truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Richard Timmons's $80 million police brutality lawsuit went to trial in April in New York City, with Timmons acting as his own lawyer to persuade a jury that he deserved to be a rich man because he was "beat[en] continuously" during his 1997 arrest. The jury turned him down after a quick deliberation, perhaps in part because his crime (for which he was convicted) was a triple murder that included the beheading of his wife and 7-year-old son.

Not My Fault: In Cleveland in March, John Struna won his lawsuit against a convenience store owner who had sold him Ohio Lottery tickets, claiming that the man ought to have explained a Lottery rule to him (even though the rules are printed on every ticket). Struna had bought 52 tickets playing the same numbers in a game that pays $100,000 per winning ticket, but somehow he never noticed that the payout would be capped at $1 million, meaning that his 52 winning tickets would be worth only $19,230 each. Despite being a heavy lottery player (spending $125,000 a year), Struna said it was up to the store owner to explain that rule to him, and the jury agreed.

On the morning of July 7, 2001, a vandal tossed detergent into the fountain in Canal Park in Duluth, Minn., producing a massive, continuing mountain of bubbles. About four hours later, Kathy J. Kelly, walking by the still-foamy mound, failed to steer clear-enough, fell on the soap-slippery sidewalk, and suffered several injuries including, eventually, gangrene. She sued the city for not having cleaned the fountain or roped off the area. In March 2004, a jury ruled in her favor, finding that 30 percent of the fault was hers for getting too close but that 70 percent was the city's. (Jurors were not allowed to assess the fault of the original vandal.)

In March, a court in Ansbach, Germany, turned down a challenge by a 43-year-old unemployed man to the government's denial of benefits stemming from his temporary separation from his wife, who is in her native Thailand. He claimed that since she could not afford to return to Germany, the government should pay for the travel, and since it refused to do that, it should pay him for at least four visits a month to a prostitute, plus an allowance to buy condoms, pornography, and an appliance to aid masturbation.

In February, freelance photographer Robert Levin filed a $50 million lawsuit against the Waste Management company for the injuries (including brain damage) he suffered while trying to take photographs at New York City's Ground Zero in December 2001. Levin had surreptitiously climbed atop one of the company's garbage trucks to get a better vantage point when the driver pulled away, causing Levin to fall, which Levin now says showed Waste Management's "failure to respect [my] rights as a pedestrian."

A Nation of Wimps: Donald Johnson sued a West Palm Beach, Fla., Shoney's restaurant for $55,000 because he thought its clam chowder was potato soup, and the chowder left him with nightmares; in January, he won $407 in damages.