Posted on 02/16/2009 5:38:37 PM PST by Entrepreneur
The most outrageous lawsuits filed in the past year have been revealed at the annual Stella Awards held in the US this week.
The awards take a light-hearted look at the civil litigation industry that now costs more than $247 billion (£172bn) a year – the equivalent of $825 (£574) per person in the US.
They are named after Stella Liebeck of Albuquerque, New Mexico, who successfully sued McDonald's for $2.86 million (£2m) in 1992 after burning herself on coffee that was "too hot".
Among the cases featured this year was the Washington lawyer who is suing the dry cleaners who lost his trousers for $65 million (£45m) on the basis of "mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort" and the woman who threw her drink at her boyfriend in a Philadelphia restaurant then slipped on the spilt liquid, broke her tailbone and successfully sued for $113,500 (£79,000).
The awards, which were set up seven years ago by California publisher and columnist Randy Cassingham, also include the case of Mrs Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma, who sued Winnebago for $1.75 million (£1.21m) after she crashed her motor home at 70mph while making a sandwich.
She argued the firm failed to inform her not to leave the wheel when she set it on cruise control.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I don't believe a word of it, until I can verify it, since they can't even get it right that Randy is (and was at the time) living in Colorado, not California!
Oh, and it was September 2002, which is much closer to 6 years ago.
He moved to Colorado in 1996 to pursue online publishing full time, centered around This is True. Randy Cassingham -- a Brief Biography
Mrs Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma, who sued Winnebago for $1.75 million (£1.21m) after she crashed her motor home at 70mph while making a sandwich.
She argued the firm failed to inform her not to leave the wheel when she set it on cruise control.
Uhh, no; that kind of made-up story is why Randy started The True Stella Awards, using REAL court cases.
True Stella Awards ...it's free to subscribe.
This smells of Insurance industry propaganda. For one, that lady didn’t “successfully sue McDonalds” for that amount. In the end she got enough to pay for her surguries to remove the pantyhose that melted to her legs from the coffee that was “too hot”.
Every one of those “awards” is bogus. Most of them have been around at least as long as the Internet; some predate it.
The Winnebago one I first heard as being 5 vacationing Arabs that rented it.
The link I put to True Stella Awards is for an intermittant newsletter of real, current cases,with the purpose of working toward tort reform.
Usually someone shows up to complain that if we knew the whole story about Stella and the hot coffe, we wouldn’t think it was outrageous. Well, before you get started, I have read about it. I still think she was an idiot to hold the coffee cup between her knees in the car. Anyone old enough to drink coffee is old enough to know better.
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