Well, it's time once 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 2007's awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S. .... you know, the kind of cases that make you scratch your shaking 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.
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 that 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 foo d, he sued the homeowner's insurancecompany 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 and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun.
Grrrrr ... Scratch, scratch.
3RD PLACE:
Third place goes to Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania becausea 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, scratch. Ha ng in there; there are only two more Stellas 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 runaway1st place Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home and on her first trip home from an OU football game, after having just 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. Mrs Grazinski then sued Winnebago for not having put into the 'owner's manual' that she should not leave the driver's seat while the motor-home was on cruise control and in motion. The Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down, $1,750,000 PLUS a new mtor-home. Winnebago has since 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...?
