David Wallechinsky - The Book of Lists

Amanda Blake of Northampton, Massachusetts, had been working for Coca-Cola Bottling Company for eight years when, in 1985, Coca-Cola discovered that she had fallen in love with and become engaged to David Cronin, who worked for Pepsi. Blake was ordered to break off her engagement, persuade Cronin to quit his job, or quit herself. She refused, and was fired for ‘conflict of interest’. Black sued Coca-Cola for damages and won a settlement worth several hundred thousand dollars.

On December 30, 1985, Doris Barnett of Los Angeles appeared on television to try her luck at the California lottery’s Big Spin. Barnett spun the lottery wheel and watched as her ball settled into the $3 million slot. Show host Geoff Edwards threw his hands in the air and shouted ‘Three million dollars!’ Barnett’s children rushed out of the audience and joined her in celebration, whooping and jumping for joy. Then Edwards tapped Barnett on the shoulder and turned her attention back to the wheel. The ball had slipped out of the $3 million slot and into the $10,000 slot. Edwards explained that lottery rules required the ball to stay in the slot for five seconds. Barnett was hustled offstage, but she did not go meekly. She sued the California lottery. In 1989, after watching endless videos of other contestants being declared winners in less than five seconds, a jury awarded Barnett the $3 million, as well as an extra $400,000 in damages for emotional trauma. But the California lottery didn’t go meekly either: they refused to pay. Eventually, though, ‘a mutually satisfactory settlement’ was reached, with the agreement that the amount not be made public.

Two cases filed in Los Angeles challenged the right of fashionable nightclubs to deny entrance to would-be patrons because they are not stylishly dressed. In the first case, settled in 1990, Kenneth Lipton, an attorney specialising in dog-bite cases, was barred from entering the Mayan nightclub because a doorman judged his turquoise shirt and baggy olive pants to be ‘not cool’. Owners of the club were forced to pay Lipton and three companions $1,112 in damages. The following year, the California State Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control won its suit against Vertigo, another trendy club that refused admittance to those people they claimed had no fashion sense. Administrative law judge Milford Maron ruled that Vertigo would lose its license if it continued to exclude customers based on a discriminatory dress code and the whim of doormen. Vertigo’s owners chose to close the club in December 1992.

‘World’s Oldest Newspaper Carrier, 101, Quits Because She’s Pregnant’, read the headline in a 1990 edition of the Sun , a supermarket tabloid. The accompanying article, complete with a photograph of the sexually active senior, told the story of a newspaper carrier in Stirling, Australia, who had to give up her job when a millionaire on her route impregnated her. The story was totally false. Stirling, Australia, didn’t even exist. But, as it turned out, the photo was of a real, living person — Nellie Mitchell, who had delivered the Arkansas Gazette for 50 years. Mitchell wasn’t really 101 years old — she was only 96, young enough to be humiliated when friends and neighbours asked her when her baby was due. Mitchell sued the Sun , charging invasion of privacy and extreme emotional distress. John Vader, the editor of the Sun , admitted in court that he had chosen the picture of Mitchell because he assumed she was dead. Dead people cannot sue. A jury awarded Mitchell $850,000 in punitive damages and $650,000 in compensatory damages. In 1993 a federal district court judge reduced the amount of compensatory damages to $150,000.

On the surface, Plaster Caster v. Cohen was just another lawsuit concerning disputed property. What made the case unusual was the nature of the property. In 1966, Cynthia Albritton was, in her own words, ‘a teen-age virgin dying to meet rock stars’. She was also a student at the University of Illinois. When her art teacher gave her an assignment to make a plaster cast of ‘something hard’, she got an idea. She began approaching visiting rock groups and asking if she could make plaster casts of their penises. She had no problem finding girlfriends to help her prepare her models. At first she used plaster of paris, then a combination of tinfoil and hot wax, before settling on an alginate product used for tooth and jaw moulds. Her project gained underground notoriety and she changed her name to Cynthia Plaster Caster. In 1970 her home in Los Angeles was burgled, so she gave 23 of her rock members to music publisher Herb Cohen for safekeeping. Cohen refused to return them, claiming they were a payoff for a business debt owed him by Frank Zappa, who had employed Plaster Caster. In 1991 Plaster Caster filed suit against Cohen, who countersued. Two years later a Los Angeles superior court ruled in favour of Cynthia Plaster Caster, who regained control of her ‘babies’, including Jimi Hendrix, Anthony Newley, Eric Burdon and Eddie Brigati.

Krandel Lee Newton, a street artist in Dallas’s West End, thought he had a pretty good thing going. Unlike other street artists, Newton specialised in drawing people’s rear ends. He even registered a trademark for his business: Butt Sketch. Then in 1992 along came another street artist, Mark Burton, who decided to add rear-end sketches to his repertoire. Burton called his business Fanny Sketch. Newton filed a federal lawsuit accusing Burton of threatening his business. The suit was settled out of court when Burton agreed to stop using the name Fanny Sketch and to refrain from engaging in any act which could cause the public to confuse his work with Mr. Newton’s ‘customartistry services’.

Canella, a Rottweiler living in Key Largo, Florida, was in heat and her owner, Kevin Foley, had plans to mate her with ‘an acceptable male’ and then sell the litter. But before he could do so, a neighbouring Chihuahua named Rocky sneaked onto Foley’s property and engaged Canella. Rocky and Canella were caught in the act, both by Foley, who snapped a photo of the incident, and by an animal control officer who happened to be passing by and stopped to watch the unusual coupling. A month later Foley learned that Canella was pregnant. He terminated the pregnancy by hysterectomy and sued Rocky’s owner, Dayami Diaz. On November 1, 1993, Monroe County judge Reagan Ptomey ruled in favour of Foley and ordered Diaz to pay him $2,567.50.

It was with some reluctance that Arizona Court of Appeals Judge Philip Espinosa accompanied his wife to a Barry Manilow concert on the fateful night of December 23, 1993. Not a Manilow fan to begin with, he nonetheless expected an endurable evening of ‘soft, amplified music’. Instead he found himself sitting through the loudest concert he had ever attended. It was so loud, in fact, that Espinosa was left with a constant and permanent ringing in his ears. He sued Manilow and others responsible for damages. The case was settled out of court in 1997 when Manilow agreed to donate $5,000 to an ear disorder association.

In honour of his impending wedding, Paul Shimkonis’ friends threw a bachelor party for him at the Diamond Dolls topless club in Clearwater, Florida. As part of the show, he was asked to lean back in a chair with his eyes closed while dancer Tawny Peaks danced around him. In the words of the lawsuit that Shimkonis filed a year and a half later, ‘Suddenly, without warning and without Plaintiff’s consent, (the dancer) jumped on the Plaintiff, forcing her very large breasts into his face, causing his head to jerk backwards.’ Shimkonis, a physical therapist, suffered head and neck injuries, incurred major medical bills and still couldn’t turn his head to the right. Finally, on June 29, 1998, he filed suit against Diamond Dolls, asking $15,000 to cover his medical expenses and as compensation for ‘loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life’. The case was brought before television’s ‘The People’s Court’ with former New York City mayor Ed Koch presiding. A female court officer examined Peaks’ 69HH breasts in chambers and reported that although they were 20 per cent silicone, they were soft and ‘not as dense as Plaintiff described’. Koch ruled in favour of Tawny Peaks and the club. Peaks had her breasts reduced in 1999 and in 2005 put one of the implants up for sale on eBay: ‘Somebody might bid on it. It’s like the first boob to be sued over in a lawsuit,’ she said. The infamous implant sold for $16,766.00 to Internet casino company GoldenPalace.com.