A couple of ludicrous legal cases:
1. A Los Angeles jury awarded 59 year-old broker Richard Boeken $3 billion dollars in a judgment against Philip Morris. Now personally, I detest smoking and have never tried a cigarette. In addition, its clear that the tobacco industry did try to hide the dangers of smoking from its customers and should be held partially liable. But $3 billion for one smoker? Give me a break.
Boeken’s case is even more ludicrous by one of the claims he made in court. According to Boeken he didn’t realize that cigarettes were linked to cancer until the mid-1990s.
2. The second one, courtesy of Overlawyered.Com, involves a ludicrous judge. Two men were shot in a dimly lit parking lot at a Ramada Inn in Florida. Why were they shot? They were trying to do a drug deal when their contact decided he would be better of with the money and the drugs. Anyway, the two would be drug dealers turned around and sued the Ramada Inn — and won a $17.5 million damage award from a jury.
How could a sane jury possibly award two drug dealers that much money? Because in one of the dumbest decisions I’ve ever heard, the judge exclude all information about the drug deal as inadmissible. All the jury heard about the case was that the two men were in a very poorly lit parking lot when someone came up and shot them. Fortunately an appeals court reminded the case judge that under Florida law, people who are injured while in the process of committing criminal acts cannot recover damages.