When I surmised yesterday that Michael Vick nemesis Jonathan Lee Riches might be “a lawsuit addict” (the ever pithy Nick Stone opted for “tinfoil hat wearing jailbird”), it appears I didn’t know the half of it. From The Smoking Gun (link swiped from Baseball Think Factory).
Riches, who is doing a decade in prison for fraud, is at it again, this time filing a loony–though quite funny–complaint again Barry Bonds, baseball commissioner Bud Selig, and Hank Aaron’s bat.
In his lawsuit, Riches weaves an intricate conspiracy theory involving television ratings, steroids, the cracking of the Liberty Bell, Colombian narco-terrorists, and secretly recorded conversations for which journalists Robert Novak and Judith Miller have transcripts.
Riches’ August 13 lawsuit, which he filed in U.S. District Court in Indiana, is the 17th federal complaint he has filed since January 2006. Imprisoned in South Carolina, Riches has filed his lawsuits in 15 separate federal jurisdictions, presumably moving state-to-state to avoid sanctions over the filing of frivolous actions.
Before anyone goes nuts over such blatant abuse of the legal system, consider that Riches has some history as a conceptual humorist. And with that kind of time on his hands, can you really blame him?