The Stella Awards
The “Stella Awards” are named after the 81-year-old woman, Stella Liebeck, who spilled hot coffee on herself and success-fully sued McDonald’s in New Mexico for 2.9 million dollars. Ever since, the name “Stella Award” has been applied to any wild, outrageous, or ridiculous lawsuits - including bogus cases! Here are this year’s winners…
- 7th Place - Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle when she tripped over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering that the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson’s son.
- 6th Place - Nineteen-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 - 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, so 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 home owners’ insurance company, 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 owners’ fenced yard. The award was less than originally sought, because the jury felt that 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 (tail bone). 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 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 (drum roll, please) - This year’s runaway winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mrs. Grazinski purchased a brand-new, 32-foot-long 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 to 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 that. The jury awarded her $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. The company actually changed its manuals on the basis of this law suit, just in case there were any other complete morons around.
What'd You Think?
(33 votes, average: 4.48 out of 5)
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October 2nd, 2007 at 1:23 pm
I’m not sure about all of those, but I do know that the ‘amber carson of Lancaster, PA’ is fabricated. They are pretty funny though…
October 3rd, 2007 at 5:46 am
it sounds really funny and i dont think any jury can be that stupid, whatever, it is too good and gives me idea how to make another person guilty on my mistakes……………gr8
October 7th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
I can now rest in the assurance that the human race is screwed.
October 11th, 2007 at 10:32 am
Well at least we know how we can make alot of money! Just be really stupid and you get thousands its a great idea lol not! And that one lady with the Winnebago motor home oh my gosh she is making people from oklahoma look so bad and im from oklahoma!
October 12th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
is this for real?? omigosh, these people are really dumb, and smart too!
October 17th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
These are all fictitious stories.
November 1st, 2007 at 3:09 pm
I think the jury members and the people who filed the law suites should be sued for being stupid,supporting stupidity and not having common sense.
November 7th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
wow those people are retarded..if i was the judge i would make THEM pay for being stupid asswipes
November 7th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
only in America…
November 15th, 2007 at 1:41 am
Wouldn’t trespassing rule out the case? Like the person wasn’t suppost to be there in the first place, how can they sue? What has America come to?!..
November 17th, 2007 at 10:22 am
dear god…
i don’t know who is the more stupid…. the ultra morons who did sued or the brain-dead juries who found in favour of the plaintiffs.
November 23rd, 2007 at 5:35 pm
one thing i noticed was that all those stupid people were Americans
November 28th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
well we ARE a sue-happy country…
January 11th, 2008 at 10:10 am
The American Association of Justice has looked into all of these. None of them are true. In fact even Stella Liebeck’s case was blown way out to the point where if you actually read the facts, McDonald’s really is at fault there. For those of you that actually care to read the facts, here is a link with the case details. http://www.atla.org/pressroom/FACTS/frivolous/McdonaldsCoffeecase.aspx
January 11th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Also to be well noted. Urban myths like the “Stella Awards” aren’t just cute or harmless jabs at trial lawyers and our legal system. They clearly are part of a massive disinformation campaign designed to undermine Americans’ confidence in our legal system and to benefit powerful corporate interests at the expense of average people harmed by corporate wrongdoing and indifference.
January 11th, 2008 at 10:14 am
The court case involving Stella Liebeck is true and is widely known because of it being the little old lady who got millions because of what seemed like a small incident.
She spilled hot coffee on herself after the drive-through at a McDonald’s in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
She was sitting in the passenger seat of her grandson’s car.
The spill caused severe burns over 6 percent of her body.
She spent a week in the hospital, underwent several skin drafts, and ended up with permanent scarring on 15 percent of her body.
According to the Washington State Trial Lawyer’s Association, Liebeck sued McDonalds only after the company refused to pay her medical expenses.
The WSTLA says her bills added up to $11,000, but McDonalds offered to pay only $800.
A mediator recommended a $250,000 settlement, which McDonald’s turned down.
One of the issues in the trial was that Liebeck’s lawyers said there had been several hundred similar cases that McDonald’s had ignored and that the company had refused to reduce the temperature of the coffee machines.
A jury gave Stella Liebeck $160,000 but also fined McDonald’s a punitive damage of $2.7 million.
A judge later reduced that amount to $480,000 then McDonald’s settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:02 pm
According to Snopes.com, all of the above are bogus.
February 12th, 2008 at 7:30 am
I never comment on these things, but I am sorry, holding a styrofoam cup between your knees, trying to pry the rather tight fitting McDonalds lid off, is a recipe for disaster, whether youre sitting in a car, or on a bench, it doesn’t matter. you KNOW the contents of the cup is hot, if it wasn’t hot, then everyone would be complaining to McDonalds that their hot beverages aren’t hot. I know it’s very sad that an old lady got hurt THAT badly, but it WAS her own fault. there was nothing that McDonalds could do more to prevent that. they did everything that was expected from them. They owed her nothing.
February 21st, 2008 at 2:56 am
I cant belive how many idiots there are in this world . what kind of screwed up people would accualy give them money.and none of these people are from canada, canadians are not that stupid to do something like that