When Sandra Valentine divorced her husband, Johnny, and married the man who had fathered her child during an affair, it had every appearance of another unremarkable tale of marital breakdown.
But when Johnny hit back and sued his rival Jerry Fitch for a six-figure sum, the Mississippi love triangle took on an altogether different dimension. And when he won in a verdict upheld by the state supreme court, he was suddenly richer to the tune of ?750,000.
When Sandra Valentine divorced her husband, Johnny, and married the man who had fathered her child during an affair, it had every appearance of another unremarkable tale of marital breakdown.But when Johnny hit back and sued his rival Jerry Fitch for a six-figure sum, the Mississippi love triangle took on an altogether different dimension. And when he won in a verdict upheld by the state supreme court, he was suddenly richer to the tune of ?750,000.
Valentine took advantage of a quirk in the law in Mississippi which, like six other US states, allows claims of “spousal theft”: if a man – or perhaps even a woman – takes another’s property, ie their spouse, they can be sued.
I would be surprised if this wasn’t the same state that sentences people to death based on blatant quakery.