truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled in November that the U.S. Department of Justice has for about 20 years blatantly denied attorneys overtime pay in violation of federal law, a practice the Department defended merely by arguing that it thought there ought to have been an exception in the law (which is an argument the Department usually scoffs at when filing its own lawsuits against lawbreakers). Court of Claims judge Robert H. Hodges Jr. said the Department apparently years ago simply declared itself immune from overtime-pay law for attorneys and has been maintaining two sets of time sheets (one for pay, one to track work on cases).

Homeless couple Darryl Washington and Maria Ramos were injured in 1992 when a train rammed them as they were having sex on a mattress on the tracks at a New York City subway station. The injuries were not severe, thanks to a quick-acting motorman. Nevertheless, the couple went on to file a lawsuit against the Transit Authority for "carelessness, recklessness and negligence." (The outcome of the lawsuit was not reported, but the couple's lawyer was, at the time, quite aggressive in justifying the filing: "Homeless people are allowed to have sex, too," he said.)

In early 1995, Chesapeake, Va., inmate Robert Lee Brock filed a $5 million lawsuit against Robert Lee Brock -- accusing himself of violating his own religious beliefs and his own civil rights by getting himself drunk enough to engage in the various crimes that put him behind bars. He wrote: "I want to pay myself five million dollars (for being made to suffer from this breach of rights) but ask the state to pay it in my behalf since I can't work and am a ward of the state." (The lawsuit was eventually dismissed.)

A pre-trial hearing was scheduled in February 1996 in Lamar, Mo., on Joyce Lehr's lawsuit against the county for injuries suffered in a 1993 fall in the icy, unplowed parking lot of the local high school. The Carthage Press reported that Lehr claimed damage to nearly every part of her body. According to her lawsuit: "All the bones, organs, muscles, tendons, tissues, nerves, veins, arteries, ligaments ... discs, cartilages, and the joints of her body were fractured, broken, ruptured, punctured, compressed, dislocated, separated, bruised, contused, narrowed, abraded, lacerated, burned, cut, torn, wrenched, swollen, strained, sprained, inflamed and infected."

A pre-trial hearing was scheduled in February 1996 in Lamar, Mo., on Joyce Lehr's lawsuit against the county for injuries suffered in a 1993 fall in the icy, unplowed parking lot of the local high school. The Carthage Press reported that Lehr claimed damage to nearly every part of her body. According to her lawsuit: "All the bones, organs, muscles, tendons, tissues, nerves, veins, arteries, ligaments ... discs, cartilages, and the joints of her body were fractured, broken, ruptured, punctured, compressed, dislocated, separated, bruised, contused, narrowed, abraded, lacerated, burned, cut, torn, wrenched, swollen, strained, sprained, inflamed and infected."