The megabucks Mcdonald's court case | Steve Canavan

I have counted every single plug socket in the house – we have 29, an exciting discovery.

I have been through the kitchen cupboards and put all the canned food in best before date order; and I have unravelled all the toilet rolls we possess and pre-folded them, six sheets at a time. It has been thrilling.

I’ve also been doing a lot of reading and the other day I came across a very entertaining article on odd court cases.

They happen everywhere in the world but it has to be said, America is the biggest culprit.

The age of people suing for stupid things seems to have started in 1992, when a 79-year-old woman from Albuquerque went to a drive-thru McDonald’s and purchased a cup of coffee.

She put the cup between her knees and pulled the lid towards her and the coffee, rather inevitably, spilt over her lap.

Instead of doing what the vast majority of us would have done – cursed at our own stupidity and rushed home to change our pants – the woman sued McDonald’s for negligence on the grounds that the coffee was too hot to be safe.

Even more astonishing than that, a jury found in her favour and awarded her not only £100,000 in compensation but £2.7m in punitive damages.

This seemed to open the floodgates for bizarre cases in the US.

For example, there was a bloke who sued the basketball star Michael Jordan on the grounds that ‘I look exactly like him’.

The chap, from Oregon, asked for £832m damages on the grounds that his life had been made a misery from over-eager autograph hunters.

A personal favourite of mine was the 2005 case when a man who actually worked as a judge, sued a dry-cleaning company for £40m over a pair of lost trousers – must have been fancy.

Roy L Pearson sued for inconvenience and mental anguish because of the company’s failure to live up to a sign on the wall of the store which read, ‘satisfaction guaranteed’. Thankfully, before we all start to think the world has gone stark raving bonkers, Pearson lost the case – but only after four years of trying every legal avenue possible to win.

Then there was the New York couple who in 2018 took their 30-year-old son to court because he wouldn’t move out. Mark and Christina Rotondo sent their son a series of eviction notices and offered him more than $1,000 to help find a new place, but he refused to pack his stuff and go.

So Mark and Christina did what any loving parents would do and filed a court order. The judge agreed and ordered their son to leave. I’m guessing family parties are a tad awkward now in the Rotondo household.

But it’s not just in the US where odd cases occur.

A couple of years ago in the Netherlands a man sued for the right to change his own age, claiming he was being discriminated against by women on Tinder because he was 69.

He said he had the looks of a 49-year-old, so he wanted the right to officially cut his age by 20 years. Commonsense prevailed and his request was denied on the grounds that it would set a harmful precedent.

Even in this country people are worryingly litigious.

My favourite is a woman who won a Renault Clio in a competition run by her local radio station but sued when she found out the prize was a four-inch long model car.

I’d love to keep going but I have lockdown activities to complete this afternoon – I need to get into the garden where I plan to count every single blade of grass on the lawn, just to see how many there are.

If I trip while doing it, I may sue Mrs C for failing to mow the lawn often enough.

See you in court.