Larry Andre McKinney-Bey and Dorice Sisco seem deluded.
An alternative theory: they are brilliant legal satirists. Probably not.
We're referring to the Martinsburg couple currently asking a West Virginia court for a cool $20 million in damages after their landlord refused to refund a $1,075 security deposit because they moved out early.
The complaint was filed in a Berkeley County court.
It features a litany of alleged grievances suffered by McKinney-Bey and Sisco that caused them to move out before the end of their lease, from unjustly being assessed overdue fees when they admittedly didn't pay rent on time, to being blamed for damage done to a bedroom sink.
They also complain that their landlord, Potomac Housing Realtors, charged them extra rent because they forgot to turn in the keys to their rental home after they suddenly moved out.
"It's the overall attitude and behavior of the defendants which the courts allow as a method of treatment of people of color, and a way of pacifying the rich by allowing them to do whatever they want, but where do it in," reads the suit.
Indeed, this isn't a dispute about who did or didn't pay rent. According to McKinney-Bey and Sisco, it is a discrimination case. That's where the $20 million comes in; only by making the duo into mega-millionaires might justice be adequately served.
McKinney-Bey and Sisco claim all was going swimmingly with their lease of a house on the West side of town -- until the landlord realized they were "Asiatic-black."
That's when leasing agent Michelle Sandri and homeowner Suzanne Potter (she owned the house) started "conspiring" against them -- both to deprive the home of necessary repairs and to, eventually, withhold that security deposit.
"They only want 'certain' people in/or a way of getting rid of someone that's not in their 'racial' 'click' and this is their way of discriminating unlawfully, and controlling the flow, and 'racial domination' of people through oppression of nonwhite into 'their' 'white' community and/or property as a whole," explains the suit.
It's almost certain this case, brought without a lawyer, isn't long for the docket. But it still will cost the defendants plenty of money to deflect. Sandri and Potter, already have hired Steptoe & Johnson, one of West Virginia's major law firms, to handle the defense.
So we learn again: jackpot justice, even of the most absurd kind, isn't a victimless pursuit. When it comes to our civil justice system, there may be cheap laughs, but no cheap suits.