In 1964, a jury awarded $50,000 to a woman who claimed a cable car accident in San Francisco had made her into a nymphomaniac.
It was a story that every American was talking about. 23-year-old Gloria Sykes filed a lawsuit claming that injuries from a cable car accident turned her into a nymphomaniac.
Sykes was a devout Lutheran from Dearborn Heights, Michigan, when she moved to San Francisco two weeks before the accident. She lived at the Stratford Hotel, and was a dance teacher at the then-Fred Astaire Dance Studio next door.
One day she took a ride on the Hyde street cable car line. It was climbing up the steep hill near Lombard street when suddenly mechanical failure caused the grip to lose the cable. The car plunged backwards down the hill. Sykes hit a pole she suffered a black eye, bruises and, she said, an insatiable appetite for sex.
Sykes said after the accident she had sex with 100 men, 50 in one week. She sued San Francisco for $500,000.
Her attorneys say the case was not salacious, rather one of the first proving post traumatic stress syndrome. She had been sexually abused as a child. The accident, they believe, forced her to seek comfort in men.
The jury awarded Sykes $50,000. She became reclusive soon afterwards.
Info Source: Famous case widely reported in the mainstream media.
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