Stella Awards

[OvadekP]

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?

So... 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 running toddler was her own son.
What???

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 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 :

A jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster , Pennsylvania $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. Whatever 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 nightclub 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 nightclub had to pay her $12,000, oh, yeah, plus dental expenses.

Go figure.

1ST PLACE :
(May we 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 more stupid?
Or is it just the juries the lawyers select?
PLEASE...
IF YOU HAVE A BRAIN IN YOUR HEAD OR HAVE GOOD COMMON SENSE...
START SHOWING UP FOR JURY DUTY

[TinGLOCK]

Do you hear that sound? That's the sound of Xenu weeping.

Good lord there are some stupid yinzes out there.

[ErSwnn]

Amazing, absolutely amazing. I'd be too embarressed by those actions to file a suit. And the burglar....WTF? Someone gave a thief a reward for being a thief??

As for the original Stella case, there is a bit more to it than commonly known. Mickey D's was repeated warned to sell cooler coffee and there had been other suits along those lines. At one point they did reduce the temp but then raised it again. Not that this alone is an excuse for her particular action but the chain had ignored warnings from several sources to reduce the temp.

One I remember from years ago. A fellow broke his leg and was out of work. While unloading groceries a bag at a time from his car a thief grabbed one of the bags and walked away knowing he wouldn't be chased. The owner, being broke without work and wanting to make sure his 4 kids would eat shot the thief in the leg so as to keep his food. The criminal sued for $100,000 and received $75,000. The judge determined the thief was 25% at fault for getting shot. I wish I was the judge....I'da made the creep pay for the bullet.

[Warpt762x39]

You guys do know a burglar can sue you if they hurt themselves while breaking into your house? Tip: if you see someone break into your house, shoot them enough that they cannot sue you.

[granuale]

Are we, as a society, getting more stupid?
Or is it just the juries the lawyers select?
PLEASE...
IF YOU HAVE A BRAIN IN YOUR HEAD OR HAVE GOOD COMMON SENSE...
START SHOWING UP FOR JURY DUTY

I'm not sure I'd want you on my jury. Every one of the cases listed is bullshit - as in did not happen. You can see for yourself by going to the Stella Awards' own website and look under the "bogus" section where these are all listed. You can't believe everything you read Ovadek.


From USA Today in 2005:

Legal myths: Hardly the whole truth
By Jonathan Turley
Have you heard about the guy who injured himself while using his lawn mower as a hedge clipper, and then won $500,000 in a lawsuit against the lawn mower company? How about the woman who threw a soft drink at her boyfriend, slipped on the wet floor, and then won $100,000 in a lawsuit against the restaurant? These are only two of the common examples of lawsuit abuses that are fueling the call for "litigation reform." They are also completely untrue — part of a growing collection of legal mythologies that are appearing widely in the national media.
Image is everything in tort reform, such as President Bush's visit earlier this month to a "judicial hellhole" in Illinois where tort cases supposedly flourish. He has made tort reform a priority of his second term and is expected to repeat these calls in his State of the Union address Wednesday. It is all part of a well-funded campaign to limit damages against companies and physicians across the country.

Horror stories offered by industry groups play to a weakness in the media for "you-are-not-going-to-believe-this" stories. Of course, it is not surprising that the stories are unbelievable — because many never occurred.

Take the ubiquitous hedge-clipper man story. It has appeared in print, on TV programs, in law school classrooms and in political speeches for decades. Former vice president Dan Quayle used it in his call for reform (though he reportedly referred to the man cutting his hair with a lawn mower). In reality, the story originated in an ad campaign by the insurance firm Crum & Forester, which later admitted that it knew of no such case. Yet, proving that facts should never stand in the way of a good story, it remains perhaps the most cited example of abuse — the best $500,000 that the insurance industry never paid.

Bad lawyering

Even true stories often prove not to be examples of bad law, but bad lawyering. Take the list of the "wackiest consumer warnings," released this month by the Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch to show the need for reform. Included are such things as a warning on a toilet brush that reads, "Do Not Use for Personal Hygiene" or a sign on a scooter that reads, "This product moves when used." These are not fabrications, but none of these warnings make any more legal sense than they do practical sense. No company has to warn consumers not to use a toilet brush on their teeth or hair.

Legal legends can be irresistible, even for the most respected newspapers, magazines and networks.

U.S. News & World Reportowner Mort Zuckerman used the story of the soft drink lady in Pennsylvania in an article denouncing lawsuit abuse. He is not alone. The tale of Amber Carlson and her soda has appeared in countless television and print sources. Zuckerman also cited the case of a woman who knocked her teeth out while sneaking through a nightclub's restroom window to avoid paying a $3.50 cover charge — and then won $12,000 from a jury. It is also false.

Both stories have been attributed to the Stella Awards, an annual listing of loony lawsuits. But the Stella Web site points out that they both are complete fabrications. Yet they continue to appear in print and on the Internet.

Other examples of fabricated "true cases of lawsuit abuse":

• Kathleen Robertson of Austin received $780,000 from a jury after she tripped over her own son in a furniture store.

• Carl Truman, a 19-year-old in Los Angeles, was awarded more than $74,000 when his hand was run over by a neighbor. The neighbor did not see Truman, who was in the process of stealing his hubcaps.

• Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pa., was given a $500,000 award after he was inadvertently trapped in the garage of a house that he was burglarizing.

• A Mr. Grazinski won more than $1,750,000 and a new Winnebago after he put his new motor home on cruise control at 70 mph and then went into the back to fix himself some coffee — only to crash on the highway.

Merely legal legends

These are the legal versions of the urban legends about alligators living in the New York City sewers. Everyone knows that alligators brought back by kids as pets from Florida have been flushed down the toilets, only to thrive below the streets of New York City.

Legal legends fit the stereotype of litigation so well that their falsity becomes secondary. Of course, law is not alone in such fabrications. Consider my favorite story about Pia Zadora's dismal performance as the lead in The Diary of Anne Frank. Zadora was so bad that, during the scene where Nazis break into the house screaming, "Where is Anne Frank?" audience members screamed, "She's in the attic!" It is a brilliant story, but I was crushed to learn recently that it is also completely untrue: Zadora has never played Anne Frank, and there is no such scene in the play.

I loved the Zadora story for the same reason people such as Zuckerman loved the fabricated lawsuit stories: They capture a critical idea with an element of humor or absurdity. There is, however, a great difference between using urban legends to dish on some actress and using them to make massive changes in the law. So, as we begin this latest debate over tort reform, one small piece of advice: If you hear about a case that is almost too good to be true, it probably isn't.

[Robert Kayland]

[obligatory pop culture reference]



Tonight's broadcast of The Stella Awards will be hosted by... aw, never mind.

[/obligatory pop culture reference]