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Environmental Hazard

Transports Schiocchet Excursions, a French bus company, is suing a group of maids for unfair competition because they stopped taking the bus and started carpooling to work. Damages requested? €2 million. And confiscation of their cars. An early draft of the pleadings probably required that the women be hobbled.

The United States has a reputation for out-of-control litigation. The reputation is mostly an illusion fostered by insurance companies to control costs and raise rates, but it is certainly the conventional wisdom. To maintain the fiction, every year a list of fake lawsuits and verdicts makes the email rounds. And none of it is as stupid as this. The carpool case is so crazy that I have to believe that it was invented by a French tort-reform advocate just to include in a fundraising newsletter.

Logically, the next suit will be against anyone who doesn't work along the route, demanding that they change employment in order to support the company.

(via Catch)