liberalism