Category: News and Views
I almost put this item in the joke board, but unfortunately, this stuff is true...
It's time again for the annual "Stella Awards"! For those unfamiliar
with these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonald's in New Mexico
where she purchased the coffee. You remember, she took the lid off the coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving.
Who would ever think one could get burned doing that, right?
That's right; these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S. You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch your head. So
keep your head scratcher handy.
Here are the Stella's for the past year:
7TH PLACE:
Kathleen Robertson of Austin , Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside
a furniture store. The storeowners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son.
6TH PLACE:
Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently
didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hubcaps.
Go ahead, grab your head scratcher.
5TH PLACE:
Terrence Dickson, of Bristol, Pennsylvania, who was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic
garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage door to open. Worse, he couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage
to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut. Forced to sit for eight, count 'em, EIGHT, days on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he
sued the homeowner's insurance company claiming undue mental anguish.
Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish. We should all have this kind of anguish.
Keep scratching. There are more....
4TH PLACE :
Jerry Williams, of Little Rock , Arkansas , garnered 4th Place in the Stella's when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the
butt by his next door neighbor's beagle - even though the beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. Williams did not get
as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the
fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun.
Grrrrr ... Scratch, scratch.
3RD PLACE:
Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania because a jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and
broke her tailbone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument. What ever
happened to people being responsible for their own actions?
Scratch, scratch, and scratch. Hang in there; there are only two more
StellaAca!acs to go...
2ND PLACE
Kara Walton, of Claymont , Delaware sued the owner of a night club in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out
her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover
charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000....oh, yeah, plus dental expenses. Go figure.
1ST PLACE: (May I have a fanfare played on 50 kazoos please)
This year's runaway First Place Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home.
On her first trip home, from an OU football game, having driven on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's seat
to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly,
Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually leave the driver's seat while the cruise control was set.
The Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down?, $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit,
just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a
motor home.
Are we, as a society, getting dumber or just more bizarre??
I don't know whether these are more funny than outragious, or more outragious than funny. In short, they are a poor reflection of our society.
To answer the question at the bottom: yes and yes.
Thanks for posting them.
Bob
One does have to wonder though how true these are? I received an email with many of these same stories in it more than 4 years ago in an email, and have received the same, or very similar version several times since, just with the year at the top changed. LOL. That said, if nothing else these are amusing stories so why not keep circulating them.
Dan.
It's true, some of them may get passed off as being new from one year to the next, but I know that at least some of them are true because they made the national news. Especially the one for whom these awards are named. If I had been stupid enough to put a burning hot cup of coffee between my legs and then spilled the coffee on myself, it never would have dawned on me to blame McDonalds and sue them. But then, not trying to sue someone every time I do something stupid may be why I'll never get rich.
Bloody hell, people are stupid!