Haunted houses, horror movies, and gory costumes can scare most people, but there’s one thing more terrifying than all of them put together: lawsuits. What happens when you combine all these frightening things and lawsuits? Blood-curdling terror, the likes of which you’ve never seen, that’s what. Here are five spooky Halloween lawsuits that are bound to keep you up at night.
- Grave Consequences (Purtell v. Mason)
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In Chicago in 2008, several neighbors complained about the motorhome in the Purtell family’s driveway. This was suburbia and the neighbors thought that the 38-foot vehicle was an eyesore for those who came into the neighborhood.
The Purtells did not take kindly to these complaints and around Halloween put a fake graveyard in their front lawn with different gravestones. Each had address numbers and name references to complaining neighbors. Here’s what one of the gravestones said: “Bette wasn’t ready, / But here she lies / Ever since that night she died,/ 12 feet deep in this trench,/ Still wasn’t deep enough/ For that wenches stench!/ 1690.”
The neighbors felt threatened by this makeshift graveyard decoration and called the police. Unlucky Officer Mason had to assess the situation and decided he was within his legal rights to remove the decorations because of the veiled threats. The Purtells took Officer Mason to court saying his removal of the decorations violated their First Amendment right to free speech and their Fourth Amendment right to not have their property unduly seized.
The presiding judge was very upset that this case even made it to court in the first place; the court ruled in favor of Officer Mason.
- a bloody copyright battle (Nosferatu vs. Dracula)
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Do you remember the hash-slinging-slasher episode of SpongeBob? At the very end of it, an uncanny vampire is seen on screen flickering the lights to the chagrin of SpongeBob and Squidward, who say without explanation, “Nosferatu!” As a child, I never knew who that monster was or why he was in SpongeBob. Okay, frankly, I still don’t know why he was in SpongeBob — but here’s who Nosferatu is!
Nosferatu was the star of a 1920s silent film, Nosferatu, that took heavy inspiration from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. While the opening credits of Nosferatu give thanks to Dracula for inspiration, no actual adaptation rights were purchased from Stoker’s estate. Stoker’s widow took issue with Nosferatu and waged a lawsuit battle in German courts that would last for years. The company that produced Nosferatu ended up not paying the amount that the court awarded Stoker’s estate, so all copies of the film were set to be destroyed by German authorities and the public was warned about legal ramifications for owning or screening the film.
The original negatives of the film were destroyed, along with almost every copy. However, prolific French archivist Henri Langlois saved a copy of the film. He is the sole reason that we can see the film today. The films are now deemed markedly different from one another and therefore, the prior art of Dracula bears no legal grounds to prevent the distribution of Nosferatu. Dracula may have won the battle, but Nosferatu won the war.Â
- reese’s in pieces (kelly v. the hershey company)
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This is a case you can follow in real-time. On May 17, 2024, The Russo Firm filed a class action lawsuit on Cynthia Kelly’s behalf. The legal question at hand: is the way that Hershey’s advertises its seasonal Reese’s candies too misleading? If you look at the way the packages and official Reese’s Instagram advertisements portray the ghost and jack-o-lantern, it looks like there’s a cutout for the mouth and eyes. However, the actual candy has no cutout, and the chocolate layer completely covers the entire candy. There is nothing suggesting the design advertised except the general shape of the chocolate.
This case is active and if you want, you can try to join the class action lawsuit for yourself. Whether or not this truly constitutes false advertising is still up in the air, but if you have a receipt for purchasing this candy you can make your mark on legal history in the making and join the class action suit.
- The Scariest thing in this haunted house was…cinder blocks? (mays v. gretna athletic boosters inc.)
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In 1999, Greta Athletic Boosters organized a haunted house on a playground to raise money for a youth sports team in Louisiana. On the fateful night of Oct. 29, 1999, 10-year-old Deborah Mays willingly paid entry and entered the haunted house. While she was inside, Mays was terrified by the attractions and darkness of the haunted house. She was so startled that she panicked and ran to find an exit out of the house. The poor little girl then ran into a cinder block wall covered with black fabric and broke her nose.
Mays had to have two surgeries to fix her nose and her parents sued for a remedy from Gretna Athletic Boosters. So, this begs the question, was the covered cinder block wall too dangerous to have in a haunted house? The final answer was delivered to us by Louisiana’s Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals: No. A haunted house is expected to be frightening and part of maintaining that scariness is covering up walls; there was no additional safety risk posed by the house and therefore no remedy for Mays could be offered.
- F(lamb)able costume (ferlito v. johnson & johnson products inc.)
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In October 1984, Susan Ferlito was making a couples costume for herself and her husband Frank: Mary and her little lamb. To make her husband’s lamb costume she used an undersuit and batting, or cotton stuffing, produced by Johnson & Johnson to put on the exterior of the costume.Â
When the couple went out to a Halloween party, Frank Ferlito attempted to light a cigarette while covered head to toe in his cotton batting lamb costume. Unfortunately, as he was igniting the cigarette the flame caught on his left arm and then spread to other parts of his costume rapidly. In the end, one-third of Mr. Ferlito’s body had moderate burns on it.
For these burns, the couple sued Johnson & Johnson for failing to put a flammability warning on their cotton batting package. They argued that it posed an undue danger to consumers. From this initial suit, a jury determined Johnson & Johnson was 50 percent to blame for the burns and rewarded the couple a whopping $625,000. However, on appeal, the motion was made invalid. The court stated that it was reasonable to expect cotton to be flammable by nature and a warning was not necessary.Â
Remember to be safe and abide by the law this Halloween…or you might end up like the sorry folks on this list!
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