Chapter Text
FILED · JAN 17 2023 · U.S. DISTRICT COURT · ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.
DAFFY DUCK, Plaintiff,
ACME CORPORATION, Defendant.
Case No. 1:23-CV-00847
COMPLAINT FOR DAMAGES AND DEMAND FOR JURY TRIAL
Plaintiff, by and through his attorneys, alleges as follows:
Preliminary Statement
- For as long as it has existed, Acme Corporation (henceforth “Defendant”) has sold its product development strategy on a single promise: that a toon cannot really be hurt. This action concerns what Defendant did, over several decades and in private, to test that claim. The resulting consequences to Mr. Daffy Duck (henceforth “Plaintiff”) disproved their claim unequivocally.
- Plaintiff served as a paid test subject at Defendant’s research facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, from 1970 to 1987. He does not seek damages for the ordinary, though considerable, hazards of that work. Plaintiff accepted those as a matter of course and does not consider them worth mentioning. Counsel has agreed, with some reluctance, not to mention them further.
- Plaintiff seeks damages for the injuries caused by Defendant’s long-term research program, Project Sisyphus, which were of a different kind entirely. Laboratory recordings made by Defendant’s former head of research came into the possession of Plaintiff’s counsel after dismissal of Coyote v. Acme, and have since been entered into evidence in In re Acme Corporation Product Testing Litigation. They show that Defendant’s researchers observed these injuries, documented them, and continued testing unabated.
- Defendant's Chairman has already admitted, before the United States Senate, that Project Sisyphus existed. Acme Corporation and the Safety of Animated Persons: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Animated Persons of the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 117th Cong. 88 (2022) (statement of Foghorn Leghorn, Chairman, Acme Corporation). His testimony is exemplary of the Defendant’s corporate culture surrounding the expendability of their animated employees.
- Defendant will argue that Plaintiff consented. He did, at the time, often and loudly. But he consented to the work Defendant described to him, not the work Defendant performed, and consent obtained by concealment is no consent at all.
- Defendant will argue that Plaintiff, being a toon, is incapable of the harm alleged. We assert that Defendant’s research program existed to measure precisely that harm. Defendant cannot spend decades studying an injury and then tell this Court the injury does not exist.
- Defendant will argue that Plaintiff lacks capacity to sue because he never registered under the Animated Persons Registration Act of 1933, 48 Stat. 211 (codified as amended at 42 U.S.C. § 1741 et seq.). Plaintiff's position is that no one ever asked him to. Defendant did not merely know that Plaintiff was unregistered. It went looking for subjects like him. In an April 1968 memorandum to its Chairman, Defendant's Research Division wrote that unregistered subjects were "preferred" because they "fall outside the consent provisions of the 1933 Act," are "rarely missed," and are "as a rule, grateful for the work."
- Plaintiff knew what Defendant was doing long before the public did. He tried to say so. He was not believed, and Defendant saw to it that he would not be.
- Plaintiff therefore brings claims for battery, fraud, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
Respectfully submitted,
Kevin Avery · Avery, Jones & Maltese · Albuquerque, New Mexico · Attorneys for Plaintiff