Outlook Bleak In Coffee-cup Case

WINNIPEG (Saturday, March 18, 2006) - The Great Tim Hortons Coffee Cup trial entered its 34th year yesterday with no indication the case will soon be resolved.

In fact, just two days ago, one of several litigants in Indonesia petitioned Judge Edwin Jarndyce to freeze all the assets of the women who rolled up the rim of the infamous coffee cup when they were children so many years - and tears - ago.

Readers will remember that the case began back in March 2006, when a 10-year-old girl plucked an empty Tim Hortons coffee cup out of a garbage bin at her elementary school in St-Jerome, north of Montreal.

Unable to unroll the rim, the girl asked a 12-year-old schoolmate for help.

They discovered the cup was a winner and the prize a Toyota RAV4 SUV worth $28,700.

Each of the little girls' families claimed the vehicle as its own. And a man who said he had bought the coffee said it was his and demanded a DNA test be made on the cup.

McGill law professor David Lametti called his claim "ridiculous."

Nevertheless, litigation in what became known as the Great Tim Hortons Coffee Cup case soon began.

And 34 years later, it continues still.

"This has become one of the longest and most complex lawsuits in legal history," said Winston (Skippy) Cudworth, dean of the faculty of law at the University of Nunavut, Igloolik.

"It's a legal labyrinth even more convoluted than my own hellish divorce, when my bitch of a wife ran off with that barracuda of a lawyer. I was lucky to keep my cojones. God, I hate her."

But while the dean, his bitch of a wife and that barracuda of a lawyer were the only people to suffer during the Cudworth divorce, the Great Tim Hortons Coffee Cup case has been an unstoppable legal tsunami that has surged across time and space and destroyed the lives of countless people.

One of them, unlike Cudworth, did lose his cojones when he attempted suicide last year by lying down in the street during the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.

Unfortunately, it was the wrong street and he became so enraged when two police officers arrested him for being drunk, the only way they could subdue him was with repeated blows to his crotch.

Last month, the unfortunate man finally succeeded in destroying himself by drinking 400 cups of extra-large triple-triples during a single day at a Tim Hortons outlet in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.

"Even though there was a Roll Up The Rim contest going on and he won five of those 400 cups, he insisted on paying for them," said his cousin, who asked his name not be used in case it jeopardized his own chances in the case.

"He may have lost his cojones but he was one of the ballsiest guys I ever knew."

One of the first to be drawn into the web of the Great Tim Hortons Coffee Cup case was the initial plaintiff's wife. She filed for divorce after the tests made on the cup showed the rim was liberally smeared with not only with her husband's DNA but also that of another woman.

Since then, her children, those of the two woman who found the cup 34 years ago and a dizzying array of cousins, in-laws, aunts, uncles and grandparents from both families have been sucked into the ever-expanding legal vortex of the Great Tim Hortons Coffee Cup case.

A number of the litigants have served in Afghanistan during the 34 years Canadian troops have been there to establish a lasting peace, and the Tim Hortons outlet in Kandahar has been the scene of innumerable acts of violence between them.

"The Taliban won't even come near this place," said one soldier, who kept looking over his shoulder as he wolfed down a dozen Timbits before heading out to the relative safety of a night patrol.

Recently, Tim Hortons initiated its own legal action against all the litigants, claiming their actions have besmirched its reputation and brought its once-popular promotional contest into ridicule.

Meanwhile, the company's attempt to replace Roll Up the Rim with Dig Into A Doughnut failed miserably. Hundreds of lawsuits were filed by customers who said they almost choked to death on the tiny prize-notification buttons embedded in the doughnuts.

Throughout all of this, the Toyota RAV4 SUV, the prize that sparked one of the most infamous lawsuits in Canadian jurisprudence, is sitting on blocks and rusting away in a dank and ramshackle warehouse in Montreal.

There could be no sadder or more apt monument to folly.

Other than all those columns written by Laurie Mustard, of course.

Ross McLennan is a Sun columnist. He can be reached by e-mail at: rmclennan@wpgsun.com.

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