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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Touching your girlfriend isn’t generally considered a punishable offence, but things change considerably when your date for the day is a rental.

A Taiwanese university student learned that the hard way, after getting a bit too close to a girlfriends he had rented by the hour, and getting sentenced to jail for it. In July of 2019, the boy, identified only as ‘Chen’, paid 7,200 Taiwanese dollars ($260) to rent a girlfriend for three hours, from a company called “Love Acting-Extra”. The service had very specific rules detailing what the client was allowed to to with his rented girlfriend, but also what was forbidden. Unfortunately for Chen, he got carried away, and paid a steep price for it…

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A 58-year-old French woman has been fight to get her life back, after being wrongfully declared dead by a court, during a long-running dispute with a former employee.

Jeanne Pouchain has been trying to prove she is alive and well for three years, ever since a labor court declared her dead, allegedly acting on information provided by one of her former employees, who she was in a legal dispute with. The verdict not only ended a decade-long lawsuit between Pouchain and her ex-employee, it also ruined her life as a citizen. Her name was wiped from official records, she lost her ID card, her driver’s license, medical insurance, bank account, everything. It was like she didn’t exist anymore.

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A 26-year-old woman from Zambia recently made international news for allegedly taking her boyfriend to court because he “wasted her time” by failing to propose after an eight-year relationship.

Tired of waiting for her partner to pop the big question, Gertrude Ngoma decided to take him to court, as a way of forcing his hand. The woman from Ndola, Zambia’s second largest city, claims Herbert Salaliki, 28, promised to marry her, and even paid the lobola (a traditional dowry) to her parents, as a sign that he will take care of her, but has since been putting it off. Despite having a baby together, the two have never even lived together, with Gertrude remaining in her parents’ house. Now she is demanding that Herbert make a decision about their future.

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A 41-year-old qualified solicitor recently took his wealthy parents to court in an attempt to force them to continue financially supporting him indefinitely.

The London-based man, who has not been identified claimed that his parents had knowingly been nurturing his dependence on them for the last 20 years, only to recently ‘significantly reduce’ their financial support, after their relationship deteriorated. He wanted a judge to rule that his parents should continue supporting him, and his lawyers cited laws relating to marriage and children during a remote family court hearing. Interestingly, the 41-year-old unemployed lawyer is currently living rent-free in a central London apartment owned by his parents. They have also been paying all his utility bills as well, but apparently that’s just not good enough…

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A 30-year-old Mexican man allegedly reported his own mother to the authorities for kicking him out of the house, because he didn’t want to get a job or at least help with chores.

Last Wednesday, Mexican media reported the case of one Christian Uriel, a 30-year-old man who denounced his own mother and aunt to the before the Mexican Prosecutor’s Office, accusing them of assault and harassments. The young man claimed that he was beaten out of the house by the two women, who also threw water on him. What he failed to tell the authorities was that he had been living at his mother’s house for months, free of charge, without contributing to the family budget or even helping out with chores.

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A young Slovenian woman was recently sentenced to two years in prison for allegedly cutting off her hand with a circular saw in order to cash a $1.2 million insurance payout.

22-year-old Julija Adlesic allegedly conspired with her boyfriend and her father to commit insurance fraud in an attempt to collect $1.2 million in insurance payouts. The young Slovenian maintains that her injury was accidental, not premeditated, adding that no one in their right mind would want to become crippled at age 20, not for all the money in the world. However, prosecutors provided enough evidence that Adlesic and her co-conspirators had planned the so-called “accident” to get convictions against all of them. Julija got a 2-year prison sentence, her boyfriend, who was accused of putting her up to it, has been sentenced to three years in prison, while the woman’s father got a one year suspended sentence.

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In a landmark ruling that will act as precedent for similar trials in the future, the Italian Supreme Court ruled against the appeal of a 35-year-old man who still expected financial assistance from his parents.

The historic sentence marked the end of a five-year case in which an adult part-time music teacher who earned an annual income of 20,000 euros (about $24,000) claimed financial assistance from his parents. In an initial ruling, a Tuscany judge actually awarded him a monthly allowance of 300 euros ($360) from his parents, a decision that was later overturned by an appeal court, and last week by Italy’s Supreme Court. Judges ruled that the 35-year-old’s parents financial support cannot be expected to continue indefinitely.

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An 84-year-old retired farmer from Melbourne, Australia, has been trying to get his own daughter evicted from his apartment for eight years, but despite spending a small fortune on legal fees, he has been unsuccessful.

Peter Grundy, a retired wheat farmer from the Australian state of Victoria, has been trying to sell his apartment so he can move into a retirement home. He isn’t entitled to a pension, so in order to secure his place there he needs to pay up front, but in order to do that he has to sell the apartment. The only problem is Peter has been trying to do just that for the last eight years, only his 49-year-old daughter, Katrina, has been doing everything in her power to stop him. Despite his best efforts to get her evicted from his property, including taking her to court, Katrina hasn’t budged and legal experts say the pensioner has exhausted all legal options.

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Frederic Desnard, who worked as a manager at a Parisian perfumery until 2015, sued his former employer because his job was so boring that it made him depressed and forced him to quit. He recently won the trial and a $45,000 compensation.

We originally featured this bizarre court case back in 2016, when Frederic Desnard made international news headlines for suing French perfumery Interparfum for $400,000 for making him work a boring job that at one point made him suffer an epileptic fit and left him feeling depressed. He also claimed that the company signed him off work for several months, and later used his prolonged absence as an excuse to fire him in 2014. Last week, after four years of litigation, 48-year-old Desnard won his case, and a compensation of $45,000.

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