An Argentinian local court ordered a 70-year-old man to pay his ex-wife 8 million pesos ($173,000) as compensation for 27 years of house work.

Judge Victoria Famá made the landmark ruling after taking into consideration that the elderly couple’s roles had been well-determined during their 30-year marriage, with the woman, identified only as M.L., taking care of the household, while the husband went to work. Despite holding a degree in economics, the woman put aside her professional career to raise her children and take care of the house. By the time M.L.’s husband left her, she was already 60-years-old, too old to even be considered on the job market.

“After 27 years of marriage the accused abandoned his wife when she turned 60 years old, the age at which women obtain retirement benefits, being excluded from the labour market,” Judge Famá’s ruling stated. “The economic dependence of wives on their husbands is one of the central mechanisms through which women are subordinated in society.”

The Argentinian couple separated in 2009, and divorced two years later. Since then, the woman has experienced financial difficulties due to her inability to find a job and receiving meager retirement benefits, while her husband reportedly “lived a good life”.

“This verdict is very novel because it acknowledges that what we do in our homes is a job, care tasks are a job because they involve time, effort and skills,” Lucia Martelotte, deputy executive director of the Latin American Justice and Gender Team, said. “But this goes unseen and women do not get a salary for that.”

Judge Famá described the compensation amount as “a reasonable sum in order to balance the disparate economic situations of the spouses”. She added that the woman’s degree in economics and the age at which her husband decided to leave her were also taken into consideration.

Lawyers in Argentina have called the verdict “very novel and the amount awarded to the plaintiff “unprecedented”.

OECD data shows that women do more unpaid work at home than men in all 10 of the most developed countries in the world…

Maurice, a proud rooster from the French commune of Saint-Pierre d’Oléron, has become an overnight celebrity after triggering a controversial legal battle with his loud morning crowing.

The story of the rooster who sang to loudly has become the topic of a fired-up debate in France. A local family has been sued because Maurice, one of their roosters, crows too loudly in the morning and disturbs some of the neighbors. The bird’s owners claim that they live in a rural environment, where crowing is a part of daily life, but because of an influx of tourists and seasonal residents looking for peace and quiet, the animal’s natural instincts have become a nuisance. They’ve tried keeping Maurice in the chicken coop until 8:30 in the morning, but that’s the best they can do, they said, because Maurice is a rooster, he has to crow. Still, their neighbors didn’t find that solution satisfactory so they filed a complaint at a regional court.

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A Spanish man risks spending the next two years in prison for opening a letter addressed to his 10-year-old son and using it as evidence in a trial against the boy’s mother.

In a hearing held on Wednesday in the Spanish city of Seville, a father was accused by the prosecution of violating his child’s privacy by opening a letter addressed to him, which he was not authorized to do. The letter had been sent by the boy’s maternal aunt, and in it he was told how he should testify against his father in a 2012 domestic abuse case brought against the defendant by his own wife, the boy’s mother. The child’s aunt reportedly also insulted his father in the letter, which was then used by the defendant in court to prove that his wife’s family had coerced his son to testify against him. He was acquitted in that case, but now faces a two-year prison sentence and financial compensation for violating private correspondence.

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A Chinese man recently took a supermarket chain to court after allegedly being cheated out of 0.04 yuan ($0.008) because the checkout clerk rounded down the change he was owed.

The plaintiff, named only as Xiao, claimed that after shopping at a branch of Yonghui Superstores and offering 55 yuan ($8.16) for groceries worth 54.76 yuan ($8.12), he was given only 0.20 yuan as change instead of the 0.24 yuan he was owed. He didn’t really need the 0.04 yuan, but he considered the supermarket’s rounding off system to be cheating, so he decided to sue them and draw attention to the practice, hoping it would get fixed.

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When riding an escalator, it’s recommended that you keep a tight grip on the handrail, just to be safe. But what if you choose to disregard that advice? Well, one Canadian woman has been fighting a 10-year-long court battle for her right to ride escalators hands-free.

In 2009, Bela Kosoian was riding an escalator at a subway station in the city of Laval when a police officer told her to respect a pictogram on the escalator that said “Caution, hold the handrail”, in French. The Montreal-area woman refused to obey the officer’s command and instead started arguing with him. She ended up being detained and getting a $100 ticket for refusing to hold the rail and another $320 for failing to identify herself. She was also handcuffed and detained for 30 minutes.

Kosoian was acquitted of her “crimes” in municipal court in 2012, and then filed her own lawsuit against the city, arguing that she was not obligated to hold the escalator handrail or identify herself in front of the police officer. She has so far lost twice in Quebec courts, but refused to give up, and this Tuesday her unique case was heard by the Supreme Court of Canada.

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A 30-year-old man from Camillus, New York, was recently ordered by a judge to move out of his parents house, after they sued him for refusing to leave voluntarily.

Parents Mark and Christina Rotondo had been trying to convince their 30-year-old son Michael to get a place of his own for several months, before taking him to court. They reportedly started giving him notices on February 2nd, telling him that he needed to get a job and move out. They even tried offering him $1,100 as an incentive to leave their house, but even though he took the money, he refused to move, saying it wasn’t enough for him to live anywhere else. Left with no other options, they went to their local town court to get him evicted .

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31-year-old Jeffrey Shaver recently became an overnight internet sensation after being photographed protesting in front of a courthouse wearing only green Speedo-style underwear, next to two signs that read “RETURN MY BONG” and “RETURN MY MARIJUANA”, while smoking a bong.

Shaver, of Cambridge, Ontario, claims that he was wrongfully arrested last October for possession of marijuana, despite having a card for medical marijuana on him at the time. Police also confiscated a small amount of pot and his bong, and now he wants them both back. He has been periodically protesting at police stations in Cambridge and Kitchener, and at the courthouse in Kitchener, hoping to get the mattered resolved. To catch people’s attention, he also researched indecent exposure and decided to wear as little as possible without breaking the law.

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A Brazilian judge recently presided over one of the most difficult cases of her career – an 18-year-old boy who sued his absent father for emotional abandonment, seeking no financial compensation, only a favorable verdict that would allow him to move on with his life.

Gabriela Jardon, a judge at Brazil’s Federal District Court, recently recounted one of the most emotional experiences of her career, the hearing of an 18-year-old trying to hold his absent father responsible for being completely absent from his life. The experience of growing up without a father apparently had such a traumatizing effect on the young man that as soon as he legally became an adult, he felt he needed to take his father to court and hold him accountable.

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