TRUTH.
In 1995, a Virginia prison inmate named Robert Lee Brock filed a federal lawsuit against himself. His argument, presented in a handwritten seven-page document, was as follows: by getting drunk on July 1st, 1993, he had caused himself to commit breaking and entering and grand larceny, thereby violating his own religious beliefs and civil rights. He wanted to pay himself $5 million in damages. Since he was in prison and had no income, he asked the state of Virginia to cover it.
Brock was serving a 23-year sentence at the Indian Creek Correctional Center in Chesapeake at the time. He was both the plaintiff and the defendant. His logic held that the drunk version of himself was a separate party who had wronged the sober version — and that version deserved compensation. "I am a failure as a husband, a Christian, a Cherokee and a prisoner," he wrote. He also promised to pay the money back once released.
Judge Rebecca Beach Smith dismissed the case as frivolous, but could not resist acknowledging its creativity: "Plaintiff has presented an innovative approach to civil rights litigation," she wrote in her ruling. The claim and the relief sought, she added, were "totally ludicrous."
The lawsuit was not Brock's first or last attempt to weaponize the legal system from behind bars. Court records show he filed 29 complaints in a single year, eventually prompting a judge to strip him of his right to litigate entirely, ruling that "none of Brock's allegations have ever been found by any court to have any merit." He also attempted, at one point, to renounce both his American and Virginia citizenship. When all else fails, just quit the country.
The case was dismissed. The argument, however, remains one of the more internally consistent pieces of legal reasoning ever produced inside a correctional facility.
