Stella Awards

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It's time again for the annual "Stella Awards"! 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 New Mexico

where she purchased the coffee.

That's right, these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts that happened in the U.S.dur ing 2005.

You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch your head. So keep your head scratchers handy.

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 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, con sidering the running toddler was Ms. Robertson's son.

Also in 5th place is Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California- you knew California had to be in the list somewhere,

right? - 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 scratchers.

The last of the 5th Placewinners went to Terrence Dickson, of Bristol,Pennsylvania,

who was leaving a house he had just robbed 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 it's 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.

Third Place went to Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, because a jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a 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.

Second 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 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 ... oh, yeah, plus dental expenses.

Finally, 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 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 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 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 in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might buy a motor home.

[REDMONSTER 0]

how dumb can people be. i dont know which is worst he people filing the lawsute or the jury give the awards :S

[Tactical Jerky 0]

Yeah the fact that it's even possible to start a lawsuit about these things is just unbelievable. Not forgetting to mention the abnormal large amounts of money they get.

[Logos 0]

Hate to be a stick-in-the-mud, guys, but all of these(EXCEPT the Stella Lieback story itself) are urban legends. This list has been making its rounds around the internet for years, and the "year", i.e. 2005 this year, just increases by one every year. We'll see this list next year as the 2006 list.

Now, as far as Stella goes...

I hate frivolous lawsuits like everyone, but in Stella's case, she was correct to sue. Did you ever have McDonald's coffee in the 70's or 80's. The stuff was ridiculously hot.

McDonald’s served the coffee at approximately 190 degrees. McDonald’s admitted coffee at that temperature is “unfit for human consumption”; 190 degree liquid causes third-degree burns within 2 to 7 seconds of contact with skin.

Stella spilled the coffee on the crotch of her cotton jogging pants, and the coffee immediately soaked through her pants and caused third-degree burns to her legs, thighs, and genitals. The burns were so severe she needed skin grafts to heal the damage. It took many months for her to recover from the severe burns.

Stella offered to settle the case with McDonald’s if they would just pay her medical bills, which were into the many thousands of dollars. McDonalds refused, and Stella filed a lawsuit. During the trial, it was discovered that in the ten years prior to Stella’s accident, over 700 men, women, and children had been burned by the unsafe McDonald’s coffee.

BTW, after the 2.95 million-dollar wrist slap, McDonald's dropped their coffee's temperature to a still-hot, but more reasonable 158 degrees.

Since the trial, whenever this story has been mentioned, they never mention the facts of the case; they only mention the 2.95 million dollars that some clumsy woman got for spilling coffee on herself while trying to drive and open a cup of coffee at the same time. The figure of 2.95 million dollars was arrived at because it was the equivalent to the profit McDonald's makes on coffee in two days. The judge reduced it to $480,000. And to avoid having to go through an appeal, Stella settled out of court for less than that.

One final note, Stella wasn't actually behind the wheel of a car when this happened; she was in the passenger seat. And the car wasn't moving; she had asked her grandson to pull over so that she could be careful not to spill the coffee when she addedd cream and sugar to it.

190 degrees? Unfit for human consumption? 700 people scalded?

Eff McDonalds.

--Logos

[Tactical Jerky 0]

Assumed that it would be real so thanks for clearing that up Logos and I should have known better on a day like this.

But still you hear other stories that are true about these people that sue in the hope of some easy money. Like some man blaimed Mcdonalds for his overweight. According to him the smell of food forced him to eat and eat every time he walked by.

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