I’ll see you in court, you rotten bastard.
Look, people are assholes. Sometimes, those assholes suffer from an extreme form of mental illness. But then again, being an asshole could certainly qualify as some sort of mental illness in and of itself, who are we kidding?
One of the easiest ways to determine the difference between being a plain old asshole and being mentally ill is to see what someone is willing to sue someone else for.
In the case of 62-year-old Anton Purisima of New York City, the line between asshole and insane are blurred beyond belief. Purisima, for reasons that defy explanation, primarily because he can’t be found for comment, filed a massive suit in Manhattan federal court seeking damages against New York, NYC Transit, Au Bon Pain (a chain cafe), two local hospitals, Kmart, someone he described as a “Latina” dog owner and pretty much any and everyone else who ever bothered to say hello to him, in the amount of, and get this:
Two undecillion dollars. What does that look like in numeral form?
$2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
That’s right, two with 36 zeros. In case you were wondering, that is more money than exists currently in the whole entire world, and Anton Purisima wants every red cent.
To show the court his level of seriousness, Purisima filed his lawsuit scribbled on a piece of paper, while also making the crucial decision to represent himself in court as his own counsel, which has a tremendous track record of ending in victory. Here’s a list of the grievances that he feels should make him the the richest man in the universe:
- Civil rights violations
- Personal Injury
- Discrimination on national origin
- Retaliation
- Harassment
- Fraud
- Attempted murder
- Intentional infliction of emotional distress
- Conspiracy to defraud
These damages stem from a variety of claims, ranging from an infected middle finger (heh) that came as a result of being bitten by a dog he called “rabies-infected” to a “Chinese couple” who made the mistake of taking his picture at a hospital.
His pain and suffering has been so great from all these indignities that there’s really no dollar amount that can truly satisfy his grievance, referring to his damages as “priceless”.
Oh, before I forget, another way to tell the difference between an asshole and one who’s certifiably insane might also entail knowing the difference between “priceless” and “worthless”.