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It's time for the Stella Awards again

stoshuaj

By stoshuaj
in The Tailgate

Does it bother you that the candidates are still collecting pay while campaigning?  

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  1. 1. Does it bother you that the candidates are still collecting pay while campaigning?


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stoshuaj

stoshuaj

Posted
Posted

**EDIT** please accept my apologies, I got this from what I thought was a reputable source, but alas, it has been snoped as untrue and fabricated. By all means, you are welcome to read for purely enjoyment and as a incentive to discuss the true foibles and follies of our legal system BUT using this list as an example will undermine any argument you may, or may not have.

warning in advance, prepare to be pissed.......

Its time again for the annual Stella Awards! For those unfamiliar

with these awards, they are named after 81- years-old Stella Liebeck,

who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonalds

in New Mexico where she purchased the coffee.

You remember, she took the lid off the coffee and put it between her

knees while she was driving. Who would ever think one could get burned

doing that, right?

That’s right, these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and

verdicts in the U.S. You Know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch

your head. So keep your head scratcher handy. Here are the Stella’s for

the past year:

To kick things off the right way, there was a three-way tie for 5th

place.

7th Place:

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 store owners were understandably

surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own

son.

6th Place:

Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California- you knew California had to

be in the list somewhere, right?- who won $74,000 plus medical expanses

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.

5th Place:

Terrence Dickson, of Bristol, Pennsylvania 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, EIGHT!- days on a case of

Pepsi and a large bag of dry 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...

4th Place:

Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, Garnered 4th place in the

Stella’s when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expanses 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.

Grrrr Scratch, Scratch.

3rd Place:

Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, because a jury ordered a

Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a

spilled 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

Stella’s to go!

2nd Place:

Kara Walton, of Claymont, Delaware, sued the owner of a night club in a

nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor,

knocking out her two front teeth. Even through 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. Oh, yeah,

plus dental expanses, go figure.

1st Place:

This year’s runaway 1st 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 onto the freeway, she set the cruise control at

70 mph and calmly left the driver’s seat to go to the back of the

Winnebago to male herself a sandwich. 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 Oklahoma 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 incase Mrs. Grainski has any

relatives who might also buy a motor home.

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AzSkinsFan63

AzSkinsFan63

Posted
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So if I bring my own toddler to my burglary, spill a drink on the floor in the owner's house and trip and break my ass and then lock myself in the garage and trip and brake an ankle on my kid and then finally break free from the garage and steal the owner's RV (not Winnebago because they already have it in the manual) and put it on cruise and wreck it....

I can retire?

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Bliz

Bliz

Posted
Posted
If they're true...wow. People never fail to surprise me.

Not one of them is true. Believe it or not, our legal system is actually very effective at weeding out frivolous claims and punishing those who try to bring them.

As for Stella herself, she got 3rd degree burns. What do you think would happen if you tried to drink coffee that was hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns? It's not fit for human consumption and poses an unnecessary risk to society since drinks are inevitably spilled (which should only result in curse words and a drycleaning bill, not a skin graft) and so they were punished for it.

http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp

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Larry

Larry

Posted
Posted
As for Stella herself, she got 3rd degree burns. What do you think would happen if you tried to drink coffee that was hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns? It's not fit for human consumption and poses an unnecessary risk to society since drinks are inevitably spilled (which should only result in curse words and a drycleaning bill, not a skin graft) and so they were punished for it.

Yeah, the folks who complain about the McDonald's Coffee Case often seem to leave out the fact that the reason she was awarded that much was because the prosecution showed, at trial, that

  • McDonald's wanted to switch to a cheaper coffee.
  • But the cheaper coffee tasted terrible.
  • But research indicated that if they super-heated the coffee, then people didn't notice the rotten taste.
  • McDonald's legal department warned them that if they did that, people would be injured, and they'd sue.
  • But McDonald's calculated that they'd make more money from the cheaper coffee than the lawsuits cost them.

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USS Redskins

USS Redskins

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Posted
Yeah, the folks who complain about the McDonald's Coffee Case often seem to leave out the fact that the reason she was awarded that much was because the prosecution showed, at trial, that

  • McDonald's wanted to switch to a cheaper coffee.
  • But the cheaper coffee tasted terrible.
  • But research indicated that if they super-heated the coffee, then people didn't notice the rotten taste.
  • McDonald's legal department warned them that if they did that, people would be injured, and they'd sue.
  • But McDonald's calculated that they'd make more money from the cheaper coffee than the lawsuits cost them.

Hot Coffee? Why would anyone want hot coffee?

Seriously - no way she should have been awarded that much cash - a few bucks for medical bills & mental anguish (ha!) but come on, millions? And guess who ends up paying for that legal bill...... joe shmoe extremskins user.

I dont have a problem with some lawsuits but the awards are outrageous.

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Brad_Edwards_Fan

Brad_Edwards_Fan

Posted
Posted
Hot Coffee? Why would anyone want hot coffee?

Seriously - no way she should have been awarded that much cash - a few bucks for medical bills & mental anguish (ha!) but come on, millions? And guess who ends up paying for that legal bill...... joe shmoe extremskins user.

I dont have a problem with some lawsuits but the awards are outrageous.

You do know that the Mcdonals lady was actually awarded less than $500k, a sum that she needs to share with her attorney.

... and even the original verdict was primarily punititive and was a punishment that was finacially equivilant to two cups of coffee a day.

While i think there are a number of frivilous suits, i think this has become the rallying point against frivilous and i think it has been incorrectly labeled.

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Larry

Larry

Posted
Posted
Hot Coffee? Why would anyone want hot coffee?

Seriously - no way she should have been awarded that much cash - a few bucks for medical bills & mental anguish (ha!) but come on, millions? And guess who ends up paying for that legal bill...... joe shmoe extremskins user.

I dont have a problem with some lawsuits but the awards are outrageous.

She was hospitalized for injuries which McDonald's knew were going to happen. They chose to do something, knowing in advance that it was going to injure people.

(And they knew that it was going to injure thousands of people. They simply calculated that the vast majority wouldn't sue, and that most of the ones who did sue wouldn't win, and the ones who did win wouldn't win much. They knowingly decided that injured customers aren't important, unless they cost money.)

The jury decided that McDonald's actions deserved to be punished.

Tell us, how much money does it take, to punish a defendant as big as McDonald's?

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Larry

Larry

Posted
Posted

Now, I do remember a professor once making a suggestion for tort reform that made sense to me.

His claim was that most of the "frivolous" judgments are punitive damages. The jury didn't rule that the McDonald's lady suffered 8 million worth of damages. They ruled that McDonald's actions deserved an 8 million dollar fine.

But the instructor pointed out, these large damages, even though they're awarded for punitive reasons, do lead to plaintiff's thinking of our tort system as a lottery ticket.

his suggestion was that, since the purpose of the judgment was to punish McDonald's (not to create an instant millionaire), then why not treat that money the same way that criminal fines are handled in that jurisdiction? Put a cap of, say, three times the actual damages, and any punitive damages beyond that point goes to the county (or whatever).

That way, it's still possible for juries to punish big defendants when they deserve it, but the plaintiff isn't looking at potential millions.

Made sense to me.

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