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 store owners were
understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the runni ng 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, th e 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 Willi ams
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 rea son 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, scratch. Hang in there; there are only two
more Stella's 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 wi n dow to avoid paying the
$3.50 cover charge, the jury s aid 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 ho me. 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 more stupid...?
Great!