Friday Follies ©

[Keith Graydon]

THE STELLA AWARDS 2002

It's once again time 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 McDonald's, the teens

who

allege that eating at McDonald's has made them fat, was filed after the

2002

award voting was closed. This suit will top the 2003 awards list without

 

question.

 

 

5th place (Tied)

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 toddler was Ms.

Robertson's Son.

 

5th place (Tied)

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

did not notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was

trying

to steal their hubcaps .

 

5th place (Tied)

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

could

not reenter the house because the door connecting the house and garage

locked when he pulled it shut. The family were on vacation and Mr.

Dickson

found himself locked in the garage for 8 days. He sub-existed on a case

of

Pepsi he found and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the houseowner'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 dog. 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 a

little

provoked at the time as Mr. Williams who had climbed over the fence into

the

yard 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 sued the owner of a Night Club in a

neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and

 

knocked out two of her front teeth. This occurred whilst Ms. Walton was

trying to crawl 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 Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City,

Oklahoma. Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new Winnebago Motor Home. On

his

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 RV left the

Freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not

advising him that in the owner's manual that he could not actually do

this.

The jury awarded him $1,750,000 plus a new Winnebago 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.

 

[ 10-10-2003, 09:29 AM: Message edited by: Keith Graydon ]

[robk]

I guess it pays to be a moron...

 

Rob

[Eric S.]

lol

lol

lol

lol

[Rick Damiani]

None of it happend. It's all fake. Look here:

 

Snopes.com Urban Legends Reference

 

Or here:

 

ATLA.ORG 'Debunk' page

 

As for Stella, there is more to that case than meets the eye:

 

Liebeck vs. McDonald's - the facts

 

Short version: none of it happend, and McDonald's lost at trial becasue:

 

- They had been paying injured people off. More than 700 of them.

- They told the jury that they weren't going to do anything differently.

[SledGeek]

Rick,

 

Went to urban legends site and came back with "weatherbug". Last time I saw this it attached itself to my computer and within a month took over and starting opening all kinds of stuff off internet uncontrollably till puter crashed. Had to call IT .

Don't know if this is same thing cause im not in same league as some of you computer guys.

Just a heads up to all incase......could've been coincidence.

 

hope im wrong !

[Rick Damiani]

I normally use Mozilla for browsing the 'net, and have it configured to ignore pop-ups. When I opened Snopes.com in IE, I see that they are using pop-up advertising. What pop-up you get depends on what is in rotation, I guess. Sorry you hit the jackpot.

 

To keep trash like weatherbug (or anything else from Gator and the other devil-spawn like them) from attaching itself to your system, DO NOT accept any offers to install software when you go to a site. Set your IE security settings to "Medium" (at a minimum) for the internet zone, and make sure that all the 'Download' setings are set to 'Prompt'.

 

Or just start using Mozilla. Nearly every site works with it just fine. The (very few) that don't can easily be opened in IE instead.

 

To make sure that you haven't been aflicted with trashware like Weatherbug, go here:

 

Lavasoft - home of AdAware

 

and download AdAware. It searches for trashware and treats it like the desiease it is.

[SledGeek]

thanx for the info Rick . already have adaware from last encounter ! no bug here best i can tell, thank God !