Local “Freelance Plaintiff” Becomes Financially Independent Thanks to 800+ Class Action Lawsuits
OMAHA, NE — After joining his 814th class action lawsuit—this time over “deceptively marketed pesto”—34-year-old Terry Malkovich announced Thursday that he is now fully financially independent, thanks entirely to a decade-long career in what he calls “civilian-level legal activism,” and what others call “checking a lot of boxes online.”
“I used to do this for the $8.47 checks and expired Chipotle coupons,” said Malkovich, squinting at a settlement from a vape pen case he’s not entirely sure he qualified for. “But after 800+ lawsuits, a man starts asking bigger questions. Like, how many times can a single individual be harmed by granola bars?”
At first, he started small, notching the following early wins:
$11.02 from a kombucha company accused of overstating probiotic content
$6.66 for a candle company whose “1,000 Wishes” scent, he claimed, smelled more like “700 hopes”
$4.88 for a hot dog that didn’t meet bun-length advertising claims
$5.19 from a cosmetics brand whose “cruelty-free” label was ruled misleading after footage surfaced of the office hamster being gently mocked
Now, Malkovich proudly refers to himself as a Freelance Plaintiff, and spends his mornings scouring OpenClassActions.com for what he calls “passive income opportunities rooted in systemic betrayal.”
“I only take on cases that align with my core values,” he said, citing his most recent claim against adult retailer Adam & Eve, which allegedly shared users’ sex toy preferences with Google.
“When I’m in bed with my wife,” he said, his voice heavy with indignation, “the last thing I want is her privacy compromised by surveillance capitalism. That’s a sacred space—between two consenting adults and a rechargeable silicone centaur named Sebastian.”
But his biggest haul, he says, is pride. “People think I’m in this for the payouts,” he said, flipping through a manila folder labeled TO SUE. “But I’m in it because I believe that if a tortilla chip says it’s ‘hint of lime,’ it damn well better not taste like Pine-Sol.”
His moral fervor peaked in 2018, when he began chain-smoking in a self-described “body-hacking bid” to qualify for the historic $206 billion Tobacco Master Settlement.
“I was coughing blood by week six,” he said. “I knew then—I was finally part of something bigger than myself.”
Even lower was his failed attempt to claim money from BP’s $20 billion Gulf oil spill settlement by dressing as an oil-slicked baby duck and waddling into a deposition.
In a brief flirtation with philanthropy, Malkovich began donating 10% of his settlement proceeds to help at-risk youth sign up for obscure class actions. “I really wanted to give back,” he said. “So I started a nonprofit that helped local teens get checks from a ‘defective eyelash glue’ lawsuit.”
But the generosity didn’t last. “Turns out these kids are natural plaintiffs,” he said. “I got twelve of them to register for a suit about mislabeled bagels. They’re a goldmine. I’ve turned the nonprofit into a plaintiff mill. Today we’re going after a juice company that promised to ‘cleanse the soul.’ One of the kids drank it and still shoplifted.”
At press time, Malkovich was spearheading a statewide “wrongful life” class action filed by Nebraska teens against their parents for giving birth to them in Nebraska. This triggered a daisy chain of litigation, as the teens’ parents then sued their parents, setting off a generational cascade that reached all the way to the Baby Boomers—who are now mostly dead. With no surviving defendants, the entire state was left emotionally devastated and financially uncompensated—at which point Malkovich quietly swapped in the state of Oklahoma as the new defendant, arguing that “Nebraska only sucks because of them,” just to see if it would stick.