Whenever a frivolous or ridiculous lawsuit is allowed to move forward through the court system, we ask ourselves why the judge didn’t toss it at the beginning. Well a judge in New York has taken a welcome but all-too-rare stand and dismissed a questionable class action lawsuit, writing that a plaintiff’s claim assumes that consumers have reached “a level of stupidity” that the court cannot accept.
It all started back in 2010, with a New York woman looking for tickets to a Yankees game at their new stadium. The team’s website redirected her to StubHub.com, an online marketplace that connects people who want to buy tickets with ticket resellers. The woman bought 6 tickets to a game for $33 each, plus $24.75 in service charges. She later found out that the tickets had a face value of $20 each.
So she filed a lawsuit against the Yankees, StubHub, and eBay (StubHub’s parent company), alleging unfair business practices and demanding that resellers publish the price of the tickets.
The court quickly dismissed the team from the suit, finding that they cannot be held liable when a third-party resells a ticket.
The judge also dismissed the deceptive practices claim against StubHub, noting that every single webpage “included a disclaimer that ‘You are buying tickets from a third party; neither StubHub.com nor StubHub, Inc. is the ticket seller.’” He added that “if a consumer is forced to pay more than face value for a Yankees ticket, it is due to the economic forces of supply and demand, not StubHub's business practices.”
Kudos to the judge for holding customers to a basic level of intelligence, and boo to the plaintiff and her lawyer for announcing that they intend to appeal and take another swing.
Is this the most ridiculous lawsuit of the month? Or is it one of these other nominees?
· The woman who sued after she hurt herself fleeing from a puppy· The lawsuit filed by a husband after his drunken wife caused a deadly traffic accident
· The woman who sued her “boyfriend” after their Facebook “relationship” ended
· The prison that was sued for banning pornography
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