r/WouldYouRather • u/Neat_Scallion6367 • 1d ago
Fun Would you rather get $3,000,000 on the DL from a genie or win $10,000,000 in a highly publicized frivolous lawsuit?
A genie shows up with an offer. Three million dollars ( however you want), or he guarantees you'll be awarded 10 million in a rediculous feivilous lawsuit. You'll become ill but the genie guarantees any injuries will be swiftly healed without any permanent damage.
You do will do something really stupid that defies common sense, like mistaking the brake fluid bottle you bought for the missing A1 sauce at the table in the restaurant. The customer before you had stolen it. You sue for $10,000,000.
There's not a sign directing customers to use caution, and make sure use provided condiments. Immediately alert staff when provided condiments are missing, so as not to mistake potentially hazardous liquids brought on site, possibly causing serious injury or fatality.
The long, drawn out story circulates on the news for days as deliberation continues. People are calling in to talk shows, social media is ablaze.
A jury finally awards you the ten million settlement and a new law is created using your name. Your story is plastered all over social media where you'll mercilessly be mocked for years to come.
So.. three million quietly passed along to you, or ten million at great and long-term cost to your pride and probability heckling on the street. At least for a few weeks. Illness / injury suffered as "time served", not permanent.
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u/jcek9 1d ago
I think you are way overestimating how much people would care or pay attention to some lawsuit. I will take 10m.
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u/Blinkskij 1d ago
The prompt is basically if you’d take the role of Stella Liebeck, who spilled McDonald’s coffee on herself in 1994 and got third degree burns.
She’s still to this day talked about as an example of a person making a frivolous lawsuit, but in reality the lawsuit was not frivolous at all.She only asked for McDonalds to cover her medical expenses, about $20k. They refused and the jury awarded 2.8 million, reduced by the judge to 800k (160k compensatory damages and 640k punitive damages)
Considering how insanely stupid the public is, and people STILL can’t get the facts straight, I wouldn’t want to take her role and with a much higher financial outcome.
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u/svencutlet 1d ago
More than that, McDonalds used to serve their coffee 40 degrees hotter than the industry standard. They were aware of the risks of burning their customers (there were 700 prior complaints of burns, they knew about them) and refused to change their policy. They 100% earned that verdict.
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u/ucjj2011 19h ago
And, the amount the jury awarded was equal to one day of profits for McDonalds just from coffee sales.
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u/Dark_Moonstruck 23h ago
Yeah but most people don't know her name unless they google it, and don't know what she looks like so it's not like you'd be recognized on the street as 'the person who filed that super frivolous lawsuit'.
If it was named after you? You can change your name, or just let people assume it was a different one or whatever. You can move. You can do basically whatever you want, and while it'll be news fodder and probably in jokes for a long time, it's not like people are going to be actively thinking of you or recognize you on the street.
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u/muzzey12 1d ago
But no one knows who she is just about her case just change your name and your good to go
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u/Admirable-Chemical77 21h ago
Every once in a while going scorched earth on a meritorious suit bites you in the ass.
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u/PuddingMent 1d ago
That wasn’t frivolous, so it has nothing to do with the question.
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u/CXDFlames 23h ago
But the smear campaign that came for it has millions of people convinced it was until they read the whole story
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u/SirTwitchALot 1d ago
There's a reason lottery winners choose to remain anonymous. Everyone comes out of the woodwork. Rando "financial planners," people looking for investment, long lost relatives can all smell the blood in the water
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u/F22boy_lives 1d ago
“No” is a complete sentence
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u/Mr_Meme_Master 1d ago
"No" is a complete sentence, but people have literally gotten family members and/or themselves kidnapped and held for ransom after winning the lottery. Saying "no" to the kidnappers aint gonna make them let go of their hostages and walk away
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u/Simple_Gold4157 1d ago
Yes. But you’re not considering how “no” will impact your relationship with everyone around you. Suddenly family resents you and relationships are ruined. Which is the whole point of the hypothetical
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u/Immediate-Tennis8838 1d ago
Only if you’re weak
“No.” Is a complete sentence, as they say
Assuming it’s a tax free $10M, Just buy some index funds and kick back for the rest of your life
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u/SirTwitchALot 1d ago
I sold my investment properties in the last year. Now I get constant cold calls about either selling anything else I might have or buying ones random realtors have for sale. Sometimes I get multiple calls per day. I always tell them no, but it doesn't stop the calls. It's super annoying. I wish I could have made those property records confidential
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u/Immediate-Tennis8838 1d ago
Yeah that’s the problem with real estate sales done personally - it’s a matter of public record
Also - with $10M - I’m absolutely changing my phone number.
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u/SirTwitchALot 1d ago
Yep. I had one in an LLC, but then I couldn't self represent in eviction proceedings. Hiring lawyers all the time got expensive.
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u/Immediate-Tennis8838 1d ago
I’m a residential developer in Canada so I understand your pain!
PS: Let me know if you’re interested in diversifying into Canadian mid-rise apartments, we’re looking for investors, lol
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u/LadyReika 1d ago
The harassment is unrelenting.
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u/Immediate-Tennis8838 1d ago
I’d be changing my phone number, and I’d be moving to a new neighbourhood.
My family isn’t that big so it wouldn’t really be a problem for me.
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u/WriteBrainedJR 16h ago
How would it possibly be tax free? It's a highly publicized court settlement?
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u/Mundane_Analyst9994 1d ago
There is another side to that coin though. When you become a public figure like this advertisers and influencers reach out and want to make deals with you. Say you want to be a twitch streamer but you never went for it because it’s so hard to make it starting from a nobody. Well after this lawsuit you can become a twitch partner in no time because thousands of people will want to see that idiot from the lawsuit playing video games.
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u/SirTwitchALot 1d ago
If I have enough money that I never have to work again I'm never working again. 3M isn't quite enough for that, but you can turn it into that much in less than ten years. I would quit my day job, get a low stress job just for health insurance and wait it out until my passive income was enough to quit permanently
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u/talanisentwo 1d ago
Having known people involved in legitimate lawsuits, I know how freaking long it can take to actually get the money, and how much of that money the lawyers take. I would go with the $3 million right away.
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u/jasonryu 1d ago
If the genie's $3 million was fully legitimate and in no way, shape, or form going to trigger any questioning/account freeze/etc even if it was fully investigated....then sure, I'll pick the $3 mil and keep my privacy
But if I have to explain where $3 mil came from, then screw it, I'll take the lawsuit and retire early or something
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u/greenmachine11235 1d ago
One of my co-workers drank a mouthful of oil after using a water bottle to catch it during an oil change and then forgetting which one was water.
He survives without ten million dollars and only minor ribbing once in a while when discussing handling of oil or hydraulic fluids.
I think I could survive.
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u/Obviouslynameless 1d ago
3 million. Just to avoid the people thinking they should be entitled to any of it for something like lending me a pencil in the third grade
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u/OrenSchroeder 22h ago edited 16h ago
Sure, I'll take 6-8 million with publicity and likely ridicule. I never went out of the way to make people like me anyhow.
Get off my lawn.
*edited to change when to went
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u/WriteBrainedJR 16h ago
You only subtracted your lawyer's cut.
Now divide by 2 for taxes
You're better off taking the $3 million in bitcoin or index funds or something
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u/ThisMeansRooR 1d ago
Give me 10 million. Does anyone remember the name of the hot coffee lady? I didn't think so.
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u/DumbbellDiva92 1d ago
This is a good point actually. People remember the story of the hot coffee lady, but not necessarily her name. Certainly not her face.
As a side note, it turns out her lawsuit really wasn’t frivolous at all. She totally deserved the money! But I suppose that’s besides the point here.
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u/ThisMeansRooR 1d ago
Haha, yea. They had a whole smear campaign against her to make us all think she was the bad guy for like 15 years.. sad
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u/SlowSurvivor 21h ago
The hot coffee lady’s lawsuit wasn’t frivolous. McDonald’s knowingly served coffee at unsafe temperatures. As in, there were emails discussing tue risk. Also hot coffee lady suffered third degree burns to her thighs and genitals that resulted in permanent disability and chronic pain.
So yeah…
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u/wr321654 1d ago
I don’t. But I’m sure people who actually knew her as well as those a degree or two removed remember her name and the fact that she got paid.
I’d still take the $10M but I’m not going to pretend the publicity is an insignificant. It’s just not significant enough for me to give up $5M.
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u/MickeyG42 17h ago
No but they sure as shit did after she won the money. And I'm sure every person she's ever known in her life came out of the woodwork to bother her.
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u/AesirMimyr 10h ago
Hot coffee lady case was valid. Mgmt at the store had known for months the coffee machine was broken and making the coffee too hot. Like 150-200 degrees. Lady had 3rd degree burns
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u/Flow3rs4Alg3rnon 1d ago
$3 million 100%. It's scary how many people in the comments are underestimating going viral nowadays. That extra $7 mil is not worth giving up your peace because of unwanted attention and harassment.
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u/glasseatingfool 22h ago
The second one.
Being a lawyer, inexplicably winning millions in a moonshot case would do more good than harm.
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u/Lokitusaborg 17h ago
Yeah, that would definitely be what a lawyer would see. Life hands you lemons, corner the lemon market, strangle the competition and resell it for billions and then make some fucking lemonade.
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u/F22boy_lives 1d ago
Give me the $10,000,000. If you ever look at a bottle of automotive fluid and see the “do not drink/ingest” warning, its because someone somewhere was dumb. With the 10, I could blow 3 and still have “fuck you” money…”fuck you” money meaning all of lifes normal expenses arent a thing you worry about, not like Saudi King money
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u/Belgaraath42 1d ago
3m now please. A lawsuit takes at the very least months, more probably years to resolve, so even ignoring the being known aspect I like 3m now. The additional 7m have very little value to me.
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u/lakeviewdude74 1d ago
Easy. 10 million. A few months later no one will even remember those 15 minutes of infamy.
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u/Tall_Apricot_9842 1d ago
10mil, im underage, cant legally mess with me til im 18, gives me time to invest or whatever. the money is being kept under the table and my front door locked until it blows over. remove the sim card off my phone.
id totally eat like mislabeled bottlesm=, so its in character
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u/ColoradoRocket3 1d ago
I'm 56, married, kid, lifelong friends etc. Give me the 10 million. I could care less what rest of ppl think
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u/Medium_Hope_7407 1d ago
10 million. I don’t give a fuck what people think now let alone if I was a multimillionaire lol
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u/ellipsisobsessed 1d ago
The thing is generally if a judge awards you the settlement that means someone did fuck up. A lot of the "frivolous" lawsuits where folks win were actually very reasonable lawsuits that the company dumped a lot of money into PR to slander the person. (Like the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit etc.)
Though also generally most of the money goes to the lawyers and medical bills not the person. If your insurance pays for health care and then you win a settlement the insurance often gets to reimburse themselves from the settlement first. (Similarly your lawyer gets paid first.)
So like is the 10 million money before or after the layers, health insurance, hospital , and any other interested parties take their cut? And is the law an actually useful one?
I'd probably be willing to deal with annoying people if it got an actually reasonable law passed and I got at least a sizable chunk after tax to myself.
If it's not actually an at all reasonable law and the judge genuinely messed up/was clearly manipulated by the genie then I'd probably just take the 3 million and avoid the nonsense because that is already plenty of money.
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u/TheGoodNamesAreGone2 1d ago
I literally could not care less about what anyone thinks of me. $10m is retire right now and live comfortably for the rest of my life money
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u/smeghead9916 1d ago
I already have an injury lawsuit in process, can the genie just make me win that?
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u/Basic_Seat_8349 1d ago
First, that lawsuit is not going to win. I realize it's a hypothetical, so here it works, but you're basing it on stuff that doesn't actually happen.
In any case, I'll take the $3 mil.
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u/Proud_Fisherman_5233 1d ago
The problem with the comparison using Stella, the coffee lady, is that that story happened in the nineties where we didn't have social media. So although we made fun of her mocked her for a while, it died out very quickly and we still remember the story, but not her name. Today, though, it's super easy, to annoy harass people with social media, and find out where you live, etc. With this story, people would mock you for being absolutely stupid. Is my pride and dignity worth ten million dollars(and i'm assuming ten million is, after lawyers' fees, taxes)?
And even though you still are a millionaire, there is a big difference between ten million and three million.
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u/HondaV4Rider 1d ago
I would probably take a couple more million to do commercials for an auto parts store, (based on the hypothetical brake fluid) And then Direct that money into some sort of charitable work, like support for homeless, or higher education for talented but economically challenged people, Etc.
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u/KnownPride 1d ago
Ten million dollar than just take the popularity to be influencers.
Hater will hate.
Don't forget to hire fully security too.
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u/More-Conversation931 1d ago
The first because it comes without Lawyer fees and no need to actually collect from whoever you sued which isn’t always possible.
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u/samiwas1 1d ago
If I’m going to get a bunch of money, I want to be happier and more fulfilled. Not cutting everyone I know off and moving away. I get that not everyone feels that way, but at least some people do.
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u/Inigomntoya 1d ago
So I get 10 million AND consumer protection laws are created?
Sure. Sign me up.
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u/Wonderful-Honeydew-3 1d ago
Did you drink brake fluid OP? Its ok, you can admit it. Just should probably get to a doctor.
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u/Plum-Specialist 1d ago
10 million, invest, set up several funds with the copious amount of leftover investment money i dont need to live on, buy friends art, fund projects and go fund me's, just have a blast being a rich philanthropist, leave it in my will to a good person who will continue the work
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u/NoDanaOnlyZuuI 1d ago
$3 million is more than enough for me. I’m too lazy to participate in a long court case
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u/apigandanangel 1d ago
If you sue for $10 million, your lawyer will get $4 million, leaving you with $6 million. After tax, you'll barely be above $3 million.
Take the $3 million and the anonymity
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u/MadViking302 1d ago
Seems like the $3m is not only less hassle, but no outside involvement and tax free. I could live comfortably off $1m with the other $2m growing from investments.
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u/perdovim 1d ago
3 mil, that sort of suit makes the world worse (stupidity and general noise). I don't want to make the world worse.
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u/invisiblebyday 23h ago
3M on the down low. At my age, that'll easily finance the rest of my life. I wouldn't want the attention of the other one, even if it was short term.
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u/Your_As_Stupid_As_Me 21h ago
3m I could live life off the interest....
10m I can afford a mansion and then live off the interest.
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u/Devchonachko 21h ago
I'll sue Blackrock over something, I dunno...they own Burger King so it shouldn't be difficult. 10 million buys a lot of therapy to heal my "long-term cost" to my "pride". And let's face it, the public has a super short fuckin' memory when it comes to frivolous shit.
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u/auraoftiger 6h ago
Thats not true at all. People bring up that old lady who sued McDonald's over her hot coffee thats like probably thr most famous one and it happened years ago and before social media was a huge thing.
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u/Devchonachko 4h ago
True, we remember it happened to a woman, but her name is not common knowledge. You'd have to look her up. Same thing with the guy who used the "Twinkie" defense. You have to admit, people are super lazy. Look at reddit. People make thousands of posts every day asking questions that could be answered easily by themselves if they just spent 2 minutes googling and analyzing the information.
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u/Lokitusaborg 17h ago
3 Million. I’d pay off debt, drop it in a high yield savings account, and let it grow for 10 years, retire and no one would know. I’d have enough to be very comfortable in retirement.
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u/WriteBrainedJR 16h ago
It's really like $3 million vs $3-4 million plus infamy. The lawyer is going to take almost as much of your settlement as taxes do.
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u/Anon_1917 12h ago
3 Mil easy. That's enough to live as I want for the rest of my life on the intrests alone, and I don't have to have any hazzle about it.
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u/recoveringpatriot 10h ago
3 million on the DL implies no taxes or other legal fees. I’ll take that one.
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u/ChilliBreath86 10h ago
Down low for me. I have no patience for frivolities, even if there's a minor chance of getting rich.
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u/NormalMammoth4099 5h ago
Genie, every time.
Plus, Lottery winners should never be publicized to keep their friends and family from finding out.
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u/Mysterious-End7800 5h ago
$3M no question. That a life changing amount of money and no draw back.
For the $10M, I’d have to (1) get seriously ill enough to have a claim, (2) be involved in a long drawn out litigation (3) pay serious legal fees (likely a third since the odds of winning aren’t good) and (4) be made a public figure and have to deal with people’s commentary.
No thanks
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u/Sabhobbes 1h ago
I’ll take the $10M. And probably still go to work like normal the next day.
I don’t think people will care that much. I may schedule a few fewer patients bc visits may take longer bc people want to talk about it
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u/Abe_frohmannn 1d ago
It depends...who are the owners of the place I'm suing, and are they assholes?
If this is Chick Filet, Tesla, Amazon, etc, I'll take all the ridicule and mockery the world has to offer if it means I even get to financially kick Musk in the shin...
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u/Aconite13X 1d ago
3m is enough to live on. I dont need the hassle just for more money.