truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Elizabeth Shelton, 21, filed a lawsuit in Houston in December against the truck driver that she accidentally rear-ended in a 2007 crash, while she was intoxicated, and in which her boyfriend was killed. Though she was convicted of manslaughter, she is now suing for $20,000 damage to her Lexus SUV and for "pain and suffering," basing her claim on the fact that the blameless driver she hit was uninsured. In all, her lawsuit names 16 defendants, including insurance companies and banks. Shelton is the daughter of a state court judge.

More than 130 lawsuits were filed in November and December by inmates at a state prison in Beaumont, Texas, who claimed to suffer psychological trauma because prison officials failed to prepare them well for Hurricane Ike, which hit the city in September.

Two customers who lined up for the 5 a.m. November "Black Friday" opening at the Long Island, N.Y., Wal-Mart (in which a worker was crushed to death) filed lawsuits against the store because of the crowd's unruliness. Fritz Mesadieu, 51, and son Jonathan, 19, said they got neck and back pain from the surge of customers and that their medical and legal expenses amounted to at least $2 million.

In October, a man unnamed in news reports filed a lawsuit in Selkirk, Manitoba, against the woman who supposedly caused him mental distress by suing for child support. The man said he had been sound asleep during that 2006 encounter, but awoke to discover the woman having sex with him. He ordered her to "cease and desist," he said, and she complied (but nonetheless, a pregnancy resulted).

With lawsuits piling up on Bank of America during the current economic downturn, Dalton Chiscolm found a new angle. In September, he sued the bank in federal court in New York City for inadequate customer service concerning his checks' routing numbers and asked for damages of "1,784 billion, trillion dollars" plus an additional "$200,164,000." Judge Denny Chin gave Chiscolm 30 days to better explain his complaint but dismissed it finally on Oct. 23. (BBC News reported that the first amount, which is 1,784 followed by 21 zeros, is more money than exists on the planet.)

Meanwhile, in Michigan, Scott Zeilinski, who is serving eight years in prison for armed robbery, filed a lawsuit against the store he had robbed because an employee (whom Zeilinski had just threatened with a knife to the throat) had pulled out his gun and shot Zeilinski.