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For what has to be one of the most ridiculous lawsuits in the history of e-mail marketing, look no further than one brought in the state of Washington against e-mail marketer Virtumundo.

It’s the kind of lawsuit federal Can-Spam legislation was crafted to defend companies against. But apparently, it’s the kind of nuisance all e-mail marketers still face.

The plaintiff in the case is one James Gordon who, according to Virtumundo’s lawyer Derek Newman, is a self-professed serial litigator whose sole source of income is suing companies he claims spammed him. Gordon’s lawyer didn’t return a call for comment.

Gordon claims that Virtumundo sent him thousands of e-mails that violated Washington State’s anti-spam law and the federal Can-Spam Act, both of which prohibit senders from hiding the source of their e-mails.

Gordon is seeking a little over $10.5 million plus attorney fees.

But get this: Gordon isn’t suing Virtumundo for sending him unsolicited e-mail. He opted into Virtumundo’s e-mail program, and failed to opt out using the mechanism the company provided, according to Newman.

Gordon is suing Virtumundo for the contents of its e-mails’ “from” lines.

According to Gordon, Virtumundo sent e-mails with names such as “Criminal Justice,” “Public Safety” and “Trade In” and addresses such as CriminalJustice@vm-mail.com, PublicSafetyDegrees@vmadmin.com and TradeIn@vm-mail.com in the from lines.

“In each of these emails … no actual sender is identified in the ‘From’ line in any meaningful sense,” said Gordon’s law firm in court papers.

Even Gordon’s lawyers indicate they know how trivial this case is by devoting a significant part of their argument in an attempt to convince the judge that it’s not trivial.

 “Since the court’s ruling will clarify both the federal and state standard for how the ‘From’ line of these spam emails is displayed to the American public, the court’s ruling will determine the amount of time and effort hundreds of millions of email users will have to expend to accurately distinguish between the flood of unwanted commercial emails that they wish to delete and/or filter from their inboxes, and the vastly smaller volume of non-spam email messages which the recipient wants to open and read as part of their private and professional lives,” Gordon’s attorneys wrote. “While the time and energy associated with each of those individual decisions may be small, cumulatively, the time and expense is monumental.”

So you see? The entire American workforce’s productivity hinges on how a judge in Washington decides commercial e-mail “from” lines should look. Ugh.

Gordon’s complaint sets a standard that is impossible to reasonably satisfy.

According to Virtumundo, the names and addresses in the from lines over which Gordon is suing all refer to domains and business units the company owns. Moreover, if the from line contained an employee name or the name “Virtumundo,” it would be meaningless to recipients.

Think about it: If the law were to require the name of the actual person or entity that sent the e-mail to be in the from line, how would a company determine who that is? Is it the parent company that paid to have the e-mail sent? The service provider? The employee who hit “send?”

Newman contends that Gordon isn’t interested in stopping spam. Rather, Gordon is trying to use the law “to extract settlement payments from law abiding commercial email businesses,” he said in Virtumundo’s defense argument.

Meanwhile, any commercial e-mailer could conceivably find itself facing one of Gordon’s lawsuits from loonville. Message to marketers: Search your files for e-mail addresses with @gordonworks in them and add them to your suppression file pronto.

Newman said that so far, Virtumundo executives have indicated they do not plan to settle. Let’s hope so.

If the justice system in Washington is working in this case, the judge will quickly rule for Virtumundo and make Gordon pay back every penny Virtumundo spends defending itself.