Yale junior Jesse Maiman is suing US Airways for $1 million because his Xbox came up missing from his checked baggage. Excessive? Not when you consider that Xbox saved his friend's very sanity.

Jesse told the US Air people his Xbox was gone after his flight last December, but got only "weeks of 'an unconscionable 'run-around.'" Now he wants "non-economic distress" damages of up to $1 million. I mean, it wasn't just the video games, okay:

"That thing was my DVD player," Maiman, a junior film studies major, said. He was the 2006 Madeira High co-valedictorian.

Even more importantly, that console was a protector of his classmate's mental health. Yale student Noah Ziggy Gentele wrote an essay for the 2007 New York Times College Essay Contest noting that after he arrived at college, he suffered "an existential crisis once a month." But his friends saved him. Including Jesse Maiman!

Jesse Maiman, a brilliant young man with whom I will be living next semester, took it upon himself to become a master of all things Nintendo Wii since buying one on a drunken Saturday evening last spring. (You may laugh, but the conversations that have transpired in that room–sober and otherwise–rank among the best of the last year).

The Wii paved the way for the Xbox, which doubtless continues its invaluable contribution to ending existential crises. One million dollars shall be the barest minimum necessary to salve the scholars' psychic wounds. Pay up.