"I've never heard of ANYONE being sued for stealing someone else's snare hit and I'm 100% sure that I never will hear of such a thing."

Keep this in mind. Alot of these legal situations go on behind closed doors, usually producer to producer, producer to publisher, etc. The artist is usually not even involved. Because once the publisher "publishes" the music, it's their responsibility. That's why you will NEVER see things like "Puff Daddy" sued for illegal use of snare sample, etc. Keep in mind both the publisher and copyright holder of the sample WANT to keep making sales! The only reason you would get sued (like another user stated) is if there was some serious money involved, OR they just want your particular song out of the way.

"All the examples I've ever heard of where people have been sued for stealing samples have been REALLY blatant, like when Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" stole from a Queen song, for example."

I've read stories where the publishers of Queen's music knew about this WAY ahead of time and decided to wait on it to see if the song went anywhere, it did and the rest is marketing history! I remember getting interested in the song "only" because "someone" ripped Queen off!

"The bottom line is this...
If you can give me one single example in the history of music where a person has been sued for stealing a snare sample then I'll eat my hat!"

It happens all the time, you're just not going to hear about it in a public forum. Sometimes it's nothing more than, hey you owe me a 1 cent for every copy sold. Call up some local studios, talk to producers, publishers, I see no reason why they wouldn't tell you anything different.

I probably worded some of this stuff more "heavy" than it should have been. Bottom line, go rip, sample, anyone and everything. Just don't pretend it's your original work. Credit the original artist/copyright holder, and uh...wait for a phone call.