Posted on 04/29/2023 7:45:19 AM PDT by sodpoodle
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 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 Stellas for this year:
SEVENTH 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!
SIXTH 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.
FIFTH PLACE
Terrence Dickson, of Bristol, CT, 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 and survive 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.
FOURTH PLACE
Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, garnered 4th Place in the Stellas 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!
THIRD 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 reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.
SECOND 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.
FIRST PLACE
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.
If you think the USA court system is out of control, be sure to pass this one on.
I cannot believe juries are this stupid ... oh wait, yes I can.
The Winnebago verdict is especially galling. That woman leaving the driver's seat to make herself a ham sandwich thinking cruise control would keep the RV on the road should be in jail right now. She could have killed a bunch of people with her stupidity.
Take that, Putin (and She)!!! We have the most ‘creative’ legal system in the world, something you guys cannot hold a candle to!
Completely infuriating - and shows the common sense and intelligence of juries these days.
Hopefully, all will be overturned - but not holding my breath given the judicial system.
When i first heard the story, i thought she was a “bet rich quick” lawsuiter, and thought she just got lightly scalded or somehting, but after reading about it, Stella was severely burned- she had extensive 3’rd degree burns too. Not saying the suit and award were right, but it was a wakeup call that mcd’s coffee is extremely hot and for folks to not be careless with it till it cools some.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have prevailed because it was her actions that caused the severe burns. But, there were no warning labels about just how rediculously hot the coffee was, which there maybe should have been. The lawsuit did have a positive impact in that it shaped how businesses labeled things in order to avoid lawsuits in the future.
And remember: these people on juries also vote!
Ping for later
This email has numerous inaccuracies. For starters, Stella herself was the passenger, and thecar was parked, and she spilled the coffee in the act of removing the lid:
“Her nephew parked so that Liebeck could add cream and sugar to her coffee. She placed the coffee cup between her knees and pulled the far side of the lid toward her to remove it.[10] In the process, she spilled the entire cup of coffee on her lap.[11] Liebeck was wearing cotton sweatpants, which absorbed the coffee and held it against her skin, scalding her thighs, buttocks and groin.[12][13]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants
For another, the Bristol in questuin is in Pennsylvania, not Connecticut. I am sure there’s more.
If I lived in or owned a business in any of the states mentioned, my house and/or business would be on the market today.
However I suspect these travesties will soon be visited on the rest of the disUnited States.
God Almighty, is there any sanity left in this country.........or the world?
It's a little eerie seeing it work and when approaching a curve, I like to freak out my passengers by taking my hands of the wheel and letting the car steer into the curve.
However, if you keep your hands off the wheel for too long, an alarm in the car starts going off.
The Winnebago story at least, has been around for years, so it can't be a recent verdict.
A friend was selected for jury. He had been rejected on four previous cases as soon as attorneys learned he had a PhD. In this case, the pool had been diminished and the attorneys had no choice.
The case involved an insurance claim for a house that burned down. The insurance company rejected the claim since this was the third time the house caught fire in a four week period. The house was unoccupied. Due to a divorce settlement the husband was required to keep up payments on the house. The wife had moved out to live with her boyfriend and refused to let the man sell the house.
In all three instances the fire marshall determined there had been accelerants deployed. The last time, the electricity had been shut off. There was an extension cord run from the house next door to an electric heater lying face down on the carpet.
The jury elected a president whose first comment was: “We know this poor boy was being screwed by his ex and he set the fire. We can find for him and be out of here in time for happy hour.” The jury voted to find for the ‘poor boy’. My friend did not.
Makes me glad that the amount of time I have left through the windshield of life is small and the amount of time in the rear view mirror goes over the horizon.
I honestly don't think I can live much longer with the stupidity I run into every day. Here's the other side of that: when you run into someone who still has smarts and commonsense, you both look at each other and shake your heads at how stupid the world's become and start comparing stories.
It's like making a new friend at that point. Just me? Am I the only one that happens to? Lord, I hope not. Those of us with intelligence and commonsense need to band together.
Sometimes, class action attorneys are the culprits in lawsuit abuse.
Currently, television commercials are airing directed at Marine Corps veterans and others who may have suffered health problems related to contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejune.
What mystifies me about this class action litigation is that no similar lawsuit is directed to those veterans who served nearby at Cherry Point that is not too far away. Is there a different water plant for the two facilities.
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