For those unfamiliar with these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonald’s in where she purchased the coffee.
That’s right. These are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts that happened during 2006. You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch your head. Here are the “Stellas” for the past year:
To kick things off the right way, there was a three-way tie for 5th place.
Kathleen Robertson 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 store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict considering the running toddler was Ms. Robertson’s son.
Also in 5th place is Carl Truman, 19, who won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn’t notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor’s hubcaps. Go ahead. Grab your head scratcher.
The last of the 5th place winners was Terrence Dickson, who was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage door to open. Worse, he couldn’t re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut. Forced to subsist for eight — count ‘em, 8! — days on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner’s insurance company claiming undue mental anguish. Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish. We should all have this kind of anguish. Keep scratching.
There are more.
Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, garnered 4th Place in the “Stellas” when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor’s beagle – even though the beagle was on a chain in its owner’s fenced yard Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun. Grrrrr. Scratch, scratch.
3rd place went to Amber Carson because a jury ordered a restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on soft drink and broke her tailbone (coccyx). The reason the soft drink was on the floor? Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument. What ever happened to people being responsible for their own actions? Scratch, scratch, scratch.
Hang in there, there are only two more Stellas to go.
2nd place goes to Kara Walton after she sued the owner of a night club in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000 and… oh, yeah dental expenses. Go figure.
Finally (may I have a fanfare played on 50 kazoos please) this year’s runaway First Place Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home – from an OU football game, no less – having driven on to the free way, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver’s seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich.
Don’t look so incredulous. Remember, we’re talking about Oklahoma here. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned.
Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner’s manual that she couldn’t actually leave the driver’s seat while the cruise control was set. The jury awarded her — you are sitting down, right? — $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit. Just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might buy a motor home.
Take a look at this link – http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_stella_awards.htm – and this link – http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp to see what BS this is. It seems typical of conservatives to take something that is 95% made up crap and turn it into “truth” to support broad-stroke, fallacious beliefs.
Comment by Chicago Jim — August 22, 2007 @ 8:15 am
a three-way tie for 5th place.
Some serious Joementum going on there.
Comment by Cerberus — August 22, 2007 @ 4:05 pm
Agreed, this is complete horseshit!!!
Propoganda by corporate America to limit class action and liability all together.
McDonalds was warned over and over not to go into the pre-set coffee machines and set them to a higher temperature (shitty coffee tastes better when really hot – known fact).
The coffee was so hot it put 3rd Degree burns on the old woman’s private parts. She deserved to win that case! Corporations have to much power and McDonalds was justly smacked down!!!!
Comment by CaliforniaDave — August 22, 2007 @ 5:55 pm
I have to agree strongly with those above in calling bullshit on the stella’s as being nothing but corporate propaganda from the culture of corruption club no less.
Since Stella isnt here to defend herself,I am forced to remind some of an inconvienient fact:
The McDonalds coffeepot manufacturer was using
inferior thermostats valued at around .15 cents
per unit.
when these malfunctioned, the coffee tested well
above the temperatures needed to cause serious burns.
below is a snippet from an article about Tom Delay and a frivolous lawsuit where he sued a manufacturer in a wrongful deathsuit and then turned around and pulled the plug on his own gray-haired daddy:
“Further raising the hypocrisy quotient, in 1990 DeLay’s family sued a manufacturer whose negligence they claimed caused the tram to careen out of control. The wrongful death suit, which included an affidavit filed by DeLay, was settled in 1993 for an undisclosed sum, believed to be $250,000″
Here is a link to the original text:
http://www.dailycal.org/sharticle.php?id=18151
I’m sorry but this post missed the mark,
usually it is excellent and I commend the mysterious Barto and Grim for the rest.
Comment by Rainlander — August 22, 2007 @ 9:52 pm
Huge settlements are awarded against huge corporations because the only way to make them stop harmful behavior is to make it financially unsound. This is why “tort reform” is a bad idea, promoted by pro-corporate shills.
The cases listed in this article are at best, incomplete, and at worst outright fabrications. This is not to say that there are never outrageous lawsuits filed, but in most cases the jury can recognize such cases for what they are. After all, anyone can sue anyone else over anything. In fact, some of the worst frivolous lawsuits have been filed by large companies for the sole purpose of putting their smaller competitors out of business.
For anyone interested in actual lawsuits, I recommend Randy Cassingham’s page The TRUE Stella Awards. There you can find all the facts about the McDonald’s coffee case, as well as others. It’s really okay to laugh at the antics of our fellow man – but let’s not stoop to making shit up to achieve some kind of political points.
Comment by Peregrin — August 22, 2007 @ 11:56 pm
Remember in each of these cases, a JURY made an award. Not trial lawyers, not judges, not corporate shills. That means they were convinced they were right.
Comment by greyhawk — August 23, 2007 @ 7:22 am
I apologize, I did not double check with snopes before posting. The jury remark stands with the coffee suit. I would like to know if your postions is that a person who has been the victim of a bad injury at the hands of another should have no legal recourse.
What do you say to this case
http://www.dailymail.com/story/News/2007081043/Man-says-hold-the-cheese-claims-McDonalds-didnt-sues-for-10-million/
Comment by greyhawk — August 24, 2007 @ 6:33 am
Hey all,
Randy, that conceived the ‘Stella Awards’, is a cool guy, a one-man-band, living in Colorado! Take a moment to visit the site…
http://www.stellaawards.com/
He is NOT a ‘corporate shill’… you’ve obviously made up your mind based on my pal Bart’s comments.
I AGREE with Bart about ‘Stella v McDo’s’…
Did you read these awards?
A burglar getting 14K from one of YOU: a homeowner he ROBBED?
A woman who tripped over her own SON? (what effect on him we don’t know…) 80K from a furniture store… (prices going up…)
Lawsuits are a GREAT HAMMER to stop corp BS (see the Stella sentence above)… but they’ve also become ‘our god-given right’ to promote IRRESPONSIBILITY…
What happened to YOUR furniture store, with the bad publicity when some BIMBO tripped over her son and dragged you into court and the PRESS?
I’ve been a contributor to Bart for many a years, writings and helping his first two annual budgets
ZENmud aka Drew
http://crystelZENmud.blogspot.com
Comment by Drew — August 24, 2007 @ 7:19 am
What is this?!? You guys all of a sudden coming out of the wood work? What a pleasent surprise. For a while I thought no one was reading at all.
The women fried by McD coffee, by the way, did not get much money, certainly not the 1.5 million(?) she sued for. don’t remember but I think it ended up at around $59,000.
Comment by grimgold — August 24, 2007 @ 9:54 am
Your somewhat right, as her verdict-award at Court, was reduced at the Appelate level… I think it was still a six-figure settlement, though.
I was hit on my bike while in Law school, was driver’s fault. AND, they lied to their ins-co. (means: claims adjuster said she believed me, and not their client, was the wife that hit me).
So I said, at that time “Do you want to settle with me soon, or do you want me to ‘hire’ my professor?”
We settled within 4months for about 10k plus meds plus a new wheel and handlebars (on a Colnago racing bike)… I could have slimed them for about 50k just by finding a lawyer to write a letter or three…
didn’t!
ZENmud aka Drew
Comment by Drew — August 24, 2007 @ 10:54 am
The last one about the Winnebago is complete horseshit. It is an urban myth that I have heard told in various different ways. It never happened. In my mind, that makes all the other stories equally invalid. This article is apparently part of a public indoctrination campaign by the corporatocracy to push their version of tort “reform”; i.e. removal of citizens rights to be compensated for legitimate wrongs and protect others from potential future injury. When one takes the time to check the actual FACTS about lawsuit abuse, one finds that there really is very little such thing, over the past 20 years, at least.
Comment by chin music — August 24, 2007 @ 12:06 pm