Home of the free ride

CAPE TIMES, 25 APRIL 2003

GOD BLESS AMERICA. Every time I open the newspaper I see something else that makes me realise afresh how true it is that America is the land of opportunity. “Bring me your poor huddled masses,” says the Statue of Liberty, “and I will teach them how to make money by suing people.”

I have already in these pages saluted the legal nous and financial acumen of one Gregory Rhymes, a roly-poly Yankee teenager who brought suit against McDonald’s for allegedly selling him several thousand greasy hamburgers over the years without once – not once! – telling him that if your diet consists almost exclusively of greasy hamburgers, you may very well not keep your slim, boyish figure. Big Greg is rivalled in my esteem only by the legendary Stella Rimsky, who set the aspirational benchmark for klutzes and dunderheads everywhere by earning a large sum of money after protesting to the court that McDonald’s takeaway coffee is unpleasantly hot when poured over your lap instead of the more usual method of transporting it in a polystyrene cup.

But there is a new hero. Join me in applauding Ms Geremie Hoff, 56, of St Louis, Missouri, who this month won nearly R50 000 and a free blow-wave after she sued her hair salon for giving her a bad haircut. Ah, America! When Ms Hoff ’s parents and grandparents arrived on the overcrowded transport ship from the Old Country, bowed by poverty, oppressed by the lank hair and unflattering cuts that were the unhappy lot of the European peasantry, how little they could have dreamed that one day their daughter would grow up to turn personal grooming into a civil rights issue. They must be so proud.

According to testimony, Ms Hoff took herself off to the salon to have her hair straightened. Later that night, clumps of her hair came loose, and the resulting bald spots made her feel “depressed and reclusive”. She sued for emotional distress, depression, counselling costs and lost income. Lost income? How did a patchy head lose the huffy Ms Hoff her income? Was she a photographic model? Was she one of those circus trapeze artists who dangle themselves from the high-wire by her hair? Did she make a living impersonating Lady Godiva at upmarket cocktail parties? No, she was a part-time tour guide, but she resigned after her traumatic hair experience. People just don’t trust information from people with bad hair.

“Say, Stanley, what’s that building over there?”

“The tour guide said that’s the St Louis municipal suntan parlour and library, honey.”

“What does she know? She has a patch of loose hair.”

It is an extraordinary thing, the extent to which it has become a modern principle not only accepted but actively embraced by law that if something goes wrong, it must be someone’s fault, and that money will ease the pain. No one really becomes depressed and reclusive and quits their job because of a bad haircut. Look at Gwen Gill – she still pitches up for work every day. Bad haircuts are acts of god, like hurricanes and tidal waves and lightning strikes. Bad things happen in the world – they happen to everyone and sometimes they happen to us. That’s just the world, and only a fool takes the world personally.

No, whatever is troubling Ms Hoff, I suspect it is something that runs altogether deeper and will last a lot longer than her loosened hair, and I very much doubt whether the money – any amount of money – will make the slightest difference.