Thursday, February 16, 2006

The Stella Awards

It's time again for the annual "Stella Awards" for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts that happened in the U.S. during 2005. (full story in comments)

thanks Becky

posted by Schroger @ 11:04:00 AM

2 Comments:

At 2/16/2006 11:10 AM, Blogger Schroger said...

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 running toddler was Ms. Robertson's son.                                           
Also in 5th place is Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California, 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.       

Also in 5th Place is Terrence Dickson, of Bristol, Pennsylvania, who was escaping a house he had just robbed by way of the garage. The automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and wouldn't open. 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 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. The jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish.                                 

4th place is Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, who 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 shooting the dog with a pellet gun.                             
3rd place went to Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered 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.                                                               

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 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, plus dental expenses.                                                                  
This year's 1st place winner is 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 - 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. The motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. 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 $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit.

 
At 2/16/2006 4:23 PM, Blogger ThomG said...

Yeah, I thought the cruise control story was an urban legend.

But props to Merv (short for Mervel, Mervine???) for representing OK so well.

 

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