Suresh Menon - The undecillion dollar question: To sue or not to sue?

Hands up all those who knew what an ‘undecillion’ was a couple of weeks ago. No one? Now raise your hands all those who today know that it is one followed by 36 zeroes. OK, OK, no need to push. I know all of you know.

The credit for this spread of knowledge must go to Anton Purisima, who at the happy age of 62 decided to sue a whole lot of people in New York for $2 unidecillion. This, incidentally, is more money than is currently available on Earth, in the solar system, or indeed in the Milky Way.

Purisima filed the suit after being bitten by a dog and included in it not just the owners of the animal but the couple who took unauthorised pictures of him while he was being treated at a local hospital, the city itself, the mass transport system, two other hospitals, the airport (La Guardia), and a bakery.

But why $2 unidecillion? Why not a duodecillion (one followed by 39 zeroes), or an octodecillion (57 zeroes), or indeed a centillium (303 zeroes)? Might as well be hung for a tredecillion (42) as for a vigintillion (63), as the old saying goes. Thanks to Bill Gates, Paul McCartney, JK Rowling and others, we have developed a gentle familiarity with “billion” (a mere nine zeroes). News that Gates might become the first trillionaire (12 zeroes, so much fewer than in an undecillion) has excited two kinds of people: those who can visualise that figure, and those who can’t.

But what of Mr Purisima? He has been living a sue-sue life, having previously sued banks and companies, and individuals and cities. But his hopes of cleaning up here are, frankly, dim. In fact, what he hasn’t sued is more interesting: He hasn’t sued a) the sun for rising in the east; b) the president of the US for ending a sentence with a preposition; c) the Arctic ice for melting; d) Nicole Kidman for acting as Grace Kelly in a Hollywood film; e) the city of Chicago for existing; f) Brazil for hosting the World Cup; g) his lawyers for not being able to extract $2 undecillion from a conglomerate of the sued; h) his school physics teacher for insisting that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points; i) Albert Einstein for his theory of relativity…

The list is a long one, nearly as long as the list of those he has sued. My favourite in that lot is this – he hasn’t sued the writer of this column. We might survive.