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You’ve come to the right place! This has been something of a hobby of mine for many, many years. Here is a sampling of the best:1. McDonald v. Scripps-Howard Newspapers — Twelve year-old Gavin McDonald (acting through his parents) filed a lawsuit against the newspaper syndicate that sponsored a spelling bee. Gavin’s “legal theory” was that he should be named the winner of the contest because another boy, who had mistakenly been disqualified earlier, was allowed to participate, and when Gaven misspelled a word, this was the boy who won. The opening line of the court opinion says it all: “Question: When should a lawyer say ‘No’ to a client? Answer: When asked to file a lawsuit like this one.”2. Lodi v. Lodi — Arguably the creator of a whole, very small class of lawsuits: Oreste Lodi filed a lawsuit against himself. He had the papers served on himself and, when he didn’t answer his own lawsuit, tried to have a default judgment taken against himself. The judge caught the oddness of the request and dismissed the lawsuit instead. So Lodi appealed — and the California court of appeal actually published the decision. The place where the respective attorneys for both sides are normally listed near the beginning of the appellate opinion instead has a single line: “Oreste Lodi for Plaintiff and Appellant and Defendant and Respondent.” (The lawsuit was apparently some kind of scheme to convince the IRS that he had been sued for everything he was worth, and therefore had no assets that could be garnished. Or something.)3. Harris v. Time, Inc. — Another California case (Why is it always California? Hard to say. California is to loony lawsuits what Florida is to everything else.) Back in 1985, little 3 year-old Joshua Gnaizda got a soliciation from Time magazine that said on the outside of the envelope, “Joshua Gnaizda, if you open this envelope, we’ll give you a free watch!” But inside the envelope, there was, in fact no free watch. The watch was only “free” if you ordered a subscription to Time magazine. Joshua’s father (who recently passed away) was a prominent public interest attorney, and instead filed a multi-million dollar class action lawsuit against Time for having “defrauded” the public. The court of appeal was not amused.4. Riss v. City of New York — Back in the 1950s, Linda Riss was an attractive young woman who had spurned a suitor named Burt Pugach. Riss was nearly blinded, and badly disfigured, when Pugach hired a thug to throw lye in her face. Pugach got a lengthy prison sentence and Riss sued the City of New York for failing to protect her. The highest court of New York eventually upheld the dismissal of her lawsuit, 4-3, ruling that the police cannot be sued for failing to protect a crime victim if they merely take a report of the crime. The story has a happy ending, though — when Pugach got out of prison, he and Riss got married.5. Miles v. City Council of Augusta, Georgia — A heartwarming tale (sort of) about a couple who owned a “talking cat” named Blackie. Blackie allegeldy would meow "I love you" or "I want my Mama" to people on the street, and his owners, an otherwise unemployed couple, encouraged people to “donate” a dollar for the privilege of hearing him talk. The city claimed that their solicitation of money for their talking feline was a “business occupation” and that they needed to pay the city for a license — just like, say, a pushcart vendor. They got the license but then sued the city, and the case made it all the way to the federal appeals court. (Spoiler: The Miles couple lost.)6. Mayo v. Satan and His Staff — Mayo was a prisoner in the lock-up in Erie, Pennsylvania, and sued Satan (the horns-and-a-tail fellow) for having led him astray and into a life of crime. The federal appeals court dismissed the lawsuit on the odd ground that the defendant could not demonstrate that Satan was domiciled in that federal court district in order to serve him with the papers. (The “Staff,” incidentally, appears to have referred to Satan’s band of evil minions, and not a big stick of some kind.)7. Brown v. State — Not so much a weird case, per se, but interesting because of the opinion itself. The defendant in a Georgia felony case claimed he had a defense witness who was unavailable. The trial judge refused to grant a continuance, so, the trial went forward, and the defendant was convicted. The defendant appealed, and the appellate court’s opinion reads, in part: “The D. A. was ready/His case was red-hot./Defendant was present,/His witness was not.He prayed one day's delay/From His honor the judge./But his plea was not granted/The Court would not budge.So the jury was empanelled/All twelve good and true/But without his main witness/What could the twelve do?”It goes on like that for 18 stanzas, with less important things like the facts of the case and the law that the appellate court relied upon in footnotes. One of them explains that, “This opinion is placed in rhyme because approximately one year ago, in Savannah at a very convivial celebration, the distinguished Judge Dunbar Harrison, Senior Judge of Chatham Superior Courts, arose and addressed those assembled, and demanded that if Judge Randall Evans, Jr. ever again was so presumptuous as to reverse one of his decisions, that the opinion be written in poetry.” So the next time Judge Evans (the author of the doggerel above) in fact had to reverse Judge Harrison, he came up with . . . whatever that is, above.8. Fisher v. Lowe — While I’m on the subject of court opinions written in rhyme, in 1983 the Michigan Court of Appeal had a case come before it in which a man skidded off a road and damaged the oak tree on a nearby property. The owner sued the driver. Michigan, however, has a strict no-fault insurance law, which does not permit recovery of damage to real property by an automobile. This “inspired” Judge John Gillis to write what is almost certainly the best of such “poetic opinions,” which (minus the footnotes, which once again have the tiresome stuff, like “facts” and “law”), in its entirety, is this homage to Joyce Kilmer’s Trees:“We thought that we would never seeA suit to compensate a tree.A suit whose claim in tort is prestUpon a mangled tree's behest;A tree whose battered trunk was prestAgainst a Chevy's crumpled crest;A tree that faces each new dayWith bark and limb in disarray;A tree that may forever bearA lasting need for tender care.Flora lovers though we three,We must uphold the court's decree.Affirmed.”The folks who publish the law books you see in law libraries were so impressed by this that they, too, even wrote the case headnotes in rhyme.9. Leonard v. Pepsico — No account of bizzaro court cases would be complete without this 1999 federal court case, arising from a promotion run by Pepsi back in the ’90s. Consumers could collect “Pepsi Points” that were redeemable for merchandise like hats, sunglasses, beach towels, etc. Buried in the fine print was a provision that if you submitted 10% of the necessary points in cash, plus at least 15 points (printed on bottle caps, cardboard drink can packaging, etc.) you could get the items without collecting enough points.The lawsuit arose when Pepsi did a TV commercial that showed a Harrier jet landing on a lawn, with the phrase “Harrier Jet — 7,000,000 points.” So a fellow named John Leonard somehow got a number of folks to pledge a total of $70,000, which he submitted along with 15 points to Pepsi and said, “Where’s my Harrier?” Pepsi responded with a letter claiming that the commercial was just hyperbole. Leonard sued. The court of appeal agreed with Pepsi that its TV commercial could not reasonably be taken as an “offer” for a Harrier jet for Pepsi points.But in the meantime, just to be sure, Pepsi modified its commercials to say, “Harrier Jet — 700,000,000 points,” presumably to discourage the John Leonards of the world from offering $70,000,000 plus 15 Pepsi points. I mean, heck, for that kind of money, you could buy, I dunno, your own fighter jet.10. Hormel Foods v. Jim Henson Productions. Or as I like to call it, “SPAM versus the Muppets.” Back in 1997, Henson’s production company produced a movie called Muppet Treasure Island. One of the minor characters was a pig — well, actually a boar — named “Spa’am,” pronounced as if you hiccuped right as you were saying his name. Hormel foods sued Henson Productions claiming that the Spa’am character — and I’m not making this up — damaged the “good name” of SPAM. The court of appeal wrote an amusing opinion, noting that Hormel should have been inured to people making fun of its signature gelatinous product, and should even have been honored that (for once) it was associated with an actual source of pork.No word on whether Hormel has sued anyone over the association of its product with trillions of unwanted e-mails.11. White v. Samsung Electronics America — In the early 1990s, Samsung had a series of television commercials humorously suggesting how various then-current trends might play out in the future. One of them showed an otherwise faceless gold robot wearing a blond wig turning letters, with the caption, “Most popular game show, 2050.” Vanna White sued, claiming that the commercials infringed upon her “image.” And unlike in the Pepsi case, she won! This was apparently confirmation that her “image” is that she is a “blond robot.” C’mon, Vanna — did you really want to point that out?12. Trustees of Columbia University v. Jacobsen — back in the 1950s, Mr. Jacobsen attended Columbia and later dropped out. He then sued the school for failing to impart wisdom and knowledge, as stated (among other places) on its emblem. Well, he certainly demonstrated that, didn’t he? Case dismissed.13. Dickens v. Debolt — Dickens was a fisherman, who caught a large legal sturgeon at a legal time of day. Having no way to clean the fish, he left it in the water tied with a rope. Later that day, at a time when it would have been illegal to fish, DeBolt, a fish and game warden, showed up and seized the fish, citing some other (uninvolved) nearby fishermen who were camping on the scene. Dickens sued the State for the valued of his wrongfully-seized fish. When DeBolt showed up in court, all the evidence he could produce was an eight-pound block that he had cleaned and frozen. Other testimony showed that a sturgeon of the size Dickens had caught should have yielded about 40 lbs. of cleaned fish, suggesting that DeBolt may well have eaten the rest of the evidence. Judgment for Dickens in the amount of several hundred dollars.14. Stambovsky v. Ackley — Stambovsky bought a home from Helen Ackley in Nyack, New York (up the Hudson from NYC). After he moved in, he discovered “to his horror” (as the court later put it) that Ackley had for years advertised this as her “haunted house on the Hudson,” even going so far as to publicize this in an article in Reader’s Digest in 1977. Stambovsky sued to rescind the purchase. Although New York has a fairly strict “Let the buyer beware” rule for home purchases, the appellate court ruled for Stambovsky, with lots of lines like the buyer normally “hasn’t a ghost of a chance,” but that the court was moved “by the spirit of equity” to rule for Stambovsky. Most interestingly, the court held that because Ackley had tirelessly advertised that her house was beset with a poltergeist, she could not deny this and therefore the house was haunted “as a matter of law.”15. Velasco v. Commercial Building Maintenance Co. — Velasco and his son were injured when a glass bottle soda bottle exploded, striking them with broken glass. They hired a lawyer, who left the pieces of the broken bottle in a paper bag on his desk. That night, the building’s janitorial service found a paper bag filled with broken glass (not otherwise labeled) on the lawyer’s desk, assumed it was trash, and discarded it. The Velascos sued the custodial company for what might be called “janitorial malpractice.” The court of appeal was not impressed with the argument. But don’t feel bad for the Velascos — their next lawsuit was presumably for legal malpractice, for leaving crucial evidence on a desk without labeling it, or putting it somewhere safe.16. Jordache Enterprises v. Hogg Wyld, Inc. — Jordache, once a leading retailer of jeans, sued two women who created a sort-of knock-off called Lardashe (its emblem showed a pig sticking its head over the pocket, as though “peeking out”). They claimed that there was no attempt to associate their brand’s name with “Jordache,” although some of the other names for their product that they had kicked around before settling on “Lardashe” (“Wiseashe” depicting an owl, or “Dumbashe” with a picture of a donkey) seemed to suggest the origins of the name pretty clearly. Nevertheless, the court ruled in favor of Hogg Wyld” (which had since changed its name to “Oink, Inc.”), finding that their name, although clearly derived from “Jordache,” was a parody, and as in copyright law, there was no infringement as long as there was no realistic likelihood of confusing the consumer.The court ended its opinion with this quotation from Lewis Carroll: “If it had grown up,' she said to herself, `it would have been a dreadfully ugly child; but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.' " L. Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 78-79 (1892).17. People v. Ramos — Ramos was convicted of first degree burglary, namely, breaking and entering of an inhabited dwelling. He testified that when he entered the house, however, he found the occupant had apparently died some time earlier. (So he just grabbed the microwave, and ran.) The D.A. argued that it was still burlgary of an “inhabited” dwelling because the owner had the “intent” to return when he evidently laid down and died in his sleep. The court of appeal concluded, however, that that “intent” to return only applied if the person actually has the capability to return. With no evidence that the occupant was alive when Ramos broke in, the court modified his conviction to a lower-level crime. (Cf., however, Stambovksy, above.)18. Zim v. Western Publishing Company — Those of us who grew up in the 1950s or 1960s fondly remember a series of books by Herbert S. Zim, known as the Golden Guides — colorful, heavily illustrated books for children on nature, science, and the like. But Zim got into a dispute with his publisher, resulting in a lower court judgment in favor of the publisher. Zim’s dispute came before Judge Irving Goldberg of the Fifth Circuit federal appeals court, and Goldberg decided to begin his opinion as if he were writing a different book: “In the beginning, Zim created the concept of the Golden Guides. For the earth was dark and ignorance filled the void. And Zim said, let there be enlightenment and there was enlightenment. In the Golden Guides, Zim created the heavens (STARS) (SKY OBSERVER'S GUIDE) and the earth. (MINERALS) (ROCKS and MINERALS) (GEOLOGY).” The whole case is sprinkled with lines like that, and eventually, Goldberg ruled in part in Zim’s favor — or as he put it, the lower court “shall write another chapter in the chronicle of Zim.”19. Flood v. Kuhn — Curt Flood was a center fielder who brought a lawsuit challenging major league baseball’s “reserve clause,” which effectively bound him to one team and prohibited him from peddling his talents to the highest bidder. The case reachd the U.S. Supreme Court in 1970, and Justice Harry Blackmun wrote an opinion upholding the reserve clause. The strange part of the opinion, however, is a sort of paean to baseball, a section of his opinion called “The Game,” reviewing baseball history from the 19th through mid-twentieth centuries, listing 83 legendary players. He noted that, in doing so, it risked leaving out other deserving players (even though his list ends with those who were playing around 1940). Paging Ken Burns.20. Dr. Seuss Enterprises v. Penguin Books USA, Inc. — From 1997, a cautionary tale, written in the wake of O.J. Simpson’s acquittal. Two fellows who named themselves “Dr. Juice” wrote The Cat NOT in the Hat, a rhyming account of the circus surrounding Simpson's trial. The book used the anapestic tetrameter (yes, that's what it's called) employed by Dr. Seuss in his children's books. It even showed Simpson in a crooked stove-pipe hat similar to that of the famous Seussian cat. Sample verse: "One knife? Two knife? Red knife. Dead wife." Although parody can be an exception to copyright and trademark law (see Hogg Wyld above), the thing being parodied must be the subject of the creation. Here, "Dr. Juice" simply retold the Simpson events by "borrowing" the style and symbols made famous by Dr. Seuss. The court of appeal upheld an order that all copies of The Cat NOT in the Hat be destroyed.21. Shenandoah Valley National Bank of Winchester v. Taylor - A fellow named Charles Henry created a trust directing that, every year on the last day of school before Easter and the day before Christmas, each child in the second and third grades at a specific elementary in Winchester, Virginia was to receive an equal share of the income of the trust. The court of appeal invalidated the directive, finding that for a trust to qualify as a "charitable trust," it had to do something "charitable" and not merely "benevolent." Giving each child what likely would have amounted to between $5 and $10 dollar twice a year was not a "charitable purpose."