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A WPC sparked outrage with her plans to sue a petrol station owner for tripping on his kerb while looking into a break-in.

Kelly Jones is now set to drop the claim after her chief constable said he was “disappointed” and her lawsuit was branded “bizarre” by Home Affairs Committee chairman Keith Vaz.

With more law firms offering no-win no-fee services, the number of people pursuing trivial or dubious damages claims through the courts has rocketed in recent years.

And whether they win or lose, the rest of us end up paying through increased insurance premiums.

But the tripping cop would not have been the most bizarre claim. Here are some of the oddest...

Crying in his beer

American Richard Overton sued the makers of Budweiser in 1991 for false advertising after the attractive ladies featured in the firm’s TV commercials failed to materialise in his own life.

The dad-of-three demanded £6,500 from brewer Anheuser-Busch for emotional distress, mental injury and financial loss because the beer brought him no luck with the opposite sex.

Overton complained that the scenic tropical settings, the beautiful women and unrestricted merriment were “untrue”.

His case was dismissed.

God be my witness

Romanian killer Pavel Mircea, 40, tried to sue GOD for breach of contract in 2005, claiming the Almighty reneged on the deal made at his baptism.

“He was supposed to protect me from all evils and instead He gave me to Satan who encouraged me to kill,” he said.

Mircea, 40, serving a 20-year term for murder, said God had accepted his prayers and offerings without providing any services in return.

He demanded reimbursement for cash he had spent on prayers and religious goods.

But judges rejected the case, ruling that God is not a person in the eyes of the law and doesn’t have a legal address where He could be served with papers.

Hubby loses sex appeal

David Mason, 30, took wife Brenda, 31, to court after she rationed him to sex once a week.

He claimed she was behaving unreasonably in banning more frequent bedroom action, saying he had even had a vasectomy as she was scared about getting pregnant for a third time.

Mason, a mechanic, from Basingstoke, Hants, initially succeeded with his court action back in 1980.

But he lost on appeal as judges found it “quite impossible for any court to find that the refusal by a wife to have sex more often than once a week is unreasonable.”

’Old on a minute

(Image: Getty)

Ageing German playboy Rolf Eden decided to sue a teenage girl for ageism after she refused to sleep with him.

The 77-year-old strip club owner bought Katharina Weiss, 19, champagne and even played the piano for her during a night on the town.

It did not help as she refused to have sex with him because he was too old.

Eden, who claims to have bedded up to 3,000 women, said: “It was shattering. No woman ever said that to me before.”

He later dropped the 2007 lawsuit.

Jailbird sues himself

Career criminal Robert Lee Brock sued HIMSELF for violating his own civil rights.

Brock, serving time for robbery, argued his religion forbid him from drinking alcohol, so when he “partook of alcoholic beverages” and was later arrested for grand larceny, “I caused myself to violate my religious beliefs”.

He wanted £2.3million but argued the US government should pay as he couldn’t work as he was a “ward of the state” in jail in Virginia.

Judge Rebecca Beach Smith dismissed the lawsuit but praised his “innovative approach to civil rights”.

Mum’s not the word

An Austrian pensioner was hauled into court by her son...because she used to phone him up to 49 times a day for a chat.

The 73-year-old mother was accused of stalking after she bombarded her boy with thousands of calls over a 30-month period.

The unidentified woman was fined £300 by the court in the southern city of Klagenfurt in April 2009.

She later explained: “I just wanted to talk to him.”

Not so fruitful

Police officer Tracey Ormsby tried to claim £1.5million damages after being hit by a pineapple during a protest at the closure of a council swimming pool in 2001.

The Glasgow WPC was slightly hurt by the fruit yet claimed more than three years later her injury had left her a mentally scarred recluse, forced to quit her job.

But a court heard how Tracey, 37, had enjoyed holidays in Australia, France, Crete, Spain and Gran Canaria, and that she had yelled “ker-ching, I’m in the money!” when a doctor diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder.

A judge awarded her just £3,000 for the minor chest injury caused by the pineapple.

Radio car-lamity

Video shop boss Cathy McGowan was overjoyed when a DJ on Derbyshire’s Radio Buxton told her she had won a Renault Clio after correctly answering a quiz question.

But Cathy, 26, was later presented with a four-inch model of the car instead.

The DJ claimed it was just a joke to amuse his audience but Cathy failed to see the funny side and sued for £8,000 – the price of the real vehicle.

At the 2001 hearing a judge at Derby crown court ruled that the radio station had entered into a legally binding contract with the listener – and ordered it to pay up.

Scent packing

A Dutch student took his university to court after he was expelled for having unusually smelly feet.

Professors and other students at Erasmus University in Rotterdam had complained that it was impossible to concentrate or conduct classes because of Teunis Tenbrook’s obnoxious foot odour.

After a 10-year legal battle a judge ruled in 2009 that his smelly feet were not a valid excuse to prevent the philosophy student from continuing his university studies.

He said: “Our opinion is that the professors and other students will just have to hold their noses and bear it.”

Sky’s the limit

A Russian astrologer sued Nasa for £170million for distorting her horoscope after the space agency crashed a probe into a comet.

Marina Bai claimed the impact on Comet Tempel 1, 82 million miles from Earth in July 2005, violated her “life and spiritual values”.

She explained: “Elements of the comet’s orbit and associated ephemera will change after the explosion, which interferes with my practice of astrology and deforms my horoscope.”

She said Tempel 1 was important to her because her grand­father had wooed her grandmother by showing her the comet.

The case was rejected after a physicist said the probe had no real effect on the comet’s trajectory.

Turk that, Batman

THE MAYOR of a Turkish town called Batman is said to have tried to sue Christopher Nolan, director of hit film The Dark Knight, in 2007 claiming he had used the name without permission.

Huseyin Kalkan said his oil-producing birthplace had been around long before the caped crusader first appeared in a 1939 comic, it is claimed.

He blamed a series of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate on the film, too.

But his will to sue left him when he was jailed for 10 months for promoting terrorism.