From the title of this post, you might assume I’m writing about a particularly terrible sitcom debuting on network television next fall about a wacky prisoner and his scuffles with the curmudgeonly-yet-kind warden. Not the case, thank goodness. Instead, this is a real-life story, and one that’s bound to make you…react. I hate to say “laugh,” because our senses of humor are all different, but what follows will at least raise an eyebrow. But if you’re like me, you’ll be rolling on the floor, existing in that fragile state between laughter and death.
This column has covered the idea of gut-splitting material before. As people get older, particularly people who consume a lot of comedy, those belly laughs are fewer and farther between. It’s not that we enjoy comedy any less, only that with exposure it takes more to surprise us. And surprise, of course, is the root of comedy. I can count on one hand how often I’ve experienced that glorious uncontrolled laughter in the past couple years. There was K-Strass, the yo-yo guy. There was Bad Lip Reading. There was that guy who did the missing cat posters (Google “Missing Missy”). Each time, when it’s over, I get that panicky feeling that it won’t happen again, that nothing else can top what came before and I’m doomed to spend the rest of my life just grinning at things.
I was wrong again. “Uhh Yeah Dude,” an absolutely indispensable comedy podcast hosted by Jonathan Laroquette (son of the actor) and Seth Romatelli, introduced me to Jonathan Lee Riches in an episode earlier this year. The story begins in 2003, when Riches, then 26, was arrested for wire fraud and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Since then, he’s been filing the most insane, unbelievable lawsuits almost around the clock. Federal inmates have free access to legal services, and so when Riches gets out of prison this April, the flow will likely dry up. But in that time, he’s created a rich legacy of frivolous litigation that will likely never be surpassed. He’s filed so many lawsuits (anywhere from 4-6 thousand, depending on who you believe) that the Guinness Book of World Records named him the world’s most litigious man. Riches’ response, of course, was to sue them.
Uhh Yeah Dude gave the bare-bones details in a quick segment, but I was intrigued. I spent hours reading about Riches’ lawsuits from the past decade (all handwritten, incidentally), and it was a process of hilarity and amazement. Here are the incredible highlights. All quotes from Riches are (sic).
• In 2010, he sought a restraining order against NBA players Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, along with owners Mark Cuban, Jerry Reinsdorf and Jerry Buss, because he faced “imminent danger and bodily harm.” “Carmelo Anthony told me he is going to kill me,” the suit began. Riches claimed he was a former boyfriend of Anthony’s, that the two met at a Baltimore YMCA, and that Riches committed wire fraud to finance Anthony’s basketball career. “I used stolen credit cards to get him GNC vitamins and enimas to flush out his toxins.” He goes on to say, among so many other things, that Mark Cuban assaulted him at a Dairy Queen and that Jerry Buss sold him his wife on E-bay and promised him a janitor job with the Lakers when he got out of prison.
• In 2007, he sued both Coke and Pepsi for defamation, alleging that they used his name in advertising. This was my favorite excerpt: “Defendants placed a billboard on I-95 10 miles North of South of the Border with my face on it drinking Coca-Cola in one hand and Pepsi Cola in the other. It Advertised the words “It’s so tastey, Even Jonathan Lee Riches drinks it.”