Suing yourself? How does that even work. You’re both the plaintiff and the defendant and depending on the situation, even your own eyewitness too. As crazy as it sounds, it does happen despite the rarity and the absurdity of it all. Most of those cases get a couple of eyerolls from the judges before being dismissed. Sometimes, these people even manage to get themselves arrested! Here are a couple of baffling stories of five people who, for one reason or another, sued themselves.

1. Larry Rutman

Larry Rutman is perhaps one of the few people to successfully sue themselves. It all started when Larry was struck in the head after throwing a boomerang. The accident supposedly altered his memory and significantly increased his drive for making love. First, he thought of suing the boomerang maker, but his lawyer advised him to sue himself instead. Rutman was successful and awarded $300,000 that was to be paid in full by his insurance company.

2. Thomas Prusik-Parkin

Following his mother’s death in 2003, Thomas Prusik-Parkin went to great lengths to keep it a secret from the government so he could collect her $700 pension. Parkin gave the funeral director a fake social security number so that she was legally alive. He also tried to recover a house that he lost after defaulting on a mortgage in 1996. So Parkin, as his mother Irene, sued her “son” for forging the deed that she signed to him in 1996. It didn’t take long for law enforcement to connect the dots and expose Parkin’s entire scheme. He showed up to court different times as both himself and Irene.

3. Lothar Mulskat

During WWII, many of Germany’s historical buildings suffered significant damage including the Marienkirche or St. Mary’s Church. Shortly after, famous art restorer Dietrich Fey and his assistant Lothar Mulskat, were hired to fix the frescoes. While Fey was being showered with money and praise for his work, Mulskat became embittered as he was barely compensated. So, he exposed the whole scam: it turned out that the frescoes were impossible to restore because they had deteriorated badly and turned to dust in an instant. To get back as his mentor, Mulskat sued himself for fraud, but instead was charged for forgery and spent 18 months in prison.

4. Emert Wyss

In 2005, when his client Carmelita McLaughlin’s home was refinanced, Illinois attorney Emert Wyss advised her to sue the mortgage company. However, the company handling the repayment passed that responsibility onto another mortgage company, Alliance Mortgage. Seizing the opportunity, Wyss told his client that Alliance Mortgage could be sued for “illegal fees” and that he would receive 10 percent of the settlement. Not long after, Mortgage Alliance revealed that Centerre Title Company, who changed the fees, was owned by Wyss. The case was eventually dropped, considering that Wyss would have been paying himself.

5. Robert Lee Brock

In 1995, while serving time in prison at the Indian Creek Correctional Center in Chesapeake, Virginia, Robert Lee Brock sued himself for $5 million. His reason? That he had consumed alcohol in July, 1993 which was against his religious beliefs. This led to him committing burglary and grand larceny for which he was serving 23 years in prison. He also insisted that the state had to be the one to pay damages, not him because he didn’t have any to give to himself. The judge wasted no time dismissing the case, though she did commend him for his innovative approach.