Posted on 02/04/2005 9:26:46 PM PST by lauriehelds
Colorado Teens Fined for Giving Cookies to Neighbor
1 hour, 33 minutes ago Oddly Enough - Reuters
DURANGO, Colo. (Reuters) - A Colorado judge ordered two teen-age girls to pay about $900 for the distress a neighbor said they caused by giving her home-made cookies adorned with paper hearts.
The pair were ordered to pay $871.70 plus $39 in court costs after neighbor Wanita Renea Young, 49, filed a lawsuit complaining that the unsolicited cookies, left at her house after the girls knocked on her door, had triggered an anxiety attack that sent her to the hospital the next day.
Taylor Ostergaard, then 17, and Lindsey Jo Zellitte, 18, paid the judgment on Thursday after a small claims court ruling by La Plata County Court Judge Doug Walker, a court clerk said on Friday.
The girls baked cookies as a surprise for several of their rural Colorado neighbors on July 31 and dropped off small batches on their porches, accompanied by red or pink paper hearts and the message: "Have a great night."
The Denver Post newspaper reported on Friday that the girls had decided to stay home and bake the cookies rather than go to a dance where there might be cursing and drinking.
It reported that six neighbors wrote letters entered as evidence in the case thanking the girls for the cookies.
But Young said she was frightened because the two had knocked on her door at about 10:30 p.m. and run off after leaving the cookies.
She went to a hospital emergency room the next day, fearing that she had suffered a heart attack, court records said.
The judge awarded Young her medical costs, but did not award punitive damages. He said he did not think the girls had acted maliciously but that 10:30 was fairly late at night for them to be out.
No good deed goes unpunished...
I heard this on Mark Levin's show tonight. Remind me never to help another old lady across the street. If she trips and breaks a leg I could wind up losing my house!
Here's to the death of doing the right thing!
Ooopsie, welcome to FR!
You took the words and the cookies right out of my mouth.
I doubt these girls knocked at 10:30PM.
More like the woman was out of it when they knocked in the early evening, she had problems anyway and the next day had to go to the hospital.
She is more than likely broke, has no means to pay, and wanted to sue to get money.
Please don't sue me!
MUST be a super-lib judge.
How in the world can these girls be held responsible for an old bats insanity?
=o)
And people who don't understand why...are lucky, and that's all I'm saying on that score.
Actually, they weren't "fined," they were ordered to pay damages.
Of course, you can't expect a reporter to know the difference.
This lady, Wanita, should call a real estate agent and start packing her things. I think she is no longer welcome/wanted in the neighborhood, to put it mildly.
This is just stupid. Makes me want to go to that woman's house, and in the best Jack Handy manner I can muster, leave an evil looking carved jack-o-lantern on her porch, with a big butcher knife stuck in the pumpkin, with a note that simpy reads "YOU!"...
I'll admit that I would have been annoyed (and I wouldn't have eaten the cookies, either, but then I'm the highly suspicious sort).
Judge Walker seems to have a serious mental problem. The people of La Plata County would be advised to have him examined for suitability for the office he holds.
When I was their age would have left far worse on someones door step! =P
In my neighborhood, the cookies would have had little paper UZIs and a note that reads "Inject cadaverine in my car trunk again, and you're a dead man..."
Flaming paper bags?
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