Oh, TMZ. Wherever do you find these things? You must have friends in high (or maybe low) places in order to pull up these fascinating documents the way that you do. Their most recent find? That some dude named Bruce Hulse is suing MTV for stealing one of his ideas. That idea, by the way, just happened to be Jersey Shore.

According to TMZ, Hulse filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court earlier this month. He claims that he and his production company met with a bunch of MTV executives back in 2006—a meeting during which he pitched his idea for a show he called Jersey Shore. Hulse says that he even showed the execs a video featuring “stereotypical young men and women from New Jersey who were spending their summer in and around the New Jersey shore beaches and cities.”

MTV, according to Hulse, dug the project and promised to pay him if they went forward with it. Of course he never heard back from them—so when Jersey Shore hit the airwaves in 2009, he was, shall we say, less than pleased.

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Now, I realize that Jersey Shore is an enormously profitable enterprise… but to be honest, would you want to be known as the person who created this blight on television? I wouldn’t, but maybe that’s just me. The money would be kind of hard to pass up. Anyway, Hulse is suing for unspecified damages; TMZ estimates that he’s probably after something in the 7-figure range. Oof.

Want more details? Check out the document filed pertaining to the case here. Naturally, it’s full of legalese, but you can get the general gist of it if you pick through it carefully.

One question, MTV: If you really did steal this guy’s idea, couldn’t you have at least bothered to change the title of the show? I mean, really. That’s just lazy.

Lucia Peters is BettyConfidential’s associate editor.