Plenty of lawsuits get mocked as proof of a broken legal system, but a handful of the craziest-sounding cases did end with real money changing hands. The genuine big-money winners among crazy lawsuit cases that won big money tend to have facts the punchline version leaves out: third-degree burns, a stolen advertising concept, a secretly repainted car, a celebrity’s identity used without permission. Others that sound just as outrageous ended with the plaintiff getting nothing, and a surprising number of the stories passed around online never happened at all.
The McDonald’s Hot Coffee Verdict
Stella Liebeck’s 1994 case against McDonald’s is the one almost everyone has heard about, and almost everyone has heard wrong. Liebeck was 79 and a passenger in a parked car when the coffee spilled onto her lap. She suffered third-degree burns over 16 percent of her body, including her inner thighs and genitals, where the skin was burned down to the muscle and fatty tissue. She spent eight days in the hospital, underwent debridement and skin grafting, and needed more than two years to recover.
McDonald’s served its coffee at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit. At that temperature, it takes less than three seconds to produce a third-degree burn. Other chains served coffee at around 160 degrees, which takes roughly twenty seconds to cause comparable damage. Between 1982 and 1992, McDonald’s received over 700 reports of burns from its coffee and admitted at trial that it knew about the risk.
Liebeck first asked McDonald’s to cover her roughly $11,000 in medical bills. The company offered $800. A court-appointed mediator recommended a $225,000 settlement; McDonald’s refused that too. The jury found McDonald’s 80 percent at fault and Liebeck 20 percent at fault, awarding $200,000 in compensatory damages (reduced to $160,000 for her share of negligence) and $2.7 million in punitive damages. The trial judge called McDonald’s conduct “callous” but reduced the punitive award to $480,000. The parties ultimately settled for a confidential amount, reportedly less than $500,000.
One analysis found that press coverage shrank from 700-word local reports with the medical details to wire stories as short as 48 words that mentioned only the dollar figure. The 2011 HBO documentary Hot Coffee, directed by litigator Susan Saladoff, argued that tort reform groups deliberately amplified the distorted version to build support for caps on jury awards.
Taco Bell’s $42 Million Chihuahua
Joseph Shields and Thomas Rinks, two independent artists from Grand Rapids, Michigan, created a cartoon character called “Psycho Chihuahua” and pitched it to Taco Bell in 1996 and 1997. Taco Bell passed on working with them directly, then launched a massively popular chihuahua-themed advertising campaign in 1998 through a different ad agency, TBWA Chiat/Day. Between January 1998 and June 2000, the campaign produced 40 television ads.
Shields and Rinks, through their company Wrench LLC, sued for breach of implied contract. In June 2003, a Michigan jury agreed that Taco Bell had used their concept without compensation and awarded $30.1 million in damages. With interest, the final judgment topped $42 million. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the award in January 2009 and rejected Taco Bell’s attempt to shift liability to its ad agency, finding that TBWA had no knowledge of the “Psycho Chihuahua” or of Taco Bell’s prior contact with Wrench LLC.
BMW’s Secret Repaint
In 1990, Dr. Ira Gore bought a new BMW sedan in Alabama for $40,750.88. Nine months later he discovered it had been repainted before the sale due to acid rain damage. The repair had cost $601.37, roughly 1.5 percent of the retail price. BMW maintained a nationwide policy of not disclosing predelivery repairs that fell below 3 percent of the suggested retail price.
A jury awarded Gore $4,000 in compensatory damages and $4 million in punitive damages, arriving at the punitive figure by multiplying the $4,000 harm by the roughly 1,000 refinished cars BMW had sold across the country. The Alabama Supreme Court cut the punitive award to $2 million, finding the jury improperly counted out-of-state sales. The U.S. Supreme Court then reversed in 1996, ruling that even the $2 million figure was “grossly excessive” and violated the Due Process Clause. The decision in BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore established three guideposts for evaluating punitive damages: the degree of reprehensibility, the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages, and the civil or criminal penalties available for comparable conduct. On a purely economic harm of $4,000, the Court found the award wildly out of proportion.
The Robot That Looked Like Vanna White
Samsung ran a series of futuristic ads in the early 1990s pairing cultural icons with its products. One featured a robot wearing a blonde wig, an evening gown, and jewelry, posed next to a game board resembling the Wheel of Fortune set. The caption read: “Longest-running game show. 2012 A.D.” Vanna White, the show’s hostess, hadn’t consented and wasn’t paid.
White sued under California’s right of publicity and the federal Lanham Act. The district court initially sided with Samsung, but the Ninth Circuit reversed in 1992, holding that the right of publicity is not limited to the use of someone’s actual name or photograph. Deliberately evoking a specific celebrity’s identity to sell products can be enough. The court sent the case back for a jury trial on whether Samsung had appropriated White’s identity. Four years earlier, the same court had ruled for Bette Midler against Ford Motor Company after Ford hired a backup singer and instructed her to “sound as much as possible like the Bette Midler record.” The court called the imitation “piracy” of Midler’s identity and noted that “a voice is as distinctive and personal as a face.”
Red Bull’s $13 Million Settlement
Red Bull’s slogan “gives you wings” generated a class-action lawsuit alleging the company misled consumers into believing its energy drinks provided superior physical and mental performance benefits. The consolidated cases, filed in the Southern District of New York, argued that Red Bull contains roughly 80 milligrams of caffeine per can, about the same as a standard cup of coffee, and lacked credible scientific evidence to justify its premium pricing or performance claims.
Red Bull settled in 2015 for $13 million without admitting wrongdoing, saying the settlement was made “to avoid the unpredictability and high costs of litigating in the U.S.” Anyone who had purchased at least one Red Bull product in the United States between 2002 and 2014 could file a claim, no receipt required. Claimants chose between a $10 cash payment or two Red Bull products valued at up to $15. The actual payouts were smaller: claimants reportedly received an initial check for $4.25, followed by a second round of $2.01.
The Burglar Who Fell Through a Skylight
One of the most frequently cited “outrageous” cases is actually real. On March 1, 1982, nineteen-year-old Ricky Bodine climbed onto the roof of Enterprise High School in Redding, California, to steal a floodlight. After lowering one light to the ground, he continued across the roof and fell through a skylight that had been painted over and was completely invisible. He dropped roughly 30 feet, landed on his head, and was left a quadriplegic.
Bodine sued the school district for $8 million. The case settled for $260,000 plus $1,200 per month for life. The legal reasoning turned on the fact that the skylight was a concealed hazard: the paint made it indistinguishable from the surrounding roof surface, and nine months earlier another person had died falling through a similarly painted-over skylight at a different school in the same district. A judge ruled the question of whether the skylight was a dangerous condition was one for a jury, and the district settled rather than risk trial.
The Bodine case became a catalyst for California tort reform. In 1985, the legislature passed what is now California Civil Code § 847, which bars property owners from liability for injuries sustained by people committing certain felonies on their property unless the owner’s own conduct was willful or criminal.
The Famous Cases That Lost
Not every crazy-sounding lawsuit paid out. Several of the most ridiculed cases ended with the plaintiff getting nothing.
The $54 Million Pants
In 2005, Roy Pearson, an administrative law judge in Washington, D.C., sued the owners of Custom Cleaners over a pair of pants he said they lost. Pearson argued that the shop’s “Satisfaction Guaranteed” and “Same Day Service” signs constituted fraud and that the signs obligated the business to honor any customer demand. The judge hearing the case calculated that Pearson’s theory of damages could have reached $67 million; Pearson lowered his claim to $54 million.
A D.C. Superior Court judge ruled against him in June 2007, finding that “Satisfaction Guaranteed” is commercial puffery, not an unlimited warranty. The D.C. Court of Appeals affirmed, calling Pearson’s interpretation “not supported by law or reason.” The Chungs spent over $100,000 defending themselves, covered by public donations, and ultimately closed two of their three businesses. Pearson lost his administrative law judge position by November 2007.
The Pepsi Harrier Jet
A mid-1990s Pepsi television commercial for its “Pepsi Stuff” promotion showed a teenager arriving at school in a Harrier jet, with “HARRIER FIGHTER 7,000,000 PEPSI POINTS” on screen. John D.R. Leonard submitted an order form and a check for $700,008.50 to buy the necessary points, then sued when Pepsi declined to hand over the aircraft. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granted Pepsi summary judgment, finding that “no objective person could reasonably have concluded that the commercial actually offered consumers a Harrier Jet.” The Second Circuit affirmed in April 2000.
The Monkey Selfie
In 2011, a crested macaque named Naruto picked up wildlife photographer David Slater’s unattended camera on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, and snapped several self-portraits. In 2015, PETA filed a copyright infringement lawsuit on Naruto’s behalf. A federal district judge dismissed the case, finding no indication that the Copyright Act extends authorship to animals. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit acknowledged in 2018 that Naruto could satisfy the constitutional requirements for standing but affirmed dismissal because the Copyright Act does not expressly authorize animals to sue. During the appeal, PETA and Slater reached a separate settlement in which Slater agreed to donate 25 percent of future revenue from the photos to organizations protecting crested macaques; the court noted Naruto himself was not a party to that agreement.
The Aunt and Her Nephew
In 2015, Jennifer Connell made national headlines when she sued her twelve-year-old nephew, Sean Tarala, over a broken wrist she suffered when he jumped into her arms at his eighth birthday party in Westport, Connecticut. She sought $127,000. Social media branded her the “worst aunt ever.” The reality was more mundane: Connecticut law required Connell to name the child as the defendant in order to trigger the family’s homeowner’s insurance coverage, and the insurance company had offered $1 to settle. A six-member jury in Bridgeport Superior Court rejected the claim after 25 minutes of deliberation.
The Ones That Never Happened
A significant share of the “crazy lawsuit” stories that circulate online are fabrications. Debunking efforts, including the Stella Awards website created by author Randy Cassingham and analyses by Snopes and legal commentators, have identified the following widely shared tales as made up:
- The Winnebago driver who allegedly set cruise control, went to the back of his motor home to make coffee, crashed, and won $1.75 million plus a new vehicle. Never happened.
- The woman who allegedly won $780,000 after breaking her ankle by tripping over her own child in a department store. Fabricated.
- The woman who allegedly won $12,000 after falling through a bathroom window while sneaking into a nightclub. Not a real case.
- The hubcap thief who allegedly won $74,000 after being run over by the car he was trying to steal from. Made up.
- The burglar named “Terrence Dickson” who allegedly won over $500,000 after getting trapped in a homeowner’s garage. An internet hoax with no basis in any court record.
Law professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University told the Los Angeles Times in 2005 that he was “astonished how successful these urban legends have been in influencing policy,” noting that the people who create and circulate them do so with “remarkable skill.” A 1977 print advertisement by insurer Crum & Forster claimed a man won $500,000 for using a lawnmower as a hedge clipper; the company later conceded the story had “no factual basis.”