truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

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 November, some African-American leaders in Danville, Ill., complained when eight black players were cut from the Danville High School basketball team at once, charging that the coach was engaging in "racial profiling" by, in the words of a black pastor, "(taking) a look at the way the young men wore their hair." The coach pointed out that though all the dismissed players are black, so are all eight retained players, and that two of the retained players wore the same style braids to which the pastor was referring.

In Lonnell Worthy's lawsuit against Bank of America, filed in November in California, Worthy values his now-ruined iPod playlist at $1 trillion.

Veteran Massachusetts thief Robert Aldrich applied for compensation because his latest arrest happened to have been illegal, and a state law permits recovery for lost income during wrongful incarceration. However, in November, a Suffolk County judge turned him down as she was unable to find any "income" that Aldrich might have earned during his six wrongful months in jail except from more burglaries or for home-improvement money that Aldrich admitted he earned "off the books" so as to evade taxes.

Christina Downs, 24, of Portsmouth, N.H., mounted a full-blown defense to the speeding ticket (44 mph in a 25 mph zone) she received in 2007 (even though the officer said Downs had arrogantly sped off again immediately afterward and had to be stopped a second time). Acting as her own lawyer, Downs filed motions and at a trial, put the officer through a meticulous, 96-point cross-examination about such matters as work schedule, training, engineering studies of road speeds, radar technology, weather conditions, traffic flow, and the use of a tuning fork to calibrate the radar device. The judge ruled against her, and in October 2008, the state Supreme Court ordered her to pay the $100 ticket.