Shows / Claim to Fame
Claim to Fame
Claim to Fame breaks down real business decisions — the bold, the bad, and the costly — and scores the lessons every owner should take away.
Episodes
- Claim to Fame
Pet Store Perfect
It's Fraud Friday. On the day before Mother's Day 2004, a woman at a Cracker Barrel in Newport News, Virginia, scoops a dead mouse out of her vegetable soup…
- Claim to Fame
Opinion, Served Cold
In 1981, a French restaurant guide reviews Mr. Chow, a fashionable Manhattan restaurant, and says the green peppers were "still frozen on the plate" and the…
- Claim to Fame
Short Shorts, Long Lawsuit
In 1993, a man applies to wait tables at a Hooters outside Chicago, gets turned away for being a man, and sues. Meanwhile, a federal agency wants Hooters to…
- Claim to Fame
Nothing but Fine Print
In 1993, a five-dollar-an-hour office-supply clerk walks out at Chicago Stadium during a Bulls game and swishes a three-quarter-court shot for a million…
- Claim to Fame
A Latte Money
A former barista sues Starbucks over who gets a cut of the tip box, and a San Diego judge orders the coffee giant to pay California baristas more than a…
- Claim to Fame
Finger Food
It's Fraud Friday and the day before Halloween, so Maggie brings Joel a true horror story: a woman at a San Jose Wendy's says she bit into something crunchy in…
- Claim to Fame
Size and Shape May Vary
An Australian teenager measures his Subway Footlong, gets eleven inches, and posts the photo. Within days, American lawyers are suing, and Joel, for once, is…
- Claim to Fame
Cream, Sugar, and Punitive Damages
It's the most famous "frivolous lawsuit" in America: a woman spills McDonald's coffee in her lap and sues. Maggie walks Joel through what really happened in…
- Claim to Fame
Suit Yourself
A lawyer starts a new job as a judge in Washington, D.C., takes his suit pants to the neighborhood dry cleaner, and says they lost them. Then he reads the…
- Claim to Fame
Thirty Minutes or Else
For almost ten years, Domino's promised your pizza in 30 minutes or less, or it was free (later, $3 off), and that promise helped make it the world's biggest…
- Claim to Fame
The House That's Legally Haunted
A bond trader from New York City signs a contract on a riverfront Victorian in Nyack, New York, then learns the seller once told Reader's Digest the house was…
- Claim to Fame
The Dog Ate My Contract
Who really invented the Taco Bell Chihuahua? Two guys from Michigan say they pitched Taco Bell a cartoon called Psycho Chihuahua more than a year before the…
- Claim to Fame
Some Bones Included
We owe you some throwed rolls, and Joel and Maggie explain why Lambert's Cafe's flying-roll lawsuit isn't getting a verdict today. Instead: a man orders his…
- Claim to Fame
The No-Look Hot Dog
A rainy night at a Kansas City Royals game, a lion mascot with a hot-dog-shaped air gun, and a behind-the-back toss that a longtime fan says hit him in the…
- Claim to Fame
The Shrimp That Went to Trial
A family birthday dinner at a Long Island Benihana, a hibachi chef tossing shrimp across the grill, and, five years later, a wrongful-death lawsuit in front of…
Claim to FameThe Death Ray Strikes Twice
A brand-new Las Vegas luxury hotel's curved glass tower focused the desert sun onto its own pool deck so intensely that the staff had a nickname for it: "the…
- Claim to Fame
Episode 1: The $500 Bedbug Decision
A Chicago motel turned down a $500 extermination job, told clerks to call bedbugs "ticks," and ended up paying $382,000. Play along: paid, denied, or did…