[A friend sent me the following delicious piece which I want to share with my readers (especially those who enjoyed the post titled ‘The death of Common Sense’). You can do a google search on Stella Awards yourself; I do not vouch for the authenticity of the contents here. Some of them do strain one’s credulity, although God knows I have encountered enough morons in my own life, and I know that silica gel sachets that come with things like cameras carry the warning tag ‘Do not eat’!]
It's time once again to review the winners of the Annual "StellaAwards." The Stella Awards are named after 81 year-old Stella Liebeck, who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonald's (in NM). That case inspired the Stella awards for the most frivolous, ridiculous, successful lawsuits in the United States. Here are this year's winners:
5th Place (tie): 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 owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson's son.
5th Place (tie): 9-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 dooropener 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 Carsonof 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 runaway 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 & 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 changed their manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons around.
.JPG)
7 comments:
Sir,
It is funny as well as surprising that such "morons" exist, and what is more surprising is that these people have got away with a decent amount of money, though they were the ones who were guilty. Like the robber, who instead of getting prosecuted gets $500,000. I mean don't you blame the jury for this ? Or even the jury for such cases have been taken from a lot of such people.
The 1st prize winner Mrs. Merv Grazinski, truly deserved the Stella Award - getting $1,750,000 for such a foolish act of hers is hilarious.
- Prithwis
Hahaha!
Good post.
I guess, that's why even potatoes here come with instruction stickers on them on how to pick, cook, preserve and "use" them.
God knows what a moron might think of doing with it and then sue!
I have known that there are several jokes on the litigious nature of Americans but had no idea that the lawsuits could be so ridiculous. I did do a google search on Stella awards.
‘Stella awards’ is indeed inspired by the infamous case of Stella Liebeck (although the ‘unreasonable nature’ of the verdict had been in debate).One could try http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm to get a complete picture of the actual case.
Sir, as far as the authenticity of the contents is concerned, I am afraid they are fabricated (www.stellaawards.com and www.snopes.com claim that many cases, which have been circulated on the net (including the ones in the post) are not true and have been derived from famous urban legends).
But if this fact (if authentic enough) brings a sigh of relief to anyone who wants to think, “So, SUCH morons do not exist after all”, there is something awaiting them.
The following are supposed to be TRUE stella awards (i.e.the cases are real as asserted by www.stellaawards.com ):
5th place, 2006:Marcy Meckler. While shopping at a mall, Meckler stepped outside and was "attacked" by a squirrel that lived among the trees and bushes. And "while frantically attempting to escape from the squirrel and detach it from her leg, [Meckler] fell and suffered severe injuries," her resulting lawsuit says. That's the mall's fault, the lawsuit claims, demanding in excess of $50,000, based on the mall's "failure to warn" her that squirrels live outside.
The winner of the 2006 Stella awards: Allen Ray Heckard. Even though Heckard is 3 inches shorter, 25 pounds lighter, and 8 years older than former basketball star Michael Jordan, the Portland, Oregon, man says he looks a lot like Jordan, and is often confused for him -- and thus he deserves $52 million "for defamation and permanent injury" -- plus $364 million in "punitive damage for emotional pain and suffering", plus the SAME amount from Nike co-founder Phil Knight, for a grand total of $832 million. He dropped the suit after Nike's lawyers chatted with him, where they presumably explained how they'd counter-sue if he pressed on.
7th prize, 2005:Bob Dougherty. A prankster smeared glue on the toilet seat at the Home Depot store in Louisville, Colo., causing Dougherty to stick to it when he sat down. "This is not Home Depot's fault," he proclaimed, yet the store graciously offered him $2,000 anyway. Dougherty complained the offer is "insulting" and filed suit demanding $3 million. (!!!!)
The winner of the 2005 True Stella Award: Christopher Roller of Burnsville, Minn. Roller is mystified by professional magicians, so he sued David Blaine and David Copper field to demand they reveal their secrets to him -- or else pay him 10 percent of their lifelong earnings, which he figures amounts to $50 million for Copper field and $2 million for Blaine. The basis for his suit: Roller claims that the magicians defy the laws of physics, and thus must be using "godly powers" -- and since Roller is god (according to him), they're "somehow" stealing that power from him.
These are some of the very many cases published in the site.
Well, with news channels analyzing and stating the failure of a certain newly formed political party in the elections to be the wrong time (‘moharat’) they started the party and an apparent grudge of the snakes (sarp dosh!!!), I can’t help believing the fact that there are too many morons around!
Warm regards
Rashmi
One begins to wonder what is of more amusement: that such fine specimens exist, or that judges/jury actually rule in their favour!
Many thanks to Rashmi for adding the link providing insight into the Stella Liebeck case: if the coffee was indeed served at close to 190 degrees, there is some logic in her claim.
That aside, what a nice way to earn! A little compromise of sanity, and whoa!
No wonder law is such a sought after degree in the West. I wonder how much these lawyers earn! Indian lawyers certainly have reasons to crib.
Narayani Devi was married for just three years when her husband died of a snake bite. Promptly accused by her in-laws as an ominous woman bringing ill luck to the family, she's driven out of her house.She was barely fifteen then.
With the help of her parents, she focussed on her studies and after a decade, joined a government school as a teacher and continued in that position till her death at the age of 56,in 1996. She did all this without an iota of help from her in-laws.
Narayani, who died intestate, left around Rs 20 lakh in her bank reserves and PF Accounts. But when her mother, Ram Kishori, applied for a succession certificate to take possession of the money, she was in for a rude shock. The sons of Narayani's dead husband's sister had already filed a similar petition.
And ironically, after a decade of legal embroil between the two families, a division bench of the Supreme Court, recently ruled, wait...,hold your breath.., in favour of Narayani's in-laws.
And this was done, strictly following the gender-biased provisions of the S/C 15 of the Hindu Succession Act, which was pithily summarised by the noted jurist, specialising on family law:
"It is indeed disconcerting that when a Hindu man dies issueless and without a will, none of his wife's relatives can inherit his property and the same goes to the next of the kin.However, if a Hindu married woman dies issueless, the property cannot be taken by her parents or her blood relatives when there is even a remote relative of the husband."
Piquantly, the patriarchal nature of the law, (the anachronistic provision of which stands unrepealed till date) always assumed property to be inherited by a Hindu female from her father, husband, in-laws et al, but could never foresee women could earn property on their own right!
Well, any questions about the fairness of law and the dispensation of justice ?
A wit once assured us, "where law ends, justice begins"! Or is there a lengthening chasm between them ?
[For a full report, please refer to the report "Unfair Deal", published in The Telegraph, Calcutta edition of 20th May, 2009]
Regards.
On a similarly interesting note,here's IGNOBEl Prizes-a parody of Nobel Prizes.
Biology - Presented to C.W. Moeliker, of Natuurmuseum Rotterdam, for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck.
Chemistry - Presented to Yukio Hirose of Kanazawa University, for his chemical investigation of a bronze statue, in the city of Kanazawa, that fails to attract pigeons.
Economics - Presented to Karl Schwärzler and the nation of Liechtenstein, for making it possible to rent the entire country for corporate conventions, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other gatherings.
Engineering - Presented to John Paul Stapp, Edward A. Murphy, Jr., and George Nichols, for jointly giving birth in 1949 to Murphy's Law, the basic engineering principle that "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, someone will do it" (or, in other words: "If anything can go wrong, it will").
Interdisciplinary Research - Presented to Stefano Ghirlanda, Liselotte Jansson, and Magnus Enquis of Stockholm University, for their inevitable report, "Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans."
Literature - Presented to John Trinkaus, of the Zicklin School of Business, New York City, for meticulously collecting data and publishing more than 80 detailed academic reports about things that annoyed him, such as:
What percentage of young people wear baseball caps with the peak facing to the rear rather than to the front;
What percentage of pedestrians wear sport shoes that are white rather than some other color;
What percentage of swimmers swim laps in the shallow end of a pool rather than the deep end;
What percentage of automobile drivers almost, but not completely, come to a stop at one particular stop-sign;
What percentage of commuters carry attaché cases;
What percentage of shoppers exceed the number of items permitted in a supermarket's express checkout lane;
And what percentage of students dislike the taste of Brussels sprouts.
Medicine - Presented to Eleanor Maguire, David Gadian, Ingrid Johnsrude, Catriona Good, John Ashburner, Richard Frackowiak, and Christopher Frith of University College London, for presenting evidence that the hippocampi of London taxi drivers are more highly developed than those of their fellow citizens.[8]
Peace - Presented to Lal Bihari, of Uttar Pradesh, India, for a triple accomplishment: First, for leading an active life even though he has been declared legally dead; second, for waging a lively posthumous campaign against bureaucratic inertia and greedy relatives; and third, for creating the Association of Dead People. Lal Bihari overcame the handicap of being dead, and managed to obtain a passport from the Indian government so that he could travel to Harvard to accept his Prize. However, the U.S. government refused to allow him into the country. His friend Madhu Kapoor therefore came to the Ig Nobel Ceremony and accepted the Prize on behalf of Lal Bihari. Several weeks later, the Prize was presented to Lal Bihari himself in a special ceremony in India.
Physics - Presented to Jack Harvey, John Culvenor, Warren Payne, Steve Cowle, Michael Lawrance, David Stuart, and Robyn Williams of Australia, for their irresistible report "An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces".
Psychology - Presented to Gian Vittorio Caprara and Claudio Barbaranelli of the University of Rome La Sapienza, and to Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University, for their discerning report "Politicians' Uniquely Simple Personalities".
Post a Comment