I’ve overlooked the Stella Awards for too long. There have been so many
bogus stories about them on the Web that I simply dismissed them. The Stella Awards, if you
don’t know, are named after 79-year-old Stella
Liebeck, who spilled coffee on herself and successfully sued
McDonald’s in 1992.
She won $200,000 in compensatory damages (later reduced by 20 percent to $160,000)
“because the jury found her 20 percent at fault,” and $2.7 million in punitive damages
(reduced by the judge to $480,000). That case inspired the Stella Awards for the most frivolous
successful lawsuits in the United States.
Last week several people e-mailed me news of the latest winners. The e-mail pointed out that,
“unfortunately, the most recent lawsuit implicating McDonald’s, the teens who alleged that eating at McDonald’s had made them
fat, was filed after the 2002 award voting was closed.” The message,
which failed to mention that the obesity suit was
dismissed, continued with the list of this year’s winners:
5th Place (tie):
A jury of her peers awarded Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, $780,000 after breaking
her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the
store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was
Ms. Robertson’s son.
5th Place (tie):
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 (tie):
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, and 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 homeowner’s insurance 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 next-door neighbor’s beagle. 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 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 (tailbone). The beverage was on
the floor because Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend earlier during an argument.
2nd Place:
Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, successfully sued the owner of a nightclub 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:
This year’s run away winner was Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mr.
Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip home, (from
an OU football game), having driven onto 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 R. V. left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not
advising him in the owner’s manual that he couldn’t actually do this. The jury awarded him
$1,750,000 plus a new motor home. The company actually changed their manuals on the basis of
this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons buying recreational
vehicles.
The e-mail went on to ask: “Is this proof that we are in the decline of a civilization or that we
are all destined to be replaced by rats?”
The answer is we may well be replaced by rats one day, but the winning cases just cited are
not the proof. Except for Stella’s case, all of them
are fabrications — urban legends, some
embroidered from minimal facts, others made of whole cloth. They sure are funny, though. Here
are the actual winners for 2002.
