CLAIM: After throwing a boomerang that hit his head upon its return, a man in Kentucky won a lawsuit he filed against himself for $300,000.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The story is fictional. It first appeared in a 1996 edition of Weekly World News, a publication known for publishing made-up claims. The name of the man who allegedly sued himself, Larry Rutman, of Owensboro, Kentucky, does not appear in county court records where the lawsuit would have been filed, a court official said.
THE FACTS: The decades-old story has been given new life in recent days by social media users, who are sharing a screenshot of a 1996 South China Morning Post article which reported its own version of the fabricated story as real.
“A Kentucky man who threw a boomerang that flew back and hit him on the head has sued himself for US$300,000 (HK$2.32 million) – and won,” the South China Morning Post article reads. “And astonishingly, it will not cost him a cent because all the money he won comes from his insurance company.”
A tweet featuring the screenshot had received more than 236,000 likes and was shared more than 11,700 times by Friday. An Instagram post had received more than 12,000 likes.
But the story was made up nearly 30 years ago by Weekly World News, a tabloid that routinely publishes outrageous stories on topics such as aliens, paranormal activity and biblical prophecies. One of the publication’s most popular creations is Bat Boy, a half boy, half bat recurring character, who is pursued by scientists and government officials.
The South China Morning Post, an English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, published its own article covering the tabloid’s account of the fictional Rutman’s legal escapade, also in 1996. This story still appears on the newspaper’s website without a correction, retraction or disclaimer stating that it is not real.
David Collins, the president and CFO of Weekly World News, told The Associated Press that the publication could “neither corroborate nor refute the accuracy of the story” given the age of the article. South China Morning Post did not respond to a request for comment.
In a 2020 interview with online magazine Mental Floss, former Weekly World News staff members discussed how the tabloid, which was founded in 1979, had published factual (albeit bizarre) stories, but as time went on more of the stories were made up.
If Rutman’s case was real, he would have had to file the lawsuit in Owensboro, where the Weekly World News article states the boomerang incident occurred, according to Dan Morgan, a personal injury attorney and partner at the law firm Morgan & Morgan, which has an office in Owensboro. But Jennifer Hardesty Besecker, circuit court clerk for Daviess County, which encompasses Owensboro, told the AP that there is no record of any such person filing a lawsuit.
“I have done a search in Daviess County for the name of Larry Rutman and his name is not found in our case management system!” she wrote in an email.
Regardless, it would be “next to impossible, if not impossible” for a case like this to ever make it to court, or even past an initial filing phase, Morgan said.
He told the AP in a phone interview that were he real, Rutman would have had to sue his insurance company, which would likely say that the accident isn’t covered because Rutman caused the harm himself. His only other recourse would have then been to go after his own assets, which would be pointless.
“As far as a court accepting it or a legitimate law firm accepting it, I don’t think you’ll ever hear about that,” Morgan added.
___
This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
