If you’ve ever seen You’ve Been Framed, then you’ll know that injuries can happen in the most unpredictable ways. No matter how strange your injury is, you shouldn’t feel embarrassed to come forward with an injury claim. There are plenty of weird and wonderful injury claims out there- here’s just a few of them.
1. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not the US that is to blame for ‘compensation culture’ in the UK. In actual fact, we’ve had personal injury claims going back to the Victorian times. In 1886, an artist from Swansea was blown down by a gust of wind… and awarded £30!
2. The very first claim for negligence was recorded in 1932 in the infamous ‘Paisley snail’ case. Mrs Donoghue was peacefully drinking a Scotsman ice cream float, a mix of ice cream and ginger beer, only to discover a decomposing dead snail in the bottom of the bottle! Having already drunk most of the ginger beer before discovering the icky intruder, she fell ill and subsequently sued the beer maker. This was a landmark case which practically invented the modern concept of negligence.
3. In 1991, Richard Overton sued the makers of Budweiser for emotional stress and psychological damages to the tune of $10,000. Why? Because the adverts running at the time suggested that Budweiser caused beautiful women in bikinis to magically appear, and he was rather disappointed when this didn’t turn out to be the case. The case, naturally, was dismissed.
4. Digestive problems were the least of some customers’ worries: the Flushmate III, a model of swanky toilet, had a defect that caused the toilet to explode! Several serious injuries later, lawyers lobbied for 5 million dollars.
5. One man tried to sue New York City after being bitten by a dog on a bus. He could have been in a chance, but aimed just a tad too high, asking for “two undecillion dollars” ($2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). That’s more money than exists on the entire planet. Needless to say, his case was dismissed.
6. Hissing, honking and spluttering; geese really can be quite aggressive. When one California mum was walking in a public park she ran into a particularly hot-tempered goose. After a brief spat, it bit her foot which resulted in her falling and breaking her tail bone. She sued the county, suggesting that there should have been warning signs posted about the territorial bird.
7. We all rely on the police: capable, calm and confident, they are always looking out for us. But can they look after themselves? It seems that bobbies off the beat are a clumsy lot, getting into all kinds of office mishaps. In just one year, Norfolk Police had 77 internal office injuries recorded. One officer received compensation for ‘inadvertently squirted hand gel from pump dispenser into eyes’.
8. Another police officer, Tracey Ormsby, was hit on the chest with a pineapple during a protest in 2001. More than three years later, she claimed that her injury left her a mentally scarred hermit who had been forced to quit her job. However, the court heard she’d enjoyed multiple holidays abroad and had shouted out ‘ker-ching, I’m in the money!’ when a doctor diagnosed her with PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder, rather than Pineapple trauma stress disorder). Though she had claimed for £1.5million, a judge awarded her just £3,000 for the damage caused by the air-borne fruit.
9. In 2006, Portland resident Allen Heckard had decided enough was enough. He filed a lawsuit for personal injury, emotional pain and suffering, claiming that he was sick of always being mistaken for sport star Michael Jordan. He filed the claim against Michael Jordan and Nike, who was using Jordan in ad campaigns at the time. Heckard, 6 inches smaller than Jordan and bearing little resemblance to him, eventually dropped the claim.
10. The infamous ‘McDonald’s Hot Coffee Case‘ was called the ‘the poster child of excessive lawsuits’, but there’s more to this case than people realise. Stella Liebeck, 79, received third-degree burns requiring skin grafts after spilling her McDonald’s coffee. While at first this sounds silly -of course coffee is supposed to be hot- McDonald’s were serving their coffee at 82 – 88 °C, when coffee is normally served between 54 – 60°C and had received a number of complaints already. Plus, they’d refused the earlier settlements of smaller amounts. Eventually, a judge ruled that Liebeck was partially responsible for the accident, but that McDonald’s had indeed served their coffee unusually hot. Liebeck was eventually awarded $640,000 in damages.