$2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 claim issued by New York man after he is allegedly bitten by a dog.
A man has filed a lawsuit for more money than there is on earth. The claim by Anton Purisima for two undecillion dollars — a 2 followed by 36 zeros — came about after his middle finger was apparently bitten off by a “rabies-infected” dog on a bus in New York.
As the blog Lowering the Bar notes, the $2,000 decillion figure listed in the claim (re-produced below) could have been shortened to $2 undecillion or two octillion gigadollars, but the figure is correct.
The precise maths marks a stark contrast to the rambling and bizarre content of the action, which was filed at Manhattan Federal Court last month. Spanning 22 pages, it targets parties which appear to have nothing to do with the dog bite incident. For example, Purisima, 62, names as a defendant a café chain where he says he has been overcharged for coffee.
To place the lawsuit in context, the largest ever damages claim in the UK is Equitable Life v Ernst & Young. The £1.7bn action was dropped in 2005.
There is an amusing reflection on the implications of Purisima’s claim being successful at What If.