This morning, I stood, as usual, trying to put on my eye makeup with my cat, Jerry, head butting me.  It occurred to me (not for the first time) that if he head butted me just so, I could stab myself in the eye with my mascara brush, possibly blinding myself.  This fleeting thought rang a bell in the cobwebbed archives of useless information in my brain.

Years ago, I got hooked into watching a TV show due to a teaser, “Woman blinded by mascara.”  Well, it turned out the woman had poked herself in the eye with her mascara brush and got an infection. This was after leaving the opened mascara in a hot car, causing bacteria in the tube to multiply exponentially. The infection led to her losing her sight in the affected eye. She sued the company which manufactured the mascara because there was no warning label on it stating, “Hey, if you’re clumsy enough to jab yourself in the eye with your mascara brush, after leaving your opened mascara in a hot car, you might develop an infection in your eye. And, by the way, applying mascara while driving could lead to serious injury or death.” Of course she won millions of dollars in the settlement.  So I kind of wondered if there shouldn’t also be a warning saying, “Allowing your cat to head butt you while applying this product could lead to eye injury or even blindness.”  Maybe I could get a huge settlement if that scenario played out, seeing as how I wasn’t properly warned.  Imagine the sheer volume of warnings that would be required to be dispensed with each purchase of a ½ oz tube of mascara.

But this just makes me want to shake my head.  Where is common sense anymore?  Just like the woman who won millions in a lawsuit against a fast food chain because she spilled hot coffee on herself when she was driving with the cup between her legs.  Duh!  Do we really need a warning that hot beverages may burn you if you put them in places where they shouldn’t be?  Apparently, yes, because people cannot be held responsible for their own stupidity.

According to the Dumbest Lawsuits In Recent History – Ranker https://www.ranker.com/list/the-13-dumbest-lawsuits-in-recent-history/williammtx, here are a few more recent crazy lawsuits:

A woman sued Google Maps because she used her BlackBerry as her guide to walk from one street to another in Park City, Utah.  Part of the directions she got involved a half-mile walk down Utah State Route 224, with no pedestrian pathway or sidewalks.   However, she continued following directions and started walking right down a major highway with a lot of high-speeding cars. When she got hit by one, she sued Google for leading her there. She demanded $100,000, claiming the directions were unreasonable and unsafe, despite the fact the road was obviously unfit for pedestrians and that upon the map, Google clearly marks Route 224 as a major thoroughfare.  Source. The Inside Scientology collection: The Most Ridiculous Things 

In 1991, a man sued Anheuser-Busch, maker of beers like Budweiser and Bud Light, because their advertisements featuring guys scoring with beautiful women do not illustrate the reality that consuming beer will not make you “lucky.” The lawsuit claims the advertisements caused this guy emotional and physical distress along with financial losses of 10,000 dollars.  Kind of makes you wonder what he spent $10,000 on.

A man tried to commit suicide by jumping in front of subway train as it pulled into an East Manhattan station. He didn’t die, but the outcome wasn’t pretty. A few months later, the family found a lawyer to sue the New York City Transit Authority for 650,000 dollars on the premise that the driver of the train did not slow down the car in time and thus was to blame for injuring the man, even though he willingly put himself in harm’s way. Astonishingly, they won. Strangely, several years later, the man tried to kill himself again using the same method.  Fortunately, New York didn’t have anything to worry about as there was no severe “personal damage” this time.

A mother and her teenaged daughter sued an amusement park because they were frightened by costumed monsters—on Halloween. The daughter, not wanting to be scared, allegedly asked the park’s costumed monsters not to bother her. When they persisted, she fell over in a fright and reportedly sustained injures – the details of which were not released to the public. The pair  sought $150,000 in damages, according to KTLA 5.

In a similar lawsuit, a woman sued Universal Studios because their Halloween Horror Nights were “too scary.”

It was really difficult trying to choose which of the many ridiculous lawsuits to pick for this blog.  Personally, I share the opinion of something I recently read on Facebook—remove all the warning labels and let the idiots take themselves out of the gene pool.