Stella Awards

[Admin Acacia]

This could be considered a cousin post to the idiot sightings.  It is also not quite as hilarious as the Darwin Awards.  I haven't actually snoped any of these to see if they are truly factual, but as dumb as people are becoming, they probably are.



Stella Awards

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.

So here are the Stella's for the past year: starting in last place............

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.

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 P LACE :

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 onto 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.

[Morwen Aldarion]

We were just talking about this very topic the other day in my Business Law class.  The fact is most of the cases outlined here did not occur. (Esp. the first place one).  Now it is a fact that Stella did indeed sue McDonalds for the hot coffee and win, but the others listed if they did go to trial didn't win.  And in the Stella case, the amount awarded to her had been reduced TWICE before she got the amount she did.  Just thought you all would like to hear some of the payoff of my schooling ^_^

[Crimson]

I saved you the trouble of snoping the stella awards. And the verdict is in, thier status is false. Also according to Snopes the awards included a 7th entry that has been removed since the first appearance of the stella awards. If anyone cares to read more about it here is the link to the Snopes site regarding it: http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp

[Admin Acacia]

You have partially escalated my faith in fellow man and the legal system to think that these things really did NOT take place.   Yippee.  They do make for some fun reading, though.

[Crimson]

They sure do. I did however watch an episode of Cops, I think that was the show. Where a woman called the cops because she accused another woman and that woman's grown son of not returning her last $20 that she gave them for the drugs she was trying to purchase from them. She then claimed that they gave her fake coke, which I think was dried up, ground up plaster that was all over the sidewalk. She told the cop she changed her mind and wanted her money back.

The other woman told the cop that this strange woman came around her house asking if they had drugs to sell her and that she told her that she didn't and then the strange woman started carrying on about how she was robbed of her last $20. She had told the cop that she just wanted the woman off her property and to leave her and her son alone since they did nothing to the crazy woman.

The cop then made the crazy woman sign some papers that said she was not allowed to step foot on the other woman's property or she could be arrested. Once the whole ordeal was over the cop was stupified as to why someone would call the cops because they were swindled out of there money because of a drug deal that didn't turn out the way they wanted. The woman must have been either so strung out on drugs she didn't realize what she was doing or was so desperate to get money from an unsuspecting person so she could go buy drugs

Now that as far as I know that really happened, unless Cops is scripted hehe.

[Medoly]

For the record... stuff like that really happens.
I know a few people that use to work as correctional Officers in a jail. People wig out really bad when they are coming off of some type of drug or if they want a fix that bad. I was told they will roll dead bugs and smoke them without thinking twice. ...that's not even a drop in the bucket from what I have heard.

[Morwen Aldarion]

Medoly!!!