[4134] in Humor
[Humor] Stella Awards
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Aletta Wallace)
Thu Oct 16 10:55:39 2003
Message-Id: <200310161452.KAA18242@coup-detat.mit.edu>
To: humor@mit.edu
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 10:52:41 -0400
From: Aletta Wallace <aletta@mit.edu>
Errors-To: humor-bounces@mit.edu
The Stella Awards
It's time once again to review the winners of the annual "Stella
Awards". The Stella's are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who
spilled coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonalds. That case
inspired the Stella awards for the most frivolous successful lawsuits
in the United States.
Unfortunately, the most recent lawsuit implicating McDonalds - the
teens who allege that eating at McDonalds has made them fat - was
filed after the 2002 award voting was closed. This suit will top the
2003 list with out question. Here are this year's winners:
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 (tailbone). 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: 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 their recreation vehicles.
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