truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Former Kansas City Royals coach Tom Gamboa filed a lawsuit in September against a fan who attacked him during a September 2002 baseball game in Chicago, and also against the ballpark's (U.S. Cellular Field's) security firm and its concessionaire. (The lawsuit was filed despite the fact that, several days after the initial attack, Gamboa had told the Associated Press, "The fault is with the two people [the fan and his minor son] who did it. I'm not one who looks to [spread] blame. It's nobody's fault but the two idiots who did it.")

Crises in the Workplace: In August, computer technician Goran Andervass received the equivalent of US$100,000 as settlement of his wrongful-firing lawsuit against Riksbanken, the Swedish national bank, over a 2001 incident that began when a colleague, meeting with him in his Stockholm office, ostentatiously passed gas. Andervass became very upset and started shouting at the man. Supervisors cautioned Andervass, who began a downward emotional spiral and began to take abundant sick leave, leading to further sanctions and eventually to his dismissal.

Former Australian inmate Craig Ballard won a settlement of his lawsuit in September for the equivalent of about US$70,000 against the Grafton Correctional Centre in New South Wales for head injuries that occurred when he fell out of a bunk bed. Ballard was in prison for a vicious assault against a woman.

Kevin Presland was awarded about the equivalent of US$150,000 by a judge in Sydney, Australia, in August because the Hunter Area Health Service psychiatric hospital released him too soon in 1995, after which he killed his brother's fiancee. This was not a lawsuit by the victim's family against the hospital; this was a direct payout to Presland, whose injury was that he was made to suffer temporary prison conditions after his arrest (he was acquitted because of his psychosis), whereas if he had never been released, he would have experienced only psychiatric-hospital conditions.

Recent Alarming Headlines: (1) "Westchester Ordered to Pay $2,500 to Pedophile Clown" (an August New York Times story about clown Richard Hobbs's winning a lawsuit against a county that had tried to keep him out of a public park). (2) "Champion Liar Accused of Cheating" (a November London Evening Standard report that this year's winner of the World's Biggest Liar contest in Cumbria, England, read from a script instead of extemporaneously lying).

Former policeman George Gilfillan won the equivalent of about $155,000 in an Edinburgh, Scotland, court in August against a widower for a neck injury he suffered when his patrol car collided with the widower's late wife's car, which had gotten in the way of Gilfillan's pursuit of a drunk driver. Gilfallan won the money even though the judge said he was going too fast and even though part of the money was for Gilfallan's "depression" over witnessing the woman die.