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The Stupidest Lawsuit Ever...against WoTC and Gary Gygax
With a lot of legal talk about lawsuits, IP, etc., and with the research I did recently on PACER, I figured I should let you guys read the outright most stupid lawsuit ever.
Attached is a ZIP file of the lawsuit. Basically this guy wanted a restraining order against WoTC and Gary Gygax (after he died!), saying that both parties were "after his life".
I can't figure out if this guy is mentally ill or just trying to exploit the system. He even has his own Wikipedia entry, of all things.
It's probably the stupidest lawsuit ever filed against a gaming company.
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Forum FYI:
Kask is not the famous Tim Kask of the early days of TSR
I am that weird guy you see buried deep down in the credits section on many of EGGs later products.
From his wikipedia entry, he's a prisoner who appears to file frivolous lawsuits to entertain himself.
Kind of sad, really. The dude's got a projected release date in 2012, you'd think he'd want to behave a bit better. Unless that release date is a hard coded one, this sort of thing will come up in the parole hearing.
Not even close to the stupidest lawsuit ever. Sure it is stupid, but when you are discussing about the sheer incomprehensible stupidity of lawsuits being filed daily (especially in court-happy USA) this will barely register.
Not even close to the stupidest lawsuit ever. Sure it is stupid, but when you are discussing about the sheer incomprehensible stupidity of lawsuits being filed daily (especially in court-happy USA) this will barely register.
Actually, that's what I meant by the elipsis...the stupidest lawsuit ever filed against Wizards of the Coast (and Gary Gygax).
But I think this guy has actually elsewhere done the stupidest lawsuit ever. Check this link out--this is just the link of defendants.
Forum FYI:
Kask is not the famous Tim Kask of the early days of TSR
I am that weird guy you see buried deep down in the credits section on many of EGGs later products.
Indeed. A one-paragraph complaint is sad to start with. This appears to be a person who has mental illness. I don't think mocking him or even calling attention to him will help him. He's been declared a vexatious litigant by the courts and everything is dismissed. They're aware that he's not really pursuing serious claims. (If he was, they would be lost in the morass of frivolous stuff.)
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Wait wait wait. Is he saying that undead Gary Gygax is one of the WOTC ninjas and they're after him?
Awesome.
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Indeed. A one-paragraph complaint is sad to start with. This appears to be a person who has mental illness.
Or just a really weird hobby.
__________________ All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re not unreasonable; I mean, no one’s gonna eat your eyes
All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re at an impasse here; maybe we should compromise:
If you open up the doors
We’ll all come inside and eat your brains
ROFL. And after we see "Angels and Demons", we'll all know too. Unless the Trilateral Commission or the boys from Area 51 or US Postal Service or Boy Sprouts or other Illuminati somehow changed the script . . .
__________________ We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming. - Werner von Braun
Right now you have no idea how lucky you are that I am not a sociopath. - A sign seen above my desk.
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Somebody needs to show Kenneth Hite this lawsuit and have him come up with some plausible conspiracy theory as a game MacGuffin...
Of course, this particular one might be even beyond Mr. Hite's abilities...
PS--from what I've gathered, his suits aren't for money, but to get restraining orders against them.
__________________
Forum FYI:
Kask is not the famous Tim Kask of the early days of TSR
I am that weird guy you see buried deep down in the credits section on many of EGGs later products.
PS--from what I've gathered, his suits aren't for money, but to get restraining orders against them.
They often ask for sums of money that can only be easily written in scientific notation. $656,111,345,000,000 trillion (or similar) was the requested amount in the case with 56 pages of defendants.
__________________ We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming. - Werner von Braun
Right now you have no idea how lucky you are that I am not a sociopath. - A sign seen above my desk.
Never confuse movement with action. - Ernest Hemingway
Last edited by Krensky; 11th May 2009 at 02:34 AM..
Well, there were certain lawsuits that just plain stepped out of the books. *chuckle* Those were pretty crazy.
My personal favorite lawsuits are some of those filed by the pseudohistorian Gavin Menzies, he of the 'the ancient Chinese discovered North America and everything else and I base this on Von Daniken levels of evidence'. The guy was actually declared a vexatious litigant by the British court system.
__________________ "I can just see the 4e adventure anthology "Tale from the Limited Staircase"." - Ken Marable
My personal favorite lawsuits are some of those filed by the pseudohistorian Gavin Menzies, he of the 'the ancient Chinese discovered North America and everything else and I base this on Von Daniken levels of evidence'.
You mean they didn't? Why else is there so much rice in Latin American cuisine?
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From his wikipedia entry, he's a prisoner who appears to file frivolous lawsuits to entertain himself.
Kind of sad, really. The dude's got a projected release date in 2012, you'd think he'd want to behave a bit better. Unless that release date is a hard coded one, this sort of thing will come up in the parole hearing.
According to Wikipedia, he's in federal prison. So unless his conviction was from before 1987, when the Federal Sentencing Guidelines took effect (unlikely for a wire fraud conviction-- 25 years would require a lot of aggravating circumstances and possibly multiple counts of conviction), he was sentenced under a determinate sentencing system, where there is no parole hearing in the style used in many states. There is a good-conduct discount available, but that's mostly for avoiding things like violence within the prison-- I doubt that it would be taken away for filing frivolous lawsuits. So yeah, he probably isn't increasing his likely sentence. Not that that changes the fact that it's kinda sad, but...
Probably the only lawsuit to ever include P. Diddy, The Vatican, Dick Cheney and Marco Polo on the defendent list...
And he made sure to include Kevin Bacon. This totally owns the "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon" game now. Oh, and don't forget he's also suing the Magna Carta, Merriam Websters Dictionary, King James Bible, and the Byzantine Republic Army "BRA" in that one.
Looking it over, I'd guess there's no mental issues. Just someone with a lot of time on his hands and a very silly hobby. That defendant list is pure comedy (and you can probably guess what was on the news and what commercials he saw that day).