10 Movie Scenes That Led To Massive Lawsuits

5. Microwave Defamation Drama - American Hustle

Movie lawsuits don't get much weirder or more unexpected than this.

In addition to receiving 10 Oscar nominations, David O. Russell's American Hustle was slapped with a lawsuit due to a scene in which Rosalyn Rosenfeld (Jennifer Lawrence) tells her husband Irving (Christian Bale) that she read an article by Paul Brodeur claiming that microwaves - or "science ovens," as she calls them - remove the nutrition from food.

Brodeur, a former science writer for The New Yorker, has published books on the apparent dangers of microwave radiation, yet sued the film's production for misappropriating Rosalyn's claim to him, because he has never suggested that microwaves reduce the nutrition of food.

Brodeur sued for $1 million in libel damages, alleging that the false claim in the movie had tainted his reputation.

Ironically, though, Brodeur more likely invoked the Streisand effect by drawing greater attention to a fleeting namedrop that your average viewer wouldn't ever remember otherwise.

The suit was ultimately dismissed, with the court deciding that audiences wouldn't take Lawrence's unreliable character seriously, while Brodeur himself had never held a firm written position on the nutritional aspect of microwaved food.