It is closely followed, however, by the claims of movie-goers that they actually bought tickets to such movies as "The Animal," "Vertical Limit," "The Hollow Man," "The Patriot," and "A Knight's Tale" just because "David Manning of the Ridgefield Press" said they were terrific films, and assert were so wounded by the experience that it's worth employing the over-loaded court system to seek redress. Here Sony's original defense of its "David Manning" scam has some traction, as Sony famously claimed that its deception was harmless because nobody believed the blurbs in movie ads anyway. Believe them or not, the idea that someone would run out to see a Rob Schneider movie about a guy who gets animal DNA and ends up with the abilities and habits of a seal, a dolphin, a chimp and a dog just because of one line of praise attributed to a movie reviewer they never heard of is pretty far fetched. In fact, it's hard to figure why anyone would buy a ticket to a Rob Schneider movie for any reason, but I digress.

One movie-goer, whose picture will soon be in the dictionary next to the word "litigious," decided to sue Sony for the persuasiveness of "David Manning" in prompting him to attend one of the above mentioned bombs ("The Hollow Man," "A Knight's Tale" and "The Patriot" were pretty good, actually. If David Manning had been real, I bet he would have liked them. Especially "The Hollow Man" since, after all, he is one). An enterprising class action lawyer then managed to have a class certified, and asked a lot of movie-goers if they wanted to join the class and get some of their money back. When Sony settled, the class members picked up five dollar refunds for one or more movie tickets, Sony had a 1.5 million dollar reminder that lying is wrong, especially if it's about Rob Schneider movies, and the lawyer received in the vicinity of $500,000 as his fee.

Is this a great country or what?

The Scoreboard sheds no tears for Sony, as corporations best be punished for trivial lies before they move on to more serious ones. But a class action law suit? If I sued my relatives and friends every time their recommendations sent me to a crummy movie, I'd be setting up a cot in the courthouse. There were damages here, but five dollars a ticket probably overstates them. Even if Sony tricked you into seeing "The Animal," you received some value: at least you knew to stay away from "The Hot Chick" and "Deuce Bigalow, European Gigillo."

An imaginary critic, a lawsuit about non-existent damages, a pittance of a reward for the victims that was still too much, public embarrassment for a multinational corporation, and a windfall for the lawyer. Perhaps the lesson of the saga of David Manning is that no lie is truly trivial.