Lawsuit Happy

Every day while I eat lunch, I go to my "My Yahoo" page to read my web comics and catch up on a bit of news. Including news of the weird. Today's top story?

Woman loses in court after losing lottery

You can click on the link for the full story, but the summary tells it all:
A Dutch woman has lost her compensation claim for mental distress she suffered from missing out when her neighbors won a lottery windfall

Really makes you shake your head at people today, doesn't it? And how they'll sue over anything. Ah well, keeps the lawyers busy, I suppose ;-)

Anyway-- it got me thinking. If a woman can try to sue for "mental distress" just because she neglected to buy the winning lottery ticket, does this mean that I can do likewise?

Most of my readers know, but for those of you who don't: I'm a moderator at a games/community site called grab.com. If you're reading this, chances are you're no stranger to the wonderful world of community message boards, and the joy that trolls and flame wars bring about. Grab.com is stricter than most forum sites, in an effort to keep it a clean, family-friendly site. So as you can imagine, there's no shortage of fun for its moderators :-P

For some reason the really big headaches decided to explode all at the same time within this past couple of weeks. RPGers taking their little role-playing a little too seriously, folks taking flame wars WAY too personally, and of course, the usual rebels against authority. It's been one thing after another, seemingly nonstop. As Lisa and I once mused, we should collect stories of all the dramas we've ever encountered on the site, and sell them to television networks as soap operas. Because-- I kid you not-- you could not make some of this shit up! The things people get carried away over!!

So yeah... if we can't strike it rich selling our stories to TV producers, maybe we can strike it rich by filing a lawsuit for our "mental distress". What do you think? ;-)

(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/279036252)