Society today has become highly litigious.

People sue anybody, anytime for anything.

People don't feel they should be held responsible for their own actions. They blame someone else, and then sue them.

If you get sick from smoking, sue the tobacco company. If you shoot yourself in the foot, sue the gun manufacturer. If you get drunk and wreck your car, sue the bartender.

Well, I have decided to cash in.

Following are some ideas for possible defendants in a flurry of civil suits I could file.

Tortilla chip manufacturers.

Some restaurants give you a bowl of free tortilla chips to munch on while you're waiting for your food.

This makes you more thirsty, so you order a second margarita before dinner. Next thing you know, you're killing somebody on the highway. My guess is that countless traffic deaths could be avoided if there were no tortilla chips.

Car manufacturers.

Especially the manufacturers of those gigantic sport utility vehicles. I used to drive a Honda Prelude. One day, at a stoplight, I glanced over at the sport utility that pulled up next to me.

In my level line of sight was the vehicles lug nuts. And why do they call them sport utilities, anyway?

Where, exactly, is the sport and utility in owning a vehicle that trundles along at 12 miles per gallon and has enough towing capacity to drag small homes from their foundations?

And cars should be designed to travel no more than 25 miles per hour. Cars go much too fast to be safe. Automakers know that cars go too fast. They know that sport utilities have the capacity to crush lesser vehicles. They must be held responsible.

Fast food restaurants. They are responsible for causing my bad eating habits.

If it weren't for them, I would be much healthier and would eat right all the time.

They made me crave a large Reeses¨ Peanut Butter Cup Blizzard¨.

They started when I was very young. They target marketed me. They plied me with cheap toys and lured me in.

They continue to do it today, corrupting generation after generation of our youth. Condemning them to a life of overindulgence in high-calorie food-like products.

Some have even stooped so low as offer Beanie Babies¨ as inducements.

Any adult who has trampled a child to purchase a Beanie Baby¨.

You've seen the lines at the knickknack store. You've read the news accounts of mayhem at McDonald's on Beanie Baby¨ day.

And now they're everywhere. There are bins of bean-filled critters at liquor stores, used car lots and auto parts stores.

They are hindering life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Ty Corp. for creating a product that causes adults to trample children.

Those who offer poor service.

That's right. Every clerk, teller, waiter, waitress, carhop or bellhop who has made me feel like a common criminal for expecting reasonably prompt, polite, service.

You know how it goes.

You walk up to the counter and they say "May I HELP you" in a tone more akin to them having said "What do YOU want."

Then the phone rings.

They answer and talk to their friend about the party they went to the night before.

They turn away so you can't hear. They glance back at you occasionally, annoyed that you might be listening in on their private conversation.

Then they say something like, "Well, I guess I have to go. There's somebody here."

After they hang up they look at you, emit a long sigh and repeat, "May I HELP you."

Or the guy you call because you have cash and want to buy his product. You leave a message but he never calls back.

You call again. He never calls back. Six weeks later he calls back and says, "May I HELP you." You tell him you bought brand X instead of his because he never called you back. He laughs. Then tells you that his brand is 20 percent cheaper than brand X.

These people are a threat to my emotional health. Pain and suffering, pain and suffering.

The inventor of the fax machine.

When it first came out, I thought the fax machine was the way, the truth and the light.

Now it is a scourge.

In the prefax era, a news release had to have some merit before someone would take the time to address an envelope and buy a stamp.

Now, people fax dozens of news releases simultaneously from the same computer.

It's a couple simple keystrokes.

We get stuff that no newspaper would print. We go through reams of paper and boxes of toner cartridges.

All the useless faxes get in the way of the legitimate ones.

The errant fax people are hampering productivity. They must pay.

The inventor of voice mail.

I am confident the voice mail system here is state of the art.

But it still drives me crazy. I can never remember if it's #59, #39, #409, *655, 998# or link 264 that I need to press.

And then, I get some long, rambling message in my voice mail with a phone number to call at the end. The person races through the number too fast for me to write it all down.

I have to listen to the whole message all over again.

My sanity is at stake. The inventors of voice mail are liable.

This is just the short list. There are lots of other potential plaintiffs. Video game programmers, movie producers, makers of anything even remotely dangerous.

If you also are an aggrieved party in any of these cases, please call me. You can join me. We'll make it a class action.

Managing Editor Gary Gerard will be on vacation for the next two weeks. News Views will return Aug. 8. [[In-content Ad]]