Stella Awards

KenpoTess

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It's once again time to review the winners of the annual Stella awards. The Stellas are named after 81 year old Stella Liebeck, who spilled coffee on herself and success- fully sued McDonald's. That case inspired the Stella Awards for the most frivolous successful lawsuits in the United States. These are actual cases that won the top five awards:

5th place.

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 could not 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 8 days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi He found and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued, claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The Jury agreed to the tune of $500,000

4th place.

Jerry Williams of Little Rock Arkansas was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his neighbor's Beagle dog. 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 provoked at the time as Mr. Williams, who had climbed over the fence into the yard, 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 sued the owner of a Night Club when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out two of her front teeth. This occurred while MS. Walton was trying to sneak out of 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 Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new Winnebago Motor Home. On a trip home from an OU football game, while driving on the Freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly the RV left the Freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the owner's manual that he could not actually do this. The jury awarded him $1,750,000 plus a new Winnebago Motor Home. The company actually changed their manuals on the basis of this suit just in case there was any other complete morons buying their recreation vehicles.
 

Jay Bell

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I've been a fan of the Stella Awards for awhile...though I rarely read them because they do nothing more the anger me.

Absolute proof that our "system" has gone to hell in a handbasket. The fact that such claims are even allowed in a courtroom to be heard is absurd. Something seriously needs to be done about this nonsense.
 

MA-Caver

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And to think how rich we all be if we decided to sue others for stupid crap that we do. I'd be making Bill Gates look like a pauper by now.
Whats really incredible about the Stella awards is that the "jury of our peers" actually awards these people for their stupidity.
You'd think there'd be ONE juror in the bunch that goes "yeah riiight, throw the bum outta here."
 

OULobo

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I'm pretty sure these are all urban legends. This email has already featured on Snopes.com and they did the research on the cases and found that none of them are really true.
 
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KenpoTess

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Thanks OULobo.. I'm feeling better bout it all now *G*


Here is the site detailing the myth. Debunking Urban Legends About the Civil Justice System: The Other Side of the Story You Need to Hear!

Updated September 30, 2003

Click Here For the Truth About the McDonaild's Coffee Case Click Here For More Information on Debunking Civil Justice Myths You may have received an e-mail that contains this unbelievable story: A man sets his Winnebago motor home on cruise control and gets up to make a cup of coffee in the moving vehicle. It crashes. He sues the manufacturer for failing to tell him to stay in the driver's seat. A jury awards him $1.75 million and a new motor home, and the company changes its handbook.

There's a simple reason this story sounds unbelievable. IT'S PHONY. THE CASE NEVER HAPPENED. It's fabricated and so are six other "lawsuits" summarized in the same e-mail, which has been widely circulated in various forms on the Internet over the last few years.

The e-mail of anonymous origin claims that the Winnebago case is the latest winner of the annual "Stella Award" for the most frivolous lawsuit in the United States. "Stella" is a mocking reference to Stella Liebeck, an elderly woman who won a lawsuit against McDonald's. Some versions of the e-mail claim she "won $2.9 million for spilling a cup of McDonald's coffee on herself." That, too, is a myth. For the facts about Ms. Liebeck's case and the horrible third-degree burns she suffered, click here.



http://www.atla.org/homepage/debunk.aspx
 

Jay Bell

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Here's what I've found by sniffing about. The email that Tess originally posted is bunk. However...if you go to the Stella Award website, they have *factual* cases. They spend time making sure cases are legitimate before posting.

So whomever originally came up with the email above pretty much lied. Here are actual cases, and winners, from last year:

The 2002 True Stella Awards Winners

#7: Attorney Philip Shafer of Ashland, Ohio, flew on Delta Airlines from New Orleans to Cincinnati and was given a seat, he says, next to a fat man. "He was a huge man," Shafer says. "He and I [were] literally and figuratively married from the right kneecap to the shoulder for two hours." He therefore "suffered embarrassment, severe discomfort, mental anguish and severe emotional distress," he claims in a lawsuit against the airline. Shafer figures this embarrassment, discomfort, mental anguish and emotional distress could be cured by a $9,500 payment from Delta. If Shafer isn't careful, that might be dwarfed by the divorce settlement his "huge" (seat)mate might demand.

#6: "The Godfather of Soul" James Brown has a "grudge" against his daughters Deanna Brown Thomas and Yamma Brown Lumar, they allege. They say Brown "vowed to the media that his daughters will never get a dime from him" and "James Brown has kept his word." So they have done what any kid would do when cut off from their rich daddy's bank account: they sued him for more than $1 million, claiming that they are owed royalties on 25 of his songs which, they say, they helped him write even though, at the time, they were children. For instance, when Brown's 1976 hit "Get Up Offa That Thing" was a chart-topper, the girls were aged 3 and 6. It's enough to make Brown switch to the Blues.

#5: Utah prison inmate Robert Paul Rice, serving 1-15 years on multiple felonies, sued the Utah Department of Corrections claiming the prison was not letting him practice his religion: "Druidic Vampire". Rice claimed that to do that, he must be allowed sexual access to a "vampress". In addition, the prison isn't supplying his specific "vampiric dietary needs" (yes: blood). Records show that Rice registered as a Catholic when he was imprisoned in 2000. "Without any question we do not have conjugal visits in Utah," said a prison spokesman when the suit was thrown out. Which just goes to prove prison life sucks.

#4: Every time you visit your doctor, you're told the same old things: eat less, exercise more, stop smoking. Do you listen? Neither did Kathleen Ann McCormick. The obese, cigarette-smoking woman from Wilkes-Barre, Penn., had high blood pressure, high cholesterol and a family history of coronary artery disease. Yet doctors at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center "did not do enough" to convince her to work to improve her own health. Unsurprisingly, she had a heart attack which, she says in a federal lawsuit, left her a "cardiac invalid". In addition to eight doctors, she's suing their employer -- the U.S. government -- demanding a minimum of $1 million in compensation.

#3: In 1997 Bob Craft, then 39, of Hot Springs, Montana, changed his name to Jack ***. Now, he says that MTV's TV show and movie "Jackass" was "plagiarized" from him, infringes his trademarks and copyrights, and that this has demeaned, denigrated and damaged his public image. No attorney would take the case, so he has filed suit on his own against MTV's corporate parent, demanding $50 million in damages. If nothing else, Jack *** has proved he chose his name well.

#2: Hazel Norton of Rolling Fork, Miss., read there was a class action suit against the drug Propulsid, which her doctor had prescribed to her for a digestive disorder. Despite admitting that "I didn't get hurt by Propulsid," Norton thought "I might get a couple of thousand dollars" by joining the lawsuit. When her doctor was named in the suit, he quit his Mississippi practice -- where he was serving the poor. He left with his wife, a pediatrician and internist. That left only two doctors practicing at the local hospital. So while Norton wasn't harmed by the drug, all her neighbors now get to suffer from drastically reduced access to medical care because of her greed.

And the winner of the 2002 True Stella Awards: sisters Janice Bird, Dayle Bird Edgmon and Kim Bird Moran sued their mother's doctors and a hospital after Janice accompanied her mother, Nita Bird, to a minor medical procedure. When something went wrong, Janice and Dayle witnessed doctors rushing their mother to emergency surgery. Rather than malpractice, their legal fight centered on the "negligent infliction of emotional distress" -- not for causing distress to their mother, but for causing distress to them for having to see the doctors rushing to help their mother. The case was fought all the way to the California Supreme Court, which finally ruled against the women. Which is a good thing, since if they had prevailed doctors and hospitals would have had no choice but to keep you from being anywhere near your family members during medical procedures just in case something goes wrong. In their greed, the Bird sisters risked everyone's right to have family members with them in emergencies.

The Stella bunch go on to talk about the fabricated claims:

Bogus
 
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pknox

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Yes. But the factual ones are bad enough that our concerns about humanity are still valid, unfortunately.
 

OULobo

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The good news is that it seems all the factual ones get thrown out of court or they just flat out loose the case. Still its expensive to run these people all the way up the court system and I'm sure there are other less direct consequences, as noted in some of the real stories.
 

Jay Bell

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Originally posted by KenpoTess
How rude for some Prefabricator to send me bunk email~!! *Puts block on their email addy*

*chuckle* Not a big deal. I have a friend of mine who sends me bunk emails non-stop...usually having to do with backing of her religious beliefs (YOU KNOW THE TYPE!). So I always send her the Snopes link explaining that her email just wasn't true. You'd think after a year of this she'd get the hint...

but no...she just tells me I'm missing the point. No one should have to lie and twist information to make a valid point....about God or anything else.
 
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KenpoTess

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Originally posted by Jay Bell
*chuckle* Not a big deal. I have a friend of mine who sends me bunk emails non-stop...usually having to do with backing of her religious beliefs (YOU KNOW THE TYPE!). So I always send her the Snopes link explaining that her email just wasn't true. You'd think after a year of this she'd get the hint...

but no...she just tells me I'm missing the point. No one should have to lie and twist information to make a valid point....about God or anything else.

*G* Good I don't think my daughter would approve of me blocking her.. I don't think she reads things before sending them on *snickers*
 

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