Posted on 02/05/2005 10:24:01 AM PST by Pikamax
After a crumby ending, donated dough rolls in for 2 cookie deliverers By Electa Draper Denver Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 06, 2005 -
Durango - The Cookie Defense Fund has swelled to thousands of dollars.
Hundreds of Denver Post readers e-mailed and called to express "shock" and "outrage" that two 18-year-old Durango girls were sued for something they did last summer: drop off a plate of cookies and a paper heart on a neighbor's porch.
Taylor Ostergaard and Lindsey Zellitti lost in Small Claims Court in La Plata County on Thursday. Their impulse to bake cookies and treat neighbors by knocking, dropping off and running away went awry. One of nine neighbors who received a plate of cookies said the pounding on her door about 10:30 p.m. July 31 frightened her into an anxiety attack. A Durango judge awarded about $900 to the 49-year-old woman to cover some medical bills incurred when she ended up at the emergency room the next day.
If the people who called and wrote make good on their pledges, that $900 will be recovered many times over. Several people offered to personally cover the whole amount themselves.
The attention has been overwhelming.
"We just put them on the plane. Lindsey, Taylor and Jill (Taylor's mother) are headed to New York to do 'Good Morning America,"' Martha Zellitti, Lindsey's mom, said Friday night.
"They just thought it might be their one shot to tell the country they're still not afraid to do good deeds," Martha Zellitti said. "They'll just try to be more considerate in the future about the time."
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The families are also mulling over an offer from Jay Leno to do "The Tonight Show." It's not looking good for Leno, though, because Lindsey's mom wants her to get back to college in Kansas, where she is a freshman studying animal nutrition. Taylor is still in high school.
"We're just not the movie- star types," Martha Zellitti said.
But the story, which appeared Friday in The Denver Post, was linked to the Drudge Report and eBay. The tale was recounted on MSNBC ("Sugar and spice is not always nice," journalist Dan Abrams said) and other media.
The Otis Spunkmeyer cookie- making company is offering to hold an event in Durango to set things right.
"Cookies are the ultimate comfort food," Otis Spunkmeyer spokeswoman Liz Rayo said. "We don't want anyone sued over cookies. Cookies are good. This is an emotional issue for us."
They're not the only ones.
In e-mail after e-mail to The Post, from Hawaii to New York, and from Canada to Puerto Rico, people invoked with dismay the adage "No good deed goes unpunished."
Many observed that the unfortunate misunderstanding gave new meaning to the term "Cookie Monster."
One reader called the plaintiff in the case "a macaroon." Another called her a "cookie batterer."
The plaintiff could not be reached for comment Friday.
Martha Zellitti said the girls' families are not upset with the neighbor, or with the judge, who received many calls from people questioning his decision. Zellitti said the neighbor volunteers at the local food bank and does good deeds herself.
"And the judge made the best decision he could with the information he had," Zellitti said. "We just weren't prepared."
The judge awarded only $1 for damages, even though he could have given the plaintiff lost wages and the cost of new motion- sensor lights for her porch and more. She had itemized about $3,000 in all.
But political conservatives who read the story were convinced the judge must be a liberal activist intent on being politically correct. On the other hand, liberals said the judge and neighbor must be conservatives, who tend to see "terrorists behind every bush and on every porch," even in a quiet rural neighborhood just south of Durango.
The girls' defenders ran the gamut from executives and reverends to felons.
One e-mailer offered to set the girls up in their own cookie business.
There were other factions. A small but intense group were incensed that anyone would consider 10:30 p.m. "too late." It's really early, they said.
One church group wrote that members were very concerned because one of its favorite programs is for youths to ring doorbells, drop off treats and run. Another church group in South Carolina said it had young men in its congregation who would like to correspond with the Durango bakers.
"Lindsey's boyfriend wouldn't like that," Martha Zellitti said.
Good for you.
What the heck is wrong with these people?
From a purely legal analysis, I can't even suggest why the judge made this decision. There's no legal theory to support it.
Nonetheless, we have several Freepers who totally agree with the judge, and some who think it would be okay if the girls were shot and killed.
I had no idea this story would be so divisive.
Some people aren't used to being disagreed with.
There's the problem right there. Lawyers were involved all along, and prevented a meeting that could have kept this thing from going to court.
From the article this incident happened on July 31 of last year.
The actual data
July 31, 2004 Sun Rise Sun Set
Actual Time 6:15 AM MDT 8:18 PM MDT
Just so the facts are documented when certain assertions are made.
I'm with you.
I have a feeling that the sheriff didn't "advise" her to leave her house that night; they may have said "If you're not comfortable here, is there somewhere else you can go?"
I want to know where mother and her 19 year old daughter were during all this commotion? Did they not open the door and look around?
And after the families offered to pay for anything above what her health insurance didn't pay, why did she continue on with this?
Even if what they girls did was ill-advised, after she heard what it was they meant to convey, what kind of person would continue on with this?
As a side note: we have no way of knowing what those discussions concerning the offers to pay her bill went like; now, judging from the fact that the husband, despite a judgement, continues to make harassing phone calls, I'll speculate they didn't go "well," if you get my drift.
I'm thinking that the families sought legal advice about their best road to getting this behind them and the attorney, after hearing all the facts, might have "mentioned" that the lady AND her husband sounded like a whack job and that they needed to consider whether this could go on until the end of time, thus the "we'll pay if you say no more claims" letter.
To me -- and I am a court reporter -- it sounds like that wasn't enough for the woman and her husband; perhaps they were going to milk it for all they could get. After all, if circumstances are all as reported, the trip to the hospital for "anxiety" -- and the apology and offer to pay -- should have been the end of it.
;)
LOL!
could it be that this judge was respecting property ownership? i don't know. but that is good in my book if so. i DON'T think it should have been brought to court in the first place from what i have read of it. but i always like it when judges side with property owners... ya know?
What goes around comes around!
Knocking on someones door is a reason to shoot them?
I deposed one lady who actually said she couldn't work because she was involved in SO many lawsuits; she nicked and dimed everybody that ever thought about opening a business.
And all she got was chump changes every time; but, of course, it was tax free.
From loud knocking on the door.
And before you go any further, the part about "pounding" and "shadows" and "Who's there?" is HER side of the story. Needless to say, there's nobody to back her up.
I haven't seen any posts that kind of agree with the judge let alone "totally".
And you'll please note the "spillover" argument was caused by a poster pinging me over here in some strange attempt to force me to recant my heresy.
LOL
Well, since you don't like ediotrializing, how about citing the Colorad code that allows anybody who lives in Colorado to kill anybody that comes to their door.
Whoops, I just said I hadn't seen anyone agree with the judge even kind of but there you are.
I stand corrected.
Not really. Unless you have a No Trespassing sign up, nobody is on notice that it's wrong to knock on your front door and that it might cost them hundreds of dollars if you do.
There you go; and as in most of these cases, the "fish" gets "longer" with the telling.
What is that suppose to mean?
Oh, never mind; I see; you're implying that somebody who disagreed with cyncooper was banned.
And your proof of that is what?
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