truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Helene de Gier filed a lawsuit earlier this year against the National Postcode Lottery of the Netherlands, claiming emotional distress from not winning, even though she never entered. That particular lottery picks a geographic postal code at random and awards prizes to all of its residents who have entered that lottery. Since so many of her neighbors were flaunting prizes, she felt particularly tormented, she says. (Seven people on her street won the equivalent of about $18 million each, according to a June Associated Press dispatch.)

Wheaton, Ill., lawyer Donald Ramsell sued Geneva, Ill., lawyer Douglas Warlick in June, demanding that Warlick continue to sell him "his" two of the four season tickets to Chicago Bears games they had split since 1985 but which Ramsell suspected Warlick might keep for himself this year. Warlick complained to the Chicago Tribune in June that Ramsell had never contacted him but just filed his lawsuit out of the blue. Said Ramsell, "The courthouse is where you go when you have a dispute."

Lawyer Charles Curbo filed a motion in Memphis, Tenn., in June, claiming that his client, Tony Wolfe, who was convicted of murder, failed to get a fair trial due to the ineffectiveness of Wolfe's lawyer (i.e., Curbo) because the lawyer was often too sleepy to do a good job. However, the prosecutor pointed out that part of Curbo's strategy had been to "wear down" witnesses "by extensive cross-examination" and that it was no wonder that he was exhausted.

(1) William R. Cohen filed a $1 million lawsuit in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in May against a family after their Jack Russell terrier bit his left nipple, causing him (according to the lawsuit) medical expenses, loss of income, pain, disfigurement, and "loss of sexual comfort and desire." (2) In June, Ronald Barrett, 68, a longtime school administrator in Bucks County, Pa., was suspended after he punched a 15-year-old student who had touched his chest. Barrett said there had been a long-running problem of boys at the school engaging in "titty-twisting," and Barrett said, "I didn't want anyone touching my nipple."

(1) In lawsuit-friendly Madison County, Ill., (termed "the promised land" by some trial lawyers), a judge awarded $311,700 to Amanda Verett for a long series of painful injuries that her courtroom- veteran chiropractor has been treating. Verett said she was holding a door open at a Pizza Hut when an employee pulled it open even more, and calamitous shoulder, arm, and hand injuries ensued. (2) In a more straightforward settlement upstate in Chicago, Joyce Walker was awarded $4,110 in May for a workplace injury when she hurt her knee in a hospital restroom after slipping on a banana peel.

In a more traditional settlement upstate in Chicago, Joyce Walker was awarded $4,110 in May for a workplace injury when she hurt her knee in a hospital restroom after slipping on a banana peel.