Woody Allen once told a joke about a man suing another man for bruises on his hand inflicted by repeated blows on the defendant's jaw.
Life has again imitated art, in Chicago. One Melanie Shaker was walking home with her husband after an evening out. They fell into a row on the way home. Melanie lost her temper, kicked out at her husband, fell through a beauty salon window, and suffered reasonably severe injuries. Did Melanie accept that the injuries were her fault and slink off quietly into the background? No, she decided to sue the shop owner for having a window insufficiently strong to "prevent injuries from those coming into contact with it including (intoxicated) pedestrians". She seeks $50,000 from (respectively) the owner of the building, the company that lease the building, and the owners of the land on which the plot stands. If Miss Shaker succeeds, then I know of a friend of mine who will be using her case as precedent to argue that a leading supermarket should compensate my friend for placing a pillar in the supermarket car park at the exact spot into which my friend happened to be reversing.....
