Time once again to review the winners of the Annual "Stella Awards." 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):
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 home owner's insurance claiming the situation caused him undue
mental anguish. The jury agreed, to the tune of $500,000. In my opinion this is
so outrageous that it should have been 2nd Place!

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.

2ndPlace:
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 actually
changed their manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any
other complete morons around.