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You won't believe these!!!!! It's time once again to review the winners of the annual "Stella Awards." The Stellas are named after 81 year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonald's. That case inspired the Stella awards for the most frivolous, ridiculous, successful lawsuits in the United States.
Here are this year's winners:
7th Place: Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $780,000 by a jury of her peers 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.
6th Place: 19-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, 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 (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 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 Mrs. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City,Oklahoma. Mrs. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot 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 and 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 this. The jury awarded her $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 around.
3 comments:
the 1st one is awesome. But I laughed so hard with that garage thing where the guy had to eat dry dog food. That was just too funny.
Okay, as an aspiring lawyer it's always bothered me that people don't know the McFacts about the McDonald's Coffee lawsuit, so here they are (kind of long, sorry):
The accident itself:
The person driving the vehicle was Liebeck's grandson Chris (not Stella Liebeck as some sources would indicate), who had parked the car so that Liebeck could add cream and sugar to her coffee. She placed the coffee cup between her knees and pulled the far side of the lid toward her to remove it. In the process, she spilled the entire cup of coffee on her lap. Liebeck was wearing cotton sweatpants; they absorbed the coffee and held it against her skin as she sat in the puddle of hot liquid for over ninety seconds.
Injuries suffered:
Liebeck was taken to the hospital, where it was determined that she had suffered third-degree burns on six percent of her skin (some sources say sixteen percent). She remained in the hospital for eight days while she underwent skin grafting. Two years of treatment followed.
Attempt to settle and litigation:
Liebeck sought to settle with McDonald's for US $20,000 to cover her medical costs, but the company offered only US$800. When McDonald's refused to raise its offer, Liebeck filed suit, accusing McDonald's of "gross negligence" for selling coffee that was "unreasonably dangerous" and "defectively manufactured." McDonald's refused to settle perhaps because, though there had been numerous lawsuits alleging that hot coffee was "defectively manufactured," courts had consistently dismissed the cases before trial on the grounds that coffee burns were an open and obvious danger. During the case, it was discovered that McDonald's required franchises to serve coffee at 180-190 degrees Fahrenheit (82-88 degrees Celsius). At that temperature, the coffee would cause a third-degree burn in two to seven seconds. Stella Liebeck's attorney argued that coffee should never be served hotter than 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius), and that a number of other establishments served coffee at a substantially lower temperature than McDonald's. Despite this claim, home and commercial coffee makers often reach comparable temperatures. For example, Bunn [1] mentions "the ideal brewing temperature of approximately 200°", and [2] mentions "water at 200° Fahrenheit (the ideal temperature)". Cuisinart mentions for at least one of their coffeemakers [3] that "After brewing, the heater plate will keep the coffee at about 180°-185°F". The National Coffee Association instructs that coffee be brewed "between 195-205 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal extraction" and consumed "immediately". If not consumed immediately, the coffee is to be "maintained at 180-185 degrees Fahrenheit." [4]
Liebeck's attorney claims that McDonald's quality control manager testified that foods hotter than 140 degrees constituted a burn hazard, and that McDonald's coffee would burn the mouth and throat. Testimony by witnesses for McDonald's revealed that McDonald's did not intend to reduce the temperature of its coffee. Documents obtained from McDonald's also showed that from 1982 to 1992 the company had received more than 700 reports of people burnt by McDonald's coffee to varying degrees of severity, and had settled claims arising from scalding injuries for more than $500,000 [5]. This represents about one complaint per 24 million cups of coffee sold by McDonald's. Some of these incidents resulted in legal claims, some of which McDonald's settled.
Settlement:
Applying the principles of comparative negligence, the jury found that McDonald's was 80% responsible for the incident and Liebeck was 20% at fault. Though there was a warning on the coffee cup, the jury decided that the warning was neither large enough nor sufficient. They awarded Liebeck US$200,000 in compensatory damages, which was then reduced by 20% to US$160,000. In addition, they awarded her US$2.7 million in punitive damages. However, the judge reduced punitive damages to US$480,000; thus Liebeck was awarded US$640,000 in total. Both McDonald's and Liebeck appealed, and in December 1994, the two came to a confidential settlement, the amount of which is secret, but is believed to be approximately equal to the amount of the final judgment.
wow tina! i've never heard of this case before and the e-mail that was sent to me has been forwarded so many times before that I don't even know where it originally came from but very good to know the real story behind it! it just proves the point that you don't know the whole story until you've heard both sides of it. =)
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