The Stella Awards

I don't know that any of these stories are true. I should Snopes them, I guess, but they are at least entertaining to read about.


STELLA AWARDS
Time once again to review the winners of the Annual
"Stella Awards". The Stella Awards are named after 81
year old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on
herself and successfully sued McDonald's (in NM). That
case inspired the Stella Awards for the most
frivolous, ridiculous, successful lawsuits in the
United States. Here are this year's winners:


5th Place (tie): 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 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 hubcaps.

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
homeowner's insurance claiming the situation caused
him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune
of $500,000. In my opinion this is so outrageous that
it should have been 2nd Place!

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
(tailbone). 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 nightclub 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.


AND,


1st Place: This year's runaway winner was Mrs. Merv
Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mrs. Grazinski
purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On
her first trip home, (from an OU football game),
having driven onto the freeway, she set the cruise
control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to
go into the back & make herself a sandwich. Not
surprisingly, the RV left the freeway, crashed and
overturned. Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not
advising her in the owner's manual that she couldn't
actually do this. The jury awarded her $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 around.