Is this crazy or what

[Hedgehog]

JBig Money

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.

2ndPlace:
Kara Walton of Claymont , Delaware , successfully sued the owner of a night club 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

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 Driver's 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.


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[Liebchen]

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
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Actually, McDonald's instructed their staff to serve their coffee at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C). At that temperature, the coffee would cause a third-degree burn in two to seven seconds. As a result, Stella Liebeck suffered third-degree burns on six percent of her skin and lesser burns over sixteen percent. She remained in the hospital for eight days while she underwent skin grafting. Two years of treatment followed.

She originally just asked McD's to pay her $20,000 toward her medical costs. McDonald's offered her $800.

Documents obtained from McDonald's showed that from 1982 to 1992 the company had received more than 700 reports of people burnt by their coffee to varying degrees of severity, and had settled claims arising from scalding injuries for more than $500,000. So they had plenty of warning that they were endangering their customers.

Micky D's corporate honchos just did a cost/benefit analysis and decided that serving the hotter coffee was just more profitable. That's why the jury awarded punitive damages -- they were trying to get Ray Kroc's people to wake up and smell the coffee.

Sorry for being such a wet blanket, but I'm familiar with the case and it always cheeses me when people make McDonald's out to be the victim.

Oh, yeah, and the rest of it's BS, too. These stories circulate for a reason, and it's not a good one.

[Mad Russian]

All Stella Liebeck ever asked from McDonalds was for them to pay her medical expenses, like they had done hundreds of times before, in incidents concerning their hot coffee, and to put a warning label on the coffee. They refused.

The jury also did not award a monetary damage value in the case. The damages were set at one days worth of coffee sales by McDonalds. They had no idea how much money that would be.

And, oh yes, McDonalds was instructed to put warning labels on their coffee when all was said and done.

The whole cost, to the corporation, would have been minimal if they had treated this case like all the others. So, the real winners of the Stupid Award, in that case, was McDonald's for making it go to trial in the first place.

We did a case study of this lawsuit when I was in college.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Hedgehog]

I really can't believe people can be so stupid, Mad Russian you got it in one these cases should never ever get to court in the first place......If I was a judge I would have thought that the circus had come to town...LOL .....And of course when you buy a hot drink....Hello It's Hot

People never stop amazing me.....And when people say how good it was in the good old day's, I think they were right, at least they weren't gullible

And I am 70 years young

Age is Wisdom

[McIvan]

I'll also point out that all the lawsuits in that post, except the McDonalds one, are fantasy....they never happened. They're just someone's idea of how to defame the ordinary people that make up a jury and generally do the best they can.

[Mad Russian]

I really can't believe people can be so stupid, Mad Russian you got it in one these cases should never ever get to court in the first place......If I was a judge I would have thought that the circus had come to town...LOL .....And of course when you buy a hot drink....Hello It's Hot

People never stop amazing me.....And when people say how good it was in the good old day's, I think they were right, at least they weren't gullible

And I am 70 years young

Age is Wisdom

Yes, in the good old days we would hang thieves, shoot anyone that didn't go along with the program, linch the guys on mob rule emotion, etc....

As bad as our legal system is and can be we are at least trying to settle the disputes in a civilized manner these days.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Ratzki]

I don't know about all of them being fantasy, they seem about on par with what goes on out there. I read in our paper several months ago about a woman taking a motorcycle helmet company to court for several million dollars for not spending enough in advertising to make her son buy one of their helmets. He bought another brand and was in an accident and has some brain damage as a result, she figures if he had been wearing one of their helmets, he would not have suffered the same ends. Therefore it must be their fault. I have not heard how that one has turned out though.

[Liebchen]

I don't know about all of them being fantasy, they seem about on par with what goes on out there. I read in our paper several months ago about a woman taking a motorcycle helmet company to court for several million dollars for not spending enough in advertising to make her son buy one of their helmets. He bought another brand and was in an accident and has some brain damage as a result, she figures if he had been wearing one of their helmets, he would not have suffered the same ends. Therefore it must be their fault. I have not heard how that one has turned out though.

It may "seem about on par" with what you believe, but that is far from being "true." I've Googled the situation that you say you've read about, and can find nothing.

There is a great deal of money invested, by those whose profit is at stake, in spreading the general feeling that they are not liable for their misjudgments. They want everyone to believe that just the judges and juries are. (And that lawyers -- other than their own lawyers, that is -- are all corrupt.)

You should not be so gullible, guys. The simple rule is that if it seems too crazy to be true, then check it out. You might try an easy tool like http://www.snopes.com/

[Mr Grumpy]

Over in the UK a guy is taking a betting company to court for 2 million GBP because they didn't stop him betting and ruining his life :chin:

Although his account with them was frozen he secretly opened another account and that is what he is blaming them for???

People like this should get a kick up the butt and sent on their way.....................

[Ratzki]

I sure wish that I had kept the clipping from the story. I will see if I can get it, they print the paper close to where I work, they may keep some sort of database on what stories are printed when. I will google the story as well, to see if I can find it. It was not a major story but ran in the thin international section, being that it was an American story and I live in Canada.