Missing Mouse

If you look at a soda can label, you'll likely find plenty of unhealthy ingredients. Hopefully “decomposing mouse” isn't one of them. But that's what Ronald Ball says he found when he purchased a can of Mountain Dew from a vending machine. According to Ball, who sued PepsiCo for damages in excess of $50,000, he discovered the dead rodent only after the contaminated soda caused him to vomit.

The accusations were bad enough, but Pepsi's defense didn't do much to further its cause: The company said that if a mouse had in fact made it into the Mountain Dew, it would have dissolved by the time it reached the vending machine. The two sides eventually settled for an undisclosed sum in August.

Surprise Surgery

They say blood is thicker than water, but it wasn't thicker than ugly for one Chinese father. Jian Feng was shocked when his apparently beautiful wife gave birth to the couple's first child, a baby that Jian said was “incredibly ugly, to the point where it horrified me.” In fact, the baby looked so different from both its parents, that the father accused his wife of having an affair.

Jian's wife denied cheating on him, but admitted to having had more than $100,000 of plastic surgery prior to their nuptials. Jian divorced and sued his wife, and a sympathetic Chinese court awarded him $120,000, after ruling that his spouse had tricked him into marriage under false pretenses.

Scalded Soles

Apparently Kurt Gies has never heard the expression “no pain, no gain.” The Orlando resident sued Carnival Cruise Lines after he allegedly suffered severe burns in pursuit of a coveted title: hairiest man on the cruise ship. According to Gies, the contest took part on the ship's deck, which was so hot that it badly burned his bare feet. He sued the cruise line for damages and medical costs, claiming to have “lost the value of his cruise vacation.”

Carnival, however, said that video of the contest showed that “several guests, including the plaintiff, were barefoot and do not exhibit any signs of distress during the video.”