Americans really are the most absurdly litigious race on the planet – it’s the only place in the entire universe where a bunch of fat kids in New York could actually waste the city’s limited judicial resources with a lawsuit blaming McDonalds that their jeans don’t fit anymore. Twice.

The latest victim of this farcical pageant of dumb is nationwide retailer Gamestop, having incurred the terrible wrath of James Collins, who became terribly wrathful after discovering that the used game he’d bought was, you know, used.

Sometime back in January, Collins decided to cheap out and buy a secondhand copy of Dragon Age: Origins at his local Gamestop, saving himself $5 for McDonalds (or something). Now, as pretty much everyone everywhere already knows, Dragon Age: Origins shipped new with a once-off DLC code for a bunch of free bonus in-game junk. And as pretty much everyone everywhere already knows, this is part of EA’s “Project $10” strategy to reward players for buying stuff new instead of secondhand, also included with Mass Effect 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

Well, everyone everywhere except James Collins, apparently. Undaunted even by the plainly printed “One time use code available with full retail purchase” on the box’s cover, Collins was furious to learn that the one time use code was available only with a full retail purchase, and promptly filed suit (“Jury Trial Demanded” no less) against the place for “unfair, unlawful, deceptive, and misleading practices”.

“Despite the representations on the packaging that the game comes with a free use code,” reads the suit, strangely indifferent to the very explicitly stated once-offness of the thing, “Unbeknowst to consumers who purchase a used copy of one of these games, upon attempting to download the content indentified on the game’s packaging, consumers are unable to do so […] because the use codes have already been used by the individual who purchased the game as new.”

While I’m very much opposed to this sort of ridiculous litigiousness, I do think Gamestop should very seriously consider a countersuit, seeking Collins’s prompt removal from the human gene pool. At least that’d be a case with some merit.