After nearly three years of litigation with entertainment giant DC Comics, a small neighborhood bakery in Chile has retained the right to use the brand “Superpan”. 41-year-old Gonzalo Montenegro has been selling bread in his native Quinta Normal, a commune in the Santiago province, for over three decades. As a youth, he would promote his products by wearing a green “Peter Pan” t-shirt, and one with the iconic symbol of the “Man of Steel”. It was the second one that really stuck with people, and before long, they started calling him “Superpan”, a play on words combining “Superman” and “pan”, the Spanish word for ‘bread’. Over the last 28 years, Montenegro used ‘Superpan’ as a brand to sell his bakery products, but some three years ago, he learned that he was being sued by DC Comics, the owners of Superman. Read More »

An elderly couple in Germany has taken their next-door neighbors to court over a very active rooster that allegedly crows about 200 times a day, making it impossible for them to rest. 76-year-old Friedrich-Wilhelm and his wife Jutta, a couple from Bad Salzuflen, in Western Germany, claim that they haven’t had a quiet day at home in a long time, all because of Magda, their neighbors’ rooster. The domestic bird allegedly starts crowing every day at around 8 am, and doesn’t stop until sundown, when the owners lock it up with their other chicken. After years of trying to reason with their neighbors about Magda, Friedrich and Jutta have taken them to court in order to resolve the matter. Read More »

A South Korean civil court recently ordered a 31-year-old man to pay his ex-girlfriend 1.5 million won ($1,150) as damages for urinating in her designer handbag. This bizarre story dates back to last October, when the defendant in this case, a 31-year-old man from Seoul, South Korea, whose identity has not been revealed, for privacy purposes, allegedly got into an argument with his girlfriend at the time. The two were at the girlfriend’s house in Gangnam-gu, and somehow started fighting about the amounts of money the woman was spending and the debts she was racking up. At one point, the man allegedly went into the bedroom, brought out one of his girlfriend’s Louis Vuitton handbags, unbuttoned his pants, and started urinating in it right there in front of her. She didn’t like that very much, so she filed a complaint against him with the police. Read More »

A Chinese court recently issued a controversial ruling, ordering a woman to pay 3.79 million yuan ($560,000) to her lover’s wife, because their relationship wasn’t recognized by law. Scorned wives suing their husbands’ lovers isn’t unheard of. On the contrary, a quick Google search of the phrase “alienation of affection” reveals that it’s still quite a common practice, although this law tort was abolished in many jurisdictions around the world. But whereas that refers to one spouse suing a third party for damaging their marriage and usually leading to divorce, a recent case in China saw one wife sue her husband’s mistress to return all the material possessions he had given her during their affair. The court sided with the woman and ordered the mistress to pay a whopping 3.79 million yuan to her lover’s wife. Read More »

A UK man who ate a festive ham sandwich at a Christmas market he was visiting with his family in December of 2017 claims the snack has been causing him uncontrollable flatulence ever since. Tyrone Prades has been living a nightmare for five years, and he claims that it has all been because of a festive roll he ate at a Christmas market in Birmingham. Mere hours after eating the snack, Tyrone was hit by stomach cramps, fever, vomiting and diarrhea, and was bed-ridden for five weeks. That alone sounds like an awful experience, but it was only the beginning of his troubles. Ever since that fateful day, the 46-year-old man has been suffering from regular and uncontrollable flatulence that causes him embarrassment and stomach noises that wake him up in the middle of the night. Read More »

Chinese social media was recently rocked by the controversial story of a man who sued his stepson after divorcing his mother, asking for compensation for raising him. Only a few months after divorcing his wife, a Chongqing man surnamed Tang reportedly took his stepson Liu to court, asking for 35,200 yuan (approximately $5,285) as compensation for the money spent on raising him during the marriage. Tang reportedly married Liu’s mother in 2009 when the boy was 10 years old and helped raise him until 2021, when the woman filed for divorce. About three months after the separation, Tang filed a lawsuit against his stepson, asking for over 30,000 yuan as compensation for living expenses. Read More »

A German Federal Court recently ruled that a man who broke his back by falling down the stairs from his bedroom on his way to his home office should be covered by his employer’s workplace accident insurance. According to court documents published last Wednesday, Germany’s Federal Social Court ruled in favor of an unnamed area sales manager who broke his back in an accident that occurred in his home in 2018. The man was allegedly walking down the stairs from his bedroom on his way to his home office when he slipped on his spiral staircase and broke a thoracic vertebra. The plaintiff’s lawyer argued that his client, who typically starts his workday without eating breakfast, was headed for his home work station, which makes his accident work-related and should be covered by insurance. Read More »

An Ohio man tried to sue his wife for leaving her shoes in an inappropriate place and causing him to trip and tumble down a flight of stairs, suffering multiple bone fractures. An appeals court recently rejected John Walworth’s lawsuit against his wife, Judy Khoury, over an incident that occurred in February of 2018. Walworth was helping his then-fiancee by carrying some jugs of vinegar to her basement when he tripped over a pair of her shoes and fell down the basement stairs, breaking bones in his leg, arm, and hand. He later sued Judy, claiming that it was her carelessness that cost him $80,000 in medical bills and another $18,000 in lost income because his injuries caused him to miss work. Read More »

A Texas man who sustained injuries after being involved in a bar fight two years ago sued the bar owner for overselling him alcohol and was awarded $5.5 million in a default judgment. Daniel Rawls claims that after drinking at the La Fogata restaurant, in Andrews, on May 21, 2019, he and another patron, Robert Henrickson, got into an altercation in the parking lot of the restaurant. As a result, Rawls suffered head injuries that his lawyer claimed could have been avoided if the restaurant hadn’t continued serving alcohol to both men, who were visibly inebriated. In the complaint, La Fogata’s owner and bartender were accused of allowing the two men to drink excessively and leave the restaurant together, as well as not calling an ambulance after Rawls was injured. Read More »

A Russian woman is reportedly taking fast-food giant McDonald’s to court for making her break fast during Lent with its aggressive advertising showing delicious burgers. Ksenia Ovchinnikova, an Orthodox Christian from the Russian city of Omsk, is suing the world’s largest fast-food restaurant chain for allegedly making her break fast for Lent two years ago, with its delicious-looking ad banners. The woman accuses McDonald’s of breaking the consumer protection law and insulting her religious feelings by advertising delicious meat products during a time when Christians attempt to refrain from eating meat and other animal products. She is requesting 1,000 rubles ($14) as compensation for sustained moral damage. Read More »

In what can only be described as the real-life plot of a horror movie script, a homeless man was wrongfully arrested and locked up in a mental hospital for over two years, after being mistaken for a man he had never even met. Joshua Spriestersbach’s nightmare began on a hot day in 2017, while waiting in line for food outside a homeless shelter in Honolulu. When police woke him up, he thought he was being arrested for breaking the city’s law against sitting and lying on public sidewalks, but little did he know that things were a lot more serious than that. What Spriestersbach didn’t realize was that the police officer had somehow mistaken him for one Thomas Castleberry, who had a warrant out for his arrest for violating probation in a 2006 drug case. The fact that the two didn’t even look similar didn’t seem to matter to anyone, and instead of simply checking photographs or fingerprints of the two men, the homeless man simply became Castleberry. Read More »

Portugal’s Supreme Court of Justice has ordered a man to pay his ex-wife 60,000 euros ($72,000) in compensation for the cleaning and cooking she did during their three-decade-long marriage. There was a time when housework was considered a wife’s duty, but those times are long gone, as evidenced by the avalanche of court rulings in favor of housewives asking for compensation from their ex-spouses. The latest such case comes from Portugal, where the Supreme Court recently ruled that a woman was entitled to $72,000 in compensation from her ex-husband for performing domestic activities like cooking and cleaning throughout their 30-year marriage. Read More »

In a first-of-its-kind case in the UK, a 41-year-old unemployed Oxford graduate has taken his parents to court in a bizarre attempt to make them support him financially for life. Despite being a trained lawyer and having a degree from the prestigious Oxford University, 41-year-old Faiz Siddiqui claims that he is completely dependent on his Dubai-based mother and father. In court filings obtained by the press, Siddiqui describes himself as a “vulnerable” grown-up child due to health issues, and insists that being cut-off by his wealthy parents would be a violation of his human rights. Read More »

In a landmark divorce ruling, a Chinese court ordered a man to pay thousands of dollars to his ex-wife, as compensation for housework performed during their five-year marriage. According to court papers, the man, identified only as Chen, filed from divorce from his wife, Wang, last year, after a five-year marriage. Although reluctant to grant him the divorce at first, the woman later requested that he compensate her for all the work she did as a full-time housewife during their marriage, adding that he had not participated in raising their child and “barely cared about or participated in any kind of domestic chores”. Recently, a Beijing family court ruled in the woman’s favor, sparking a heated debate in China. Read More »

An Australian court has ruled that a man who accidentally dropped the keys to a company car and strained his back while bending over to pick them up should receive workers compensation. Robert Thelan, a works coordinator for SA Power Networks, in South Australia, was on call at home, on September 9, 2019, when he received a text message from work, telling him to go fix a power line. Thelan got dressed for the job, went out to the company-issued Ford Ranger in his driveway, sat down in the driver’s seat, but accidentally dropped the keys to the car on the pavement. While remaining seated, the man reached out to grab the keys and strained his back. Apparently, that’s a work related injury and he needs to be compensated by his employer. The Australian man was able to drive to the Port Pirie SA Power Networks depot to report his injury, and was taken to the hospital soon after. His injury left him unable to work for an undisclosed period of time, and he incurred substantial medical expenses, but his employer, SA Power Networks, rejected his claim for compensation. Read More »