Trumbull Island

Everyone loves a good list. Although Brett Barrouquere of the Associated Press reported that Jonathan Lee Riches ©, the most litigious man in history, has filed more than 3,800 lawsuits, the AP and many other news outlets have confused the number of PACER case locator entries under Jonathan’s name for actual lawsuits. Not all of these filings are lawsuits, although the majority of them are. Appeals, interventions, and other tricky legal filings are represented by this figure. And now, thanks to our team of data-molesting code monkeys, we are proud to present a dynamic (and accurate) table that will allow the world to admire Jonathan’s work in a way that gives some greater, more factual perspective on how monumental it is.

In order to understand just why Jonathan files as many as four lawsuits a day, it is necessary to turn to the man’s correspondence. In a letter dated Jun 8, 2010, responding to a question we asked about his interest in graffiti, Jonathan wrote, “I was never into graffiti, but it’s interesting that you say that, because I consider my interventions and lawsuits akin to a spray paint tagger as I leave a forever mark on people’s docket”. He went on: “I have a vision of real spray paint taggers from every major city going about and spraying Jonathan Lee Riches.com everywhere, to get the name out there, this will also include a bombardment of spam in peoples’ inboxes and telephone call recordings. Your phone rings, you pick up, it says ‘Google Jonathan Lee Riches’ — that sort of thing.”

After pranking the U.S. Justice System for most of the naughts, federal prosecutors fired back at Jonathan last week with a lawsuit of their own, in which they propose to “…allow the federal Bureau of Prisons to screen Riches’ outgoing mail or to designate a federal court employee to determine if the legal filings are frivolous and stop the mail from being sent.” As an inmate, Jonathan would be thrown into solitary on grounds of the annoyance his incoming and outgoing mail created for federal prison employees.

Considering the spiteful ways the guards et al have been treating Jonathan for his renown both inside and outside the prison walls, our editorial board (both at-large and The Desk) feels it would be unjust for the Bureau of Prisons to screen Jonathan’s outgoing mail. This would be an infringement on his freedom of speech. As for designating a single federal court employee to parse Jonathan’s legal filings before the mail is sent … what’s he gonna do, sit at a tiny desk outside Jonathan’s cell and dip his letter opener into Jonathan’s envelopes as he pushes them, stamped and sealed, through his door slot? It’s a federal crime to open someone else’s mail, so if Jonathan addresses a lawsuit to a Maine court, and a clerk opens it in Kentucky, where Jonathan is now imprisoned, that could set a dangerous precedent for dealing with a prisoner who is disagreeable but not in any way dangerous.

So while we wait for news about our man, and as his legal docket continues to grow and twist kaleidoscopically towards a complete envelopment of society by the “Lawsuit Zeus’” copyrighted handle, take a look at the table below, play with it, mine it, scrape it, register for PACER, make YouTube videos about your favorite passages from your favorite suits, and just wait for the book on old boy, co-authored by we at the Trumbull Ghostwriters Guild of America. What follows is a list of every lawsuit, appeal, intervention, and other legal filing by Jonathan Lee Riches ©, current through August 4, 2010.