@TheRambles posted:UPDATE: this turned out to be false and an urban legend.
Haven't you heard about the burglar who sued for $500k because he was trapped in the garage of the house he broke into?
In the process of exiting a house he had just entered and burglarized, he found that his planned escape route through the garage was a dead end as the door opener would not function and he was unable to open the garage door. Turning back to re-enter the house, he found that the connecting door had locked behind him! He was forced to spend the next eight days with only a case of Pepsi and a bag of dry dog food.Mr. Dickson, upon regaining his freedom from the garage, filed a suit against the homeowner’s insurance company on the basis of his having suffered mental anguish during his unintended confinement. Incredibly, the jury determined that Mr. Dickson was to be paid $500,000 for his suffering.
Like many of these kinds of rumors, or "urban legends" that get started, this is fake. There are many of these kinds of made-up stories that float around. The vast majority of them are completely, or at least mostly, false, but people buy into them.
The urban legend Web site www.snopes.com (and there are others) has a good essay on the imaginary lawsuits, all of which it investigated and found to be false. The fake story posted above is one mentioned. In fact, with this particular urban myth, the local police confirmed that it had no record of any cases involving Terrence Dickson, the dog-food-eating burglar. It is completely made up.
