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from the looking-for-really-REALLY-good-bodyguards dept.
What is the largest lawsuit ever filed?
Did you guess Apple v. Samsung? SCO taking over the world? Not even close!
This is Anton Purisima v. Au Bon Pain Store, Carepoint Health, Hoboken University Medical Center, Kmart Store 7749, St. Luke's Emergency Dept., New York City Transit Authority, City of New York, NYC MTA, LaGuardia Airport Administration, Amy Caggiula, and Does 1-1000. Case No. 1:14 CV 2755 (S.D.N.Y. filed 4/11/2014).
What did the defendants allegedly do? "Civil rights violations, personal injury, discrimination on national origin, retaliation, harassment, fraud, attempted murder, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and conspiracy to defraud. $2,000 decillion ($2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)", not including punitive damages.
Randall Munroe's What If? analyzed exactly how much money that is, and how it could be repaid (I especially like this answer in the forums). Might just have set the new record for the Biggest Known Demand!
It's the weekend and a slow news day, so here's an opportunity to let your imagination run wild. What suggestions do you have for the plaintiff and/or defendants?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Nerdanel on Saturday May 17 2014, @04:02PM
Assuming that the defendant somehow lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay all the money (which won't happen, but we're speaking hypothetically here) AND that the debt will get paid somehow instead of Au Bon Pain just becoming bankrupt... It turns out that that's kind of possible and doesn't even require more material wealth than exists of planet Earth to pull it off.
The scenario: The US government decides that Au Bon Pain is too delicious to fail and comes to the rescue. They generously choose to give the company a gift of 2 undecillion US dollars, created by the Federal Reserve just for this purpose. The person who sued the company is now the richest person on Earth - for a little while, as there is still something the US government can do, given enough political will and unity, which there must have been for the situation having gotten to this point.
The government will arrange a switch to a new currency. Old dollars on people's bank accounts will be exchanged for New Dollars, but only up to a limit. If the switch is made a microsecond after the person who sued the company gets the money, there won't be enough time to convert those dollars into something else like the pre-existing rich people would have done after learning about the currency switch.
And thus Au Bon Pain is saved while the US economy suffers but isn't completely obliterated. While they're at it, the US could use the currency switch to wipe out the national debt too, at the cost of making the new currency weaker for it.