Jerry Rose, from Nanaimo, Canada, is suing those he holds responsible for an alleged theft of a computer technology he invented. His case is unusual.

First, the defendants include: Wal-mart, the Microsoft Corporation, Telus, the University of British Columbia, the British Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Then, there is the sum of damages he is claiming: $2 billion. The nature of the alleged theft is also decidedly non-standard: Rose’s claim asserts that he was subjected to “invasive brain computer interface technology, research experiments, field studies and surgery”.

In a preliminary hearing, the judge was invited by five lawyers to dismiss Rose’s three-page claim as nothing more than a bizarre argument without any redeeming merit. The assertions about “brain-control”, they say, are not supported by any plausible scientific evidence. The lawyer representing Microsoft said that Rose’s action was akin to “someone saying they sustained injuries because their boat fell off the edge of the world". She said her client ought not to be subjected to a “nuisance lawsuit".

The judge, however, has allowed the case to proceed. He accepted that Rose’s case was "certainly an unusual one", but noted that in order to dismiss it he would have to be convinced there was nothing in the claim that could be litigated. He wasn’t convinced of that.

The judge referred to a precedent in which nine Canadians claimed they had been subject to mind-control experiments sponsored by the CIA at McGill University between 1957 and 1964. They were given LSD and put through some extraordinary brainwashing but didn’t know they were part of an experiment. Their apparently bizarre allegation turned out to have more merit than it first seemed: in 1988, the American Justice Department settled the case for $750,000.

Nonetheless, most cases involving allegedly secret and mysterious operations eventually yield quite humdrum explanations once examined in court. In 2000, magistrates in Sheffield, England, heard what happened after Gloria Havenhand was stopped by police for speeding. Shortly after, a man named Giles Norton marched into a police station in uniform, announced that he was Captain Crispin Cashmore from the Military Police and that Havenhand was immune from prosecution because she was working undercover on a clandestine surveillance mission for him.

A driver at the police station became suspicious because Captain Cashmore was not wearing the famous red cap of the Military Police, nor a captain’s three pips on his shoulder. When police officers checked with the captain’s headquarters they found that there was no record of such a man. The magistrates found Norton guilty of obstructing police and also of possessing two CS canisters, one of which was hidden in his sock. He was fined £600.

The true facts of the drama were more mundane. The lady charged with speeding wasn’t Norton’s special agent on a Quantum of Solace car chase; she turned out to be his mother, and Norton had never been in the military police although he did work in the general field of protection: condom machine sales.

Professor Gary Slapper is Director of the Centre for Law at The Open University

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