Greg's Corner

Overly abusive litigant sues man for $30K over $40 printer

In case you needed another reason to only do online transactions locally, comes this story out of Massachusetts, and Indiana.

in 2009 a Massachusetts man sold a used printer to a man from Indiana for $40. This was done through an online classifieds site that has a reputation for attracting people who may be, to put it politely, not all there. The man from Indiana is said to allegedly be one of those people. He is 54-year-old Gersh Zavodnik of Indianapolis who makes his living off of what some may describe as frivolous lawsuits. The Indiana Supreme Court is so familiar with him that he is sometimes called a “prolific, abusive litigant.”

Mr. Zavodnik is suing the Massachusetts man for $30,000 claiming breach of contract because the printer allegedly did not work. This case has bounced around in courts for so long that the seller of the printer has racked up $12,000 in legal fees from fending off Mr. Zavodnik’s legal attacks. The case could be dismissed later this year, then again with some of the stranger lawsuits that have happened in the past, it might not be.

If you’re selling something relatively inexpensive and innocuous and someone from halfway across the country offers to buy it, when it’s obviously something that they could buy in their own region, you may want to question their reasons before ending up in a mess like this.