And I thought American courts were a sham.....

....according to this story today in the London Telegraph, Americans can do even better in the British court system! This American ex-pat did!

Novelist gets payout over shoe factory fumes

By Paul Stokes

25/01/2008

An award-winning author has received £115,000 in an out-of-court settlement after claiming her literary career suffered because of fumes from a shoe factory.

Joan Brady, the first woman to win the Whitbread Prize, says she had to abandon a highbrow novel and turn to thriller writing after suffering numbness in her hands and legs which she alleged was caused by solvents used by the Conker Shoe Company next to her former home in Totnes, Devon.

Brady, 67, said the noise from the factory also contributed to her being unable to concentrate on her novel, Cool Wind From the Future, which she has still not completed almost eight years on.

Instead, she embarked on a less-demanding crime novel, Bleedout, which has sold about 10,000 copies since 2005.

"It made me terribly angry and it made me ill," she said.

"I couldn't finish the literary work because I was so angry."

Let's see now, according to this judicial finding, I ought to be able to sue my wife because the proximity of the cat's litter box prevented Ole' Pecoz from becoming the Zane Grey of the 21st Century!