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Quebec man makes bid for planetary ownership

It's Sylvio Langevin's planet and we just live on it. At least that's what the Ste-Euphemie, Quebec man tried to affirm in court last January when he filed a lawsuit demanding sole ownership of the Earth, the rest of our planetary bodies, and a couple of moons for good measure.

Since his bid to become the solar system's planetary proprietor, Justice Alain Michaud of Quebec's Superior Court has barred Langevin from filing anymore lawsuits without written permission from a judge.

As QMI Agency reports, Michaud has declared Langevin to be a quarrelsome litigant, a designation he has earned since filing 45 lawsuits — including four motions to the Supreme Court of Canada — since 2001.

Although past claims have included a $1-billion lawsuit against the federal government, a move that inspired another judge to restrict his right to sue three years ago, it was Langevin's demand to assert ownership over the galaxy that has finally tried the court's patience.

Michaud suggested that Langevin fashioned the solar system suit in retaliation to the 2009 ban.

"Mr. Langevin seems to have understood ... that the absence of respondents to his motions reduced his risk of being once again declared a quarrelsome litigant," Michaud said, adding that he believed it was a "calculated response."

Even Langevin had to admit that was a weakness in his argument. "If there was a respondent, it would be God," he wrote in the suit.

Michaud noted that Langevin's decade-plus of filing ridiculous lawsuits, many of which appear under different aliases, has done little but cost taxpayers loads of money.

Perhaps Langevin was planning to pay back the public funds he's depleted once he started his galaxy exchange. As he explained in his lawsuit, he wanted to collect planets "like others collect baseball cards."