CURIOSITYPeople Have Sued God a Monkey and Their Own Kidneys and Here Is How It Went4 min read

The Man Who Blamed Jordan for His Face

Allen Heckard had what most people would call a flattering problem. Strangers kept mistaking him for Michael Jordan. Heckard, an Oregon man with no Basketball Hall of Fame credentials whatsoever, found it unbearable. In 2006, he sued.

The targets were Jordan himself and Nike co-founder Phil Knight — the two men Heckard held responsible for making Jordan’s face one of the most recognized on earth. His filing claimed that at “whatever public functions he attend,” people harassed him “on a daily base” about the resemblance. His demand: $52 million from Jordan, $52 million from Knight, and $364 million in punitive damages from each. He later dropped the whole thing without explanation. A Nike spokesperson offered one anyway: Heckard had probably realized he’d owe their court costs if he lost at trial.

The Kidney That Came With Terms

In 2001, Richard Batista gave his wife Dawnell one of his kidneys. She needed it. He gave it. Whatever warmth surrounded that moment was gone by 2005, when the Long Island couple began a bruising divorce and Richard made a demand no family court had ever fielded: give back the kidney. Or write him a check for $1.5 million.

His reasoning was that Dawnell had started an affair within two years of the transplant, effectively voiding the gift. Nassau County Supreme Court arbiter Jeffrey Grob shut it down in July 2009.

“While the term ‘marital property’ is elastic and expansive … its reach, in this court’s view, does not stretch into the ethers and embrace … human tissues or organs.”

The kidney stayed. So did Dawnell.