"If you allow it for Mr. Davis, you allow it for Ms. Adams, Mr. Jones and everyone else."

So said the Stevenson, Alabama city attorney "adding that this was the most protracted litigation in the city since a case a few years ago involving something about pigs."

From a long NYT article about a man who buried his wife in his front yard.

"The onslaught of litigation brought by 'patent trolls'..."

"... who typically buy up a slew of patents, then sue anyone and everyone who might be using or selling the claimed inventions — has slowed the development of new products, increased costs for businesses and consumers, and clogged our judicial system...."

Because they don’t manufacture products, they need not fear a counterclaim for infringing some other patent. They need not be concerned with reputation in the marketplace or with their employees being distracted from business, since litigation is their business.

AND: Here's an excellent episode of "This American Life" about patent "trolls":

Beauty pageant contestant ordered to pay Donald Trump $5 million.

Former Miss Pennsylvania Sheena Monnin inopportunely asserted that the Miss USA pageant was "rigged."

"I’m a very upstanding person with a crystal clear reputation."

Said the real-and-fake antiques dealer. "People believe what they want to believe."

Lawsuit for $1.2 million brought by a man named Butt, who learned his Faberge egg wasn't real at an Antiques Roadshow event.

"The attorney who said he would sue the state of Connecticut for $100 million after the Newtown school shooting is withdrawing his potential lawsuit..."

"... at least for now."

Irving Pinsky, who said Saturday he was filing the suit as a way to improve school safety, told the Connecticut Post that he’s received new information about security at Sandy Hook Elementary School and wants to review it....

"We all know its going to happen again," Pinsky said last week. "Society has to take action."

Oh, Irving. Lawyers and their motives. What have you added to our thinking on the subject?

"Animal activists have been attacking our family, our company, and our employees for decades because they oppose animals in circuses."

"These defendants attempted to destroy our family-owned business with a hired plaintiff who made statements that the court did not believe.... This settlement is a vindication not just for the company but also for the dedicated men and women who spend their lives working and caring for all the animals with Ringling Bros. in the face of such targeted, malicious rhetoric."

The ASPCA pays $9.3 million to get out of this case, which continues against the other defendants, the Humane Society of the United States, the Fund for Animals, Animal Welfare Institute, Animal Protection Institute United with Born Free USA, various lawyers, and a former Ringling employee named Tom Rider.

"British paper sues Lance Armstrong for $1.5m over lost libel action."

"Sunday Times paid now-disgraced cyclist $485,000 in 2006 over claims that he had taken performance-enhancing drugs."

That reminds me of this news item from The Des Moines Register, June 18, 1959, reprinted in Bill Bryson's "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir" (p. 106):

A high court jury awarded entertainer Liberace 8,000 pounds ($22,400) damages Wednesday in a libel suit against the London Daily Mirror. The jurors decided after 3½ hours of deliberation that a story in 1956 by Mirror journalist William N. Connor implied that the pianist was a homosexual. Among the phrases Liberace cited in his suit was Connor’s description of him as “everything he, she or it can want.” He also described the entertainer as “fruit-flavored.”