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 McDonald's. 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 teen's 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 list without question.

Here are this year's winners:

5th Place (tie):
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...

5th Place (tie):
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 (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 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 fucking morons buying recreation vehicles).

I WONDER WHO WE SHOULD BE CONCERNED ABOUT MORE, THE JURIES THAT AWARDED THESE WINNINGS...OR THE JUDGES WHO LET THE AWARDS GO THROUGH?

bananacologne said:

oh my!!! my mom used to tell me about a lady who did this when cruise control was first introduced...i always figured she was telling tells...nobody could be that stupid, right?

guess i was wrong!!!

Yo Stella, if you think I'm afraid of you...

NotoriousJ said:

Jessica!!! Not bad - 2 posts! I just KNEW someone was gonna post that!

bananacologne said:

It was the first thing that came to my mind the second I read the title of your thread

so,me people in this world are just stoopid. i'm talking about the jurors who awarded these freaks the money in the first place.

Hmmm...gives me ideas...

* Next time I hear some athlete "guaranteeing" a win in their upcoming game, I'm gonna bet my entire bank account on that team...if they lose, I can sue for lost earnings and emotional distress.

* I'll steal a car, and if I end up getting caught by the police as I try to escape, I'll sue both the owners of the car for not having enough gas in the car to get me to Mexico, as well as the makers of the car for not considering high speed chases in the designing of the car. Should be worth a few million...

* Someone will say "Brian"...I'll think they said "Byron", and turn my head to see who's calling me...once I realize they really said "Brian", I'll sue for both the neck trauma experienced from turning my head so quickly, as well as for emotional stress at the embarassment they've caused me when I realize they were talking to someone else (people can be so uncaring like that...)...

What political party do you think most of these people belong to? The "me first and the gimme gimme" party? Hmm, I wonder which one that could be? Stinking thinking. Seriously!

Silly C***s

Byron said:

Stuff like this makes me ashamed to be human.

Lammastide said:

..and there was me thinking all along u were alien!

bananacologne said:

to you, studboy!

bananacologne said:

There's just no explaining sometimes. The scary thing to me isn't that these lawsuits were filed but that in many cases were awarded compensation by ~ um ~ other humans.

Lammastide said:

Snuffle my truffles Mr Man!

STELLA STELLA STELLA STELLA Got her Groove on

Even the mostbeautifulgirlintheworld made it out today. So how goes your team? Fantasy Basketball.


This fucking board, how am I going to get anything done today.

O'Yea I'm not!!
[This message was edited Tue Nov 18 10:49:28 PST 2003 by mrbungle]