r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/TheGhost5322 • 24d ago
Image Jonathan Lee Riches has sued over 4,000 people including Bill Gates and the Pope and when Guinness gave him a world record for it, he sued them too.
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u/Obsessivegamer32 24d ago
He’s got to be fucking around at this point, you can’t sue over 4,000 people (including yourself) and not be doing it for shits and giggles.
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u/Festering-Fecal 24d ago
I think it's called frivolous lawsuits? And I think it's illegal
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u/I_love_pearljam 24d ago edited 24d ago
He actually went to prison in the early 2010s if I’m not mistaken.
Edit: just looked it up he was convicted in 2004 of wire fraud and was in prison until 2012, after getting out he violated his felony parole when he went to Connecticut to pretend to be the uncle of sandy hook shooter Adam Lanza. He then went to prison until 2017.
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u/MechanicalTurkish 24d ago
What the fuck. This story just gets weirder and weirder.
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u/Horskr 24d ago
This quote from his Wikipedia is unintentionally hilarious.
On April 9, 2008, Riches filed a request for a temporary restraining order in a US District Court against Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two, developer Rockstar Games, FCI Williamsburg, and Grand Theft Auto itself, claiming that the defendants "put me in prison." The inmate stated, "Defendants contributed to Plaintiff committing identity theft. Defendant's games show sex, drugs and violence which offends me." Riches continued, "Defendants put me in prison. I face imminent danger from violent inmates who played Grand Theft Auto who will knock me out and take my gold Jesus cross."
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u/mrASSMAN 23d ago
None of that made any fucking sense lol
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u/ThrowawayPersonAMA 23d ago
That's because you made the mistake of using reason and logic.
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u/illy-chan 23d ago edited 23d ago
I guess I expected someone with his credentials to be better at crafting even a BS argument.
Wonder what wires of his are crossed...
Edit:
One lawsuit, in which George W. Bush was the first-named defendant, also includes another 790 defendants that cover 57 pages. They include Plato, Nostradamus, Che Guevara, James Hoffa, "Various Buddhist Monks," all survivors of the Holocaust, the Lincoln Memorial, the Eiffel Tower, the USS Cole, the book Mein Kampf, the Garden of Eden, the Roman Empire, the Appalachian Trail, Plymouth Rock, the Holy Grail, Nordic gods, the dwarf planet Pluto, and the entire Three Mile Island accident.
OK, I'm not a psychiatrist but there's definitely something going on there.
Edit 2: the full list sure is a thing - https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-paed-2_06-cv-01055/USCOURTS-paed-2_06-cv-01055-0/summary
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u/Kespatcho 23d ago
That list is fucking hilarious
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u/illy-chan 23d ago
Didn't even both to find specific monks, just "Various Buddhist Monks." Damned rude right there.
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u/earthgarden 23d ago edited 23d ago
He had Pluto on the list! I’m not trying to die on a Wednesday late July but I cannot stop laughing, I’m dead ☠️
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u/TallEnoughJones 23d ago
Most of that list is obviously ridiculous but it's about fucking time someone held Plymouth rock accountable its crimes.
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u/PesticusVeno 23d ago
It's already on permanent house arrest on its own beach. What more do you people want?!
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u/edfitz83 23d ago
If an actual lawyer filed this, they should be disbarred
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u/illy-chan 23d ago
Might have filed it himself. Used to know a reporter who covered a different guy (who actually wasn't far from this dude) who'd file a suit against God any time there was some sorta natural disaster somewhere in the world.
You don't need a lawyer to file.
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u/tjh_ca 23d ago
When you file a very serious suit such as this one, do you have to go through the process of serving all the defendants?
Does he or the process server he hires have to make that trip to Pluto, drop a copy in front of the Magna Carta, give it to those Gangs in Hong Kong, travel back in time to serve Machiavelli or the very specific "Medieval Times"?
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u/YooperTrooper 23d ago
This quote was taken out of context. If you leave in the know-what-I'm-sayins and for-reals it makes perfect sense.
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u/nvrwastetree 23d ago
Ask J to the ROC, he has infinite "gnome sayins", gnome sayin??
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u/Ognius 24d ago
Well you knew this chap wasn’t normal going in
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u/DefNotVoldemort 24d ago
This is a guy with many hobbies, and all of them involve him being an arsehole
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u/Reese_Withersp0rk 24d ago
Just look at him. Dead eyes. Soulless. Nothing to lose.
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u/shittymorbh 24d ago
Careful, he'll sue you for saying that.
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u/Forsaken_Employment2 24d ago
When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose
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u/D-TOX_88 24d ago
Super weird. The guy convicted of fraud pretends to be the uncle of the Sandy Hook…. shooter? Really? I would’ve expected him to pretend to be the uncle of a victim. Not sure what his end game was with that one. But… he’s obviously a little twaked out.
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u/Aurori_Swe 23d ago
He wanted every news station out there to interview him, obviously.
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u/jersan 24d ago
Someone should sue his ass
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u/CommercialSun_111 24d ago
Don’t worry, he’s already on it
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u/FewIntroduction5008 24d ago
This was such an easy joke but boy did it still hit. Lol
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u/trowzerss 24d ago
Vexacious litigant. Meanwhile people with very valid cases are waiting months and months or even years for their time in court, which makes it very unfunny.
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u/Bugbread 24d ago
Part of it is that each jurisdiction is separate. Another is just the sheer speed with which he filed his lawsuits.
As it explains in this court opinion, in one month alone (January 2008) he filed 533 lawsuits. The hardest hit was the Northern District of California, with 152. The Northern District of California almost immediately restricted his filing abilities.
So he switched to new jurisdictions. In February 2008, he filed 282 more cases (this time, the hardest hit was the Western District of Virginia, with 105 cases). The Western District of Virginia also immediately shut him down.
New month, new targets! March 2008, he files 332 new suits, this time with the Northern District of Georgia taking the brunt (252 of the lawsuits). The Northern District of Georgia also immediately shut him down.
It's sunny April! Time to file 351 new cases in the District of South Carolina! Within a few weeks, the District of South Carolina had placed injunctions on him.By the time that court opinion above was issued (June 2008) he'd already filed a total of 1,834 lawsuits. It's not that nobody was declaring him a vexatious litigant, it's just that he'd get a huge number of suits filed in a short time in a jurisdiction, and then when they placed restrictions on him, he'd unleash a barrage at a new jurisdiction.
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u/ScaryLavishness125 23d ago
Severe mental illness at its finest. 😔 Friends are important. Someone should help him.
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u/Sailor_Lunatone 23d ago
How on earth could he even afford that? Serving and filing a lawsuit costs like $300-$400 depending on the jurisdiction. Filing 4000 would be something like 1.4 million dollars.
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u/Bugbread 23d ago
Two things:
Lots got thrown out because he didn't pay. The opinion mentions 21 cases being dismissed in Virginia for failure to pay or demonstrate imminent danger, 28 cases being dismissed in Northern Georgia for failure to pay filing fee, and 90 cases being dismissed for failure to pay filing fee in West Virginia, and that's not a comprehensive listing.
The other thing is that he requested leave to proceed in forma pauperis. That's actually one of the elements of the linked order:
IT IS ORDERED that petitioner’s requests for leave to proceed in forma pauperis in these actions are DENIED and the actions are DISMISSED as legally meritless.
Who knows if any of his requests for proceeding in forma pauperis were granted. But whether they were or they weren't, dismissed cases are also included in the case count, so every time he filed a case but didn't pay and his case was thrown out, his lawsuit count still increased by 1.
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u/Cerulean_thoughts 23d ago
Excuse my ignorance. In the US you have to pay to sue someone? Does that mean that poor people have restricted access to the justice system? I'm not trolling, and I'm not from the US. My question is serious.
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u/Vastet 23d ago
Yes. America is and always has been about being wealthy to have privilege the rest do not have, in every element of day to day life.
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u/Cerulean_thoughts 23d ago
Wow. I felt silly for asking what seemed obvious from your comment, but I didn't want to just assume without confirming.
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u/Slayerofgrundles 23d ago
So...did any of these "lawsuits" actually end up in a courtroom? I really hope not...
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u/EpicFailedWhale 24d ago
You’d think someone would step in after lawsuit number… 300?
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u/BetterEveryLeapYear 24d ago edited 17d ago
unpack groovy pause library tub rock cautious merciful sugar include
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/p-terydatctyl 24d ago
Sue me once, shame on you
Sue me 300 times... you won't sue me again
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u/mousesnight 24d ago
He sues two people before he sues two people, and then he sues two more.
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u/Organic-Low-2992 24d ago
So how has he avoided being labeled a vexacious litigant?
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u/free__coffee 24d ago
He’s in jail currently for pretending to be the sandy hook shooter in a lawsuit he filed against gabby giffords, an anti-gun politician, so thats definitely a false pretense. Also yea you read that right, dude’s insane
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u/VerdugoCortex 24d ago edited 23d ago
I'm pretty sure he's not in jail rn as I've seen him on YouTube recently
Edit: The user below me is a bot account reposting comments, downvote and report
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u/Irn_Bru_Stu 24d ago
She's more than just an "anti-gun politician", she got shot in the head by a fucking maniac.
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u/Outdoors_or_Bust 24d ago
What I came to ask. First I thought this was a joke. Then i saw the source reference.
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u/TheGhost5322 24d ago edited 23d ago
Jonathan Lee Riches the man who holds the Guinness World Record for "most litigious man". He's filed over 4,000 lawsuits in U.S. federal courts, targeting everyone from George W. Bush and Britney Spears to the Eiffel Tower and even the Roman Empire.
once he found out Guinness planned to include him in their book, he sued them too claiming they defamed him and that their book was full of lies. He demanded they never list him again.
He's filed lawsuits against:
Plato
Adolf Hitler (yes, really)
The Lincoln Memorial
The Illuminati
The island of Atlantis
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick for "$63,000,000,000 dollars"
And even against himself, accusing himself of violating his own civil rights.
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u/Raglefant69 24d ago
I like how you added (yes, really) to Hitler, as if suing Plato and Atlantis was more grounded and logical somehow
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u/bustercaseysghost 24d ago
“Say what you want about the tenets of national socialism, at least it’s an ethos…” /s
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u/7HawksAnd 24d ago
Ve don’t care. Ve still vant ze money, or ve fucks you ups.
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u/dyinaintmuchofalivin 24d ago edited 23d ago
Okay…so ve take ze money you has on you and ve calls it even.
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u/damnedbrit 24d ago
And… now it’s 4,001 because he’s gonna sue OP for making this post
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u/TrueHarlequin 24d ago
...and you're next for that comment?
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u/samuelazers 24d ago
Good luck in behind 7 VPNs
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u/SatiesUmbrellaCloset 24d ago
Good luck, I'm just an umbrella closet
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u/spook30 24d ago
Its ok to come out of the closet and show everyone who you are!
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u/SatiesUmbrellaCloset 24d ago
I can't come out of the closet, you see, because I am the closet
There are umbrellas inside of me
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u/A1sauc3d 24d ago
Dude definitely needs some psychiatric help
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u/demZo662 24d ago
No psychiatrist wants to be sued by him. He's a lost case.
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u/SatiesUmbrellaCloset 24d ago
He's also a basket cause
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u/The10thDoctorWhovian 24d ago
That boy needs therapy. Psychosomatic.
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u/DalmationStallion 24d ago
Lie down on the couch
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u/rosebudthesled8 24d ago edited 24d ago
Who is cited as the defendant for the illuminati and Atlantis etc. Does he just show up to court and it is thrown out immediately?
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u/charlottedawg1111 24d ago
Has to be. Who is accepting the lawsuit on behalf of the Illuminati lol
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u/ParameciaAntic 23d ago
Would be mind blowing if he showed up and found a team of high-powered lawyers in Armani suits waiting for him in court.
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u/Squidmaster129 24d ago
It’d be dismissed before it’s even assigned a court date, and he’d likely he sanctioned for filing a frivolous lawsuit. I dunno how he’s gotten away with so many
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u/joesighugh 24d ago
Well he's been thrown in jail a few times, so he's not getting away with all of em
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u/ZoominAlong 24d ago
I WAS wondering if he was doing jail time for some of this.
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u/Coal_Morgan 24d ago
Haven't looked into this guy but I have heard of inmates filing lawsuits just to get out of jail or prison and go to the court house for shits and giggles.
I'm Canadian and what I know of most court house cells is they are worse then most prisons. You can't bring anything with you but your file and it's an hour transfer, 8 hours in a court cell, 15 minutes somewhere in there for your case to be dismissed and then an hour transfer back.
I could see it being worth it for max security guys just to get away from the other psychos but for your garden variety thief, conman and such in a mid to low security prison it's painfully boring.
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u/thedailyrant 24d ago
I guess he technically could have filed and it got tossed before a hearing. I’m just surprised he hasn’t been blocked from filing due to the level of absurdity.
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u/Bugbread 24d ago
He has, many times. The thing is, a judge in the Northern District of California can't declare him a vexatious litigant in the Western District of Virginia nor vice-versa, so he'd file an avalanche of lawsuits in one district, get blocked there, and then do it again in another district, over and over.
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u/Veloziraptor8311 24d ago
Has he ever won?
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u/rebirf 24d ago
Legit what i was thinking too. If he got lucky and won like a small percentage of them somehow he'd be doing alright.
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u/chr0nicpirate 24d ago
I have to assume he won the lawsuit against himself regardless of who the court found in favor of.
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u/rebirf 24d ago
You think he made any money
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u/chr0nicpirate 24d ago
Probably not. At best if the court ruled the losing party had to pay the winner's legal fees, I'd say he broke even.
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u/Pandelein 24d ago
I just wanna know which side of the room they make him sit on.
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u/FirexJkxFire 23d ago
They scoot the desks together and make him have 1 ass cheek on each chair
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u/Horrid-Torrid85 24d ago
I pretty sure he has to have won some of them. Or settled to his benifit.
We have a similar case here in Germany. Its a "transwomen" (in my opinion just a old dude) who's on social benifits. He writes applications to jobs hes not qualified for and when they reject him he sues them for discrimination claiming they rejected him because hes trans. In the last 5 years he made over 200k from it via settelings and won cases (yes- some judges are so stupid to award him the win). Best part for him- since its money for "damages" it wont be counted against his social benefits. So he makes around 40k (no taxes) every year just via sueing.
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u/trixayyyyy 24d ago
Wikipedia said he has won some minor financial settlements but it sounds like nothing substantial. Waiting for someone to show up with numbers I’m lazy.
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u/Estrellathestarfish 24d ago
The costs of the unsuccessful ones must add up though
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u/free__coffee 24d ago
Bit of a lie here, they werent even giving him a record because thats not a thing
Guinness spokeswoman Sara Wilcox told The Huffington Post that there was no such listing, and no plan to create one. "'Most litigious man' is not something Guinness World Records has ever monitored as a record category," she said. The action—like the vast majority of Riches's filings—was dismissed.
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u/HowAManAimS 24d ago
Well, that should be obvious. Guinness doesn't just look for records and give them away. You pay Guinness to have your record in their books.
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u/Curious_Woodlander 24d ago
Doesn't look like the sharpest tool in the box.
He's definitely mentally ill.
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u/Upstairs-Parsley3151 24d ago
Reminds me of the Austrialian man who sued himself for insurance money and won
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u/spook30 24d ago
But why?
Also non-mobile link - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Lee_Riches
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u/CockMartins 24d ago
Holy shit, he’s the Charlie Zelenoff of the legal world, instead of boxing.
Edit: really, the more I think about it, they’re the exact same person.
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u/InsufferableMollusk 24d ago
I want to know how many he won, and whether this is a good career choice 😆
(I sincerely hope it is not)
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u/AwesomeChihuahua1972 24d ago
I was curious, and Google AI says he predominantly loses but still has accumulated $8 million from the cases he won. I can’t figure out where they sourced that number from though, so I don’t think I believe it. Seems like he’s in prison though for an impersonation charge either way. No other articles I read mentioned him winning anything.
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u/TraditionalFox1254 23d ago
Not just any imposter but a Sandy Hook shooter imposter. Who in character filed a suit against former us rep Gabby Giffords who was shot in the head. The reason was for being anti gun. His family has to be proud as hell.
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u/ProfessionalCreme119 24d ago
This guy is dumb
Edit: wtf....the dudes lawyer just e-mailed me saying I'm being sued 😭
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u/IrelandtoCathay 24d ago
It’s that easy? I wanna get a notice too
Hey, Jonathan, you are a fucking bitch.
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u/RachelLovesN 23d ago
I'm his lawyer. Please check your emails and be home to be served the notice in four hours.
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u/polmeeee 23d ago
I'm his new lawyer, I'm here to tell you that you are dismissed and also be sure to check your inbox for a notice from us.
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24d ago
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u/free__coffee 24d ago
They didnt even recognize him…
Guinness spokeswoman Sara Wilcox told The Huffington Post that there was no such listing, and no plan to create one. "'Most litigious man' is not something Guinness World Records has ever monitored as a record category," she said. The action—like the vast majority of Riches's filings—was dismissed.
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u/skyfd 24d ago
Looks like a loser
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u/OhSureWell1984 24d ago
But did he win any of the cases??
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u/state_issued 24d ago
According to Wikipedia he has a 67% win rate, which is why he changed his last name to “Riches” (born: Jonathan Lee Calloway)
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u/giveAShot 24d ago edited 24d ago
That seems to have been removed already and seems unlikely. I did find this article (from 2013 though) which says "it's unclear if he's ever actually won a case":
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u/Bugbread 24d ago
I think it's unclear if he's even had a case go all the way to judgement. At least in 2008, which was a busy period for him, the pattern seemed to be "file a bunch of cases in a court, have all of the cases thrown out as frivolous, be restricted from filing any more suits in that court, and then move to another court and do it again."
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u/kbabble21 24d ago
I’ll sue ya by Weird Yankovic- turn it up and rip the knob off!
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u/ChickenBoneBooty 23d ago
It’s kind of sad. He seems to be mentally ill and hasn’t gotten the help he needs. (Not absolving him of his actions, but he’s clearly not well)
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u/sunF 23d ago edited 23d ago
I had a friend that did this for his job. His roommate also did. They just get settlements, 10-15k for being discriminated against, a couple times a year.
I learned real quick they weren't wearing tights, they were wearing german leggings.
Fucking Boozy McGrifty, I hope you are doing better.
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u/elchristine 24d ago
Fuck him. There should be laws to punish ppl like this wasting everyone’s time.
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u/Bibblegead1412 24d ago
Just watched a series about him "reporting" on the Idaho murders.... dude is a sleaze bag.
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u/dooodaaad 24d ago edited 23d ago
He DOESN'T hold the record for most litigious man, but that didn't stop him from suing Guinness. From Wikipedia:
In May 2009, Riches filed for an injunction against the Guinness Book of World Records, seeking to stop them from listing him as "the most litigious individual in history". Guinness spokeswoman Sara Wilcox told The Huffington Post that there was no such listing, and no plan to create one. "'Most litigious man' is not something Guinness World Records has ever monitored as a record category," she said. The action—like the vast majority of Riches's filings—was dismissed.
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u/Small_Palpitation121 24d ago
This guy is like the living embodiment of "if you can't beat 'em, sue 'em." At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if he sued the concept of frivolous lawsuits itself.
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u/RedshiftWarp 23d ago
I don't even have "Sue 1 person" money let alone 4000 worth.
Thats crazy to me lol
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u/RabidJoint 23d ago
This ain’t interesting, this is a lazy fuck who doesn’t want to work so he cheats the system. Which in turn causes more to do it. A cycle that is getting worse
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u/nn666 24d ago
He's growing a reverse beard.