It's Here: The First Stupid Lawsuit of '09!

Elderly Ohio woman arrested for confiscating a kid's ball is suing her neighbors

The new Great Depression may put a swift end to spending, mortgages, jobs, ice cream, ponies, and the happiness of all mankind, but you know what just keeps chugging along like the Energizer Bunny? Stupid, hair-trigger litigiousness! Totally impervious to recession!

The first notable stupid-lawsuit item of the new year comes to us from Blue Ash, Ohio, where an 88-year-old woman (or is she 89? Make up your mind, Ohio.com) -- whose neighbors had her arrested for theft after she refused to return a football that their kid kept flinging into her yard -- is now suing said neighbors because the whole thing has caused her "emotional distress."

The boy's parents are worried because they have five kids and can't afford a lawyer (maybe they should have thought of this when they had their elderly neighbor frogmarched down to the Blue Ash precinct over a football? Just saying).

And they probably should be worried, because 1) if there's one thing 88- (or 89-)year-olds have nothing but time and energy for, it's holding petty grudges, and 2) the plaintiff's name is Edna Jester, so you just know she's a tenacious bundle of crochety old-lady business like that upstairs neighbor in the awful Ben Stiller/Drew Barrymore real-estate "comedy" Duplex.

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