Road Apples by Tim Sanders

Road Apples
March 15, 2010

Sewer, sewer, get your mind out of the gutter

For the past several years I’ve felt the need to sue somebody. My problem has been that I’ve never had anybody specific in mind. Oh sure, after a famous lawsuit surfaces, like the woman suing McDonald’s for making her go all spastic and spill her very own hot coffee into her own lap, all by her very own self, I can see very clearly how suing McDonald’s would have been an excellent idea if only I’d thought of it first. But the trick is getting into court early with those kinds of cases, before anyone catches on. I’ll guarantee that if a month after the famous McDonald’s hot coffee suit had been settled I’d followed suit (gratuitous pun), claiming I’d been mutilated for life due to hot coffee spilled in my lap, and even if I’d had video footage showing the kid at the window slinging the coffee, along with my fries and quarter-pounder, directly into my lap and then laughing maniacally, the judge would have decided that my case had no merit because it lacked originality. I’d have ruined a perfectly good pair of Levis, my car’s upholstery, and some of my own personal, private upholstery, for nothing.

A few years after the McDonald’s suit I got my hopes up, lawsuit-wise, when I heard rumors that another fast food restaurant, Wendy’s, was supplementing their hamburger meat with earthworms. A close acquaintance even told me she had some dear friends in Albertville who ran a “mom and pop worm farm” which provided a steady supply of farm-fed, domesticated worms to that fast food chain. I was fairly confident that I could detect those little worm parts in my double-stacker, photograph them right there in the restaurant, and then fall to the floor, clutching my throat and gurgling “Worm ... HORNK, HORNK .... WORM! It’s ALIVE!!! Gimme air ... GASP!”

All I had to do was get to court with the Wendy’s earthworm suit before anybody else did.

The problem there, of course, was that after I gave the worms-as-hamburger-helper scenario some serious thought, I realized that anyone who’s ever bought bait at any of the local marinas knows that a cup full of dirt, with a dozen or two red wigglers curled up in the bottom, costs way more than a whole pound of ground beef. There were no worms in Wendy’s burgers, and if I were to find one who’d lost his bearings and wound up in a burger, the good people at Wendy’s, recognizing the worm’s value in the local bait market, would have charged me extra for it. There was obviously no wormburger lawsuit in my future.

Another kind of lawsuit involves Lindsay Lohan, who believes she owns the name Lindsay, to the exclusion of anyone else, especially anyone else in the media. When the folks at E*Trade gave their popular talking baby commercial a second talking baby to keep talking baby number one company, and called her “Lindsay,” Ms. Lohan had a cow. By which we mean she brought a multi-million dollar suit against the company because, Senator Lindsey Graham, Bionic Woman Lindsay Wagner, former New York Mayor John Lindsay and George “Goober” Lindsey notwithstanding, Ms. Lohan was obviously the only Lindsay allowed to use the name.

Years before little Lindsay’s birth there was a lawsuit out there with my name on it–literally. A group called the Buoys used the name “Tim,” which was even in 1971 more or less my personal trademark, without my permission. If I’d had any sense, I’d have sued the group and their sadistic lyricist for their stupid song “Timothy.” The song told the plaintive story of three buddies who fell into a mine shaft and eventually got very hungry. And as luck would have it, my namesake apparently had more meat on his bones than the other two and was elected as the evening’s main course. At the end of the song, with morsels of Tim still stuck in his teeth, our protagonist wails: “Timothy, Timothy, Joe was looking at you. Timothy, Timothy, God what did we do?” Lindsay Lohan, HAH! Those people made a Happy Meal out of me, and left me with emotional distress, pain and suffering. I could be a millionaire today. But back then I hadn’t given lawsuits much thought. I was a dope.

Here are a couple more recent lawsuits which should give prospective sewers–er, suers, hope. The first is recounted by Thomas Zambito in a March 3rd edition of the New York Daily News. In his account, a Queens lady named Germaine Bowman McDonald is suing the Hollis store Baobob because while she was trying on a Diana Ross-style hairpiece the plastic Diana Ross head fell off the plastic Diana Ross torso and landed on Germaine’s left foot.

Now, according to her lawyer, the lady can no longer curl her left toes. This is devastating to the lady, and it is also devastating to her husband, Dean, who has filed a separate suit stating that he’s been denied sexual activity due to his wife’s inability to curl her left toes, which is apparently an integral part of their love-making ritual.

The last, and probably silliest, lawsuit was recently settled in Detroit for $100,000 plus a few minor concessions by the city. According to a March 7th On Point article by Matthew Heller, a city planner named Susan McBride sued the City of Detroit under the Americans With Disabilities Act when the city failed to accommodate her allergy after her complaints that her co-worker’s perfume made it hard for her to breathe. As part of that settlement, the city will post notices on its bulletin boards advising employees to:

“Refrain from wearing scented products, including but not limited to colognes, after-shave lotions, perfumes, deodorants, body/face lotions, hair sprays or similar products.”

So now, due to Ms. McBride’s nasal sensitivity, all of Detroit’s city employees will be skulking around the halls and holed up in their cubicles, stinking like a herd of wet goats crammed into a barn loft somewhere. And that, apparently, won’t affect her sensitive nose even one little bit.

They are all good, imaginative lawsuits, and I’d love to cash in on the craze. But unfortunately, the closest I’ll ever get to a lawsuit will be when some goatherders’ union decides to sue me for comparing their harmless goats to a bunch of litigious Detroit city employees.