At long last, this years awards are in.
Now there are the...


Stella Awards
It's time once again to review the winners of the annual "Stella Awards."
The Stella's are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonald's. That case inspired the Stella awards for the most frivolous successful lawsuit in the United States. Unfortunately, the most recent lawsuit implicating McDonald's, the teens who allege that eating at McDonald's has made them fat, was filed after the 2002 award voting was closed. This suit will top the 2003 list without question.

Here are this year's winners:

5th Place (tie):
Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $780,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson's son.


5th Place (tie):
19-year-old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000 and medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hub caps.


5th Place (tie):
Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania, was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since the automatic door opener was malfunctioning.He couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation, and Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found, and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the home owner's insurance claiming this situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of $500,000.


4th Place:
Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbor's beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have been just a little provoked at the time by Mr. Williams who had climbed over the fence into the yard and was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.


3rd Place:
A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, $113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and broke her coccyx (tail bone). The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.


2nd Place:
Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, successfully sued the owner of a night club in a neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. This occurred while Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the window in the ladies room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000 and dental expenses.


1st Place:
This year's run away winner was Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip home, (from an OU football game), having driven onto the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, the R. V. left the freeway, crashed and overturned.Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the owner's manual that he couldn't actually do this. The jury awarded him $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. The company actually changed their manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons buying recreation vehicles.

CatchMn...Too funny.
Mr. Grazinski must be a retired airline pilot who now needs to be in a nursing home or the nearest mental institution.

CatchMm ...

Are you sure they aren't all California juries?


H-mom
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
We learn a lot from crayons:
some are sharp; some are dull; some are pretty;
some have weird names; all are different colors.
And they all have to learn to live in the same box.

Of course, most of you know that all of the supposed "lawsuits" are fake. This one has been going around for years. "Stella" awards
And some of you have probably even read up on the actual facts of the "McDonald's hot coffee" case and its actual legal outcome to know it was not a "frivolous" lawsuit, but actually a levelheaded and fair response to a dangerous situation which had seriously injured numerous people.
I hate having to be such a "nudge", but constant repetition of stuff like this, even in a joking way, seems to me to reinforce false ideas about what really goes on in the world, and is a bad idea.
Sorry to be a buzzkill.

D'oh!

Wow, P-Dog.
I checked the web-site. My email came from my brother and he ususally doesn't send me completely false info. I will send the Stella web info to him right away.

But I still think they are funny and with some of the cases in OUR local courts, they could very well be credible. Cooler, more reasonable heads do not always prevail where I come from.

Hey, don't feel bad. This is the second time I've addressed the "Stella" bs on this bulletin board in the last 12 months. So you're not alone. I guess that's my beef. How do you know your impression of what goes on in your local courts isn't actually based on a repetition of stuff like the "Stella" awards, instead of the truth? Outside of the OJ trial and a few other dramatic criminal cases, who really pays attention to what actually goes on in court?
I recently saw yet another "tort reform" group in California advertising what it called examples of rampant frivolous litigation - and not one of the cases (whatever the truth about them may have been) was actually from California (not that the "reformers" publicized that fact.)
As Mark Twain said: "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." That's why I'm leery of letting a small falsehood coast, especially when people seem to think it represents the truth, or something like it.

D'oh!

Stella brings up bad memories of ole Leftydad pouring scalding coffee on Mrs. Fungo. Now her name ain't Stella but this here ain't no hoax either. Happened at the Baylor baseball field in Waco, Texas ohhh...'bout three or four years ago. OPP, HSBBW, and UBSbmom was witness to the whole thing. It healed purdy quick though. The doctor was amazed at how fast it healed. The Dr. said it had to be the high alcohol content in the coffee that speeded up the healing process. Couple of legal questions….What's the statute of limitations on careless endangerment without provocation or cause, doing bodily harm to an elderly baseball fan? Now I've also heard 'em talk that legal jargon about a change of menu and I was wondering, if I can't get cash, could I at least get a change of menu for leftyday that doesn't have hot coffee!
Be Good,
Fungo

Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.

The snopes.com site is interesting, fun, and informative. And should be the first stop whenever you get one of those e-mails about crime, Congress, the law, or some scam. If the research is there, they've got it!

---------------------------------
From 'Nice Guys Finish Last' by Leo Durocher:

Baseball lives at the center of a never-flagging whirl of irreconcilable opinions.

Fungo,
There may be no statute of limitations when it comes to referring to your wife as "elderly", even if you only did it to try for punitive damages.