Fucking jurrors, only in America eh? Pity.

[CDSmith]

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 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 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 the 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 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 8 days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the house owner'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 neighbors Beagle dog. The Beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt he 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 sneak out of 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.



WHERE DO THEY FIND THESE JURORS!!!???!!!!

[BRISK]

StellaAwards.com has found no evidence to support these stories

http://www.stellaawards.com/bogus.html

[Rorschach]

Originally posted by CDSmith
WHERE DO THEY FIND THESE JURORS!!!???!!!!

Um.... America?

[BRISK]

http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.htm

[Rorschach]

Don't be such a killjoy brisk.

[Libertine]

Originally posted by BRISK
StellaAwards.com has found no evidence to support these stories

http://www.stellaawards.com/bogus.html

I was about to post that very same link

[CDSmith]

It's all true I tell you. I'm off to the states to trip over a dog and collect......


<img SRC="http://members.shaw.ca/billy1-99/pics/drevil.jpg">

One MILLion dollarsss.

[frippeno]

Where do they find these jurors?

A better question would be "where to they find idiots who believe shit like this?"

Because I doubt if there is more than a grain of truth to a single one of those "stories".

FYI, the McDonalds case you refer to - I doubt if you know the FIRST THING about it. It was not just a "the coffee was hot" case, though morons with their own agenda like to think so.

Get on the net and find out why the jury punished McDonalds. They didn't pull the judgement out of their ass, but corporate America would like for you to think so because they don't believe in tort law at all.

What's a tort? I rest my case.

[CDSmith]

Originally posted by Rorschach
Don't be such a killjoy brisk.

Brisk is on a mission to end all fun in the world.

[CDSmith]

Originally posted by frippeno
Where do they find these jurors?

A better question would be "where to they find idiots who believe shit like this?"

Because I doubt if there is more than a grain of truth to a single one of those "stories".

FYI, the McDonalds case you refer to - I doubt if you know the FIRST THING about it. It was not just a "the coffee was hot" case, though morons with their own agenda like to think so.

Get on the net and find out why the jury punished McDonalds. They didn't pull the judgement out of their ass, but corporate America would like for you to think so because they don't believe in tort law at all.

What's a tort? I rest my case.

Try relaxing your sphincter valve and dropping the stick out of your ass.


Then put on your coke bottle glasses and start looking for your sense of humor.


Twit.

[frippeno]

Dipshit.

[liquidmoe]

So whats a tort?

[CDSmith]

Originally posted by frippeno
Dipshit.

A true wordsmith. I rest my case.

[Libertine]

Originally posted by liquidmoe
So whats a tort?

Some kind of pastry, I believe.

<div style="visibility: hidden;">Did you actually take that seriously?</div>

[CDSmith]

Originally posted by liquidmoe
So whats a tort?

Basically it is a wrongful act that is actionable.


Not to be confused with "torte", which is a cake made with many eggs and often grated nuts or dry bread crumbs and usually covered with a rich frosting.

[Libertine]

Originally posted by CDSmith
Basically it is a wrongful act that is actionable.


Not to be confused with "torte", which is a cake made with many eggs and often grated nuts or dry bread crumbs and usually covered with a rich frosting.

Damage, injury, or a wrongful act done willfully, negligently, or in circumstances involving strict liability, but not involving breach of contract, for which a civil suit can be brought.


Also not to be confused with a tart, which is a pie.

[CDSmith]

That's what I said.

[liquidmoe]

I would prefer a nice tart at this time, with a cup of coffee (its 6AM).

But in any case that tort sounds like regular civil law, on what grounds does corporate America try to refuse its validity?

[Rorschach]

Dumbasses... everyone knows that a tart is a loose and slatternly woman.

[Carrie]

Lawsuits like this (whether these particular ones are true or not) are rewarded because of a simple loss of common sense.

You can thank the gov't and its curriculum for public schools for producing people that cannot think for themselves.

If you think that I am joking, stop by your state's educational site and download the Standards of Learning (SOL) for each grade and look them over. Then compare that with what *you* learned in school. Better yet, compare it to an 8th grade test from 1895:
http://www.azbea.org/8th_Grade_Final.htm

Once you're done doing that, if you still think that there has been no "dumbing down" of our children, that government controlled education is a fantastic idea, and that the agenda of teacher's unions has had no harm whatsoever on the learning ability of our kids...
Well then, you're most likely a recent graduate of public schools and can't understand 80% of what you've just read anyway, and the above lawsuit rewards probably make total sense to you.

[BRISK]

Originally posted by punkworld


Damage, injury, or a wrongful act done willfully, negligently, or in circumstances involving strict liability, but not involving breach of contract, for which a civil suit can be brought.


Also not to be confused with a tart, which is a pie.

I like pie

[liquidmoe]

There is certainly a dumbing down of America, I doubt anyone can argue against that, but how do teachers unions play in to this?

[CDSmith]

So to recap:


tart --- a woman of loose morals OR a miniature pie-like pastry.

torte --- a cake made from many eggs.

tort --- an wrongful act (excluding breach of contract) that is actionable via civil suit.

frippeno --- a crazy board newb who tends to get angry at 5 am.

Carrie --- is not joking.

Brisk --- hates all things fun, but likes pie.

[Carrie]

Originally posted by liquidmoe
There is certainly a dumbing down of America, I doubt anyone can argue against that, but how do teachers unions play in to this?

Because they fight for things like less work with the same or more pay, less testing for the teachers, less requirements for the teachers to produce classes that meet the required testing level, lower barriers of entry to be a teacher, etc.

[Libertine]

Originally posted by CDSmith
Brisk --- hates all things fun, but likes pie.

Pie is fun...

[Mr. Marks]

Bastards!!!!!

Originally posted by CDSmith


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 the 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 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 8 days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the house owner's insurance claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The Jury agreed to the tune of $500,000.

[arial]

To bad those are fake but here?s a real one.

The (ex?) governor of New Mexico won $10 million after someone?s tree in their yard feel on him.

[liquidmoe]

Need more info, why did the tree fall? Wouldn't under most normal circumstances a tree falling on a person be considered an act of God, so it wouldn't be possible to sue.

[iroc409]

lol... yeah, a lot of teachers these days are total fuckoffs (granted, i haven't been in school for a while, but still). some of the teachers i had were awesome, and deserved to show others the ways of the world. and others, well, they couldn't teach 8th grade algebra and just hit on all the hs girls.

my senior year i thought i'd take it easy, so i signed up for an easy lit class. the first day in class she [teacher] pulled out a youngster's picture book and read to us like we were 4 years old. i couldn't get to the office fast enough to transfer out, and ended up transferring into probably one of the hardest lit classes i could. but it was a much better experience.

[KraZ]

coool, I gotta go out more

[CDSmith]

Originally posted by liquidmoe
Need more info, why did the tree fall? Wouldn't under most normal circumstances a tree falling on a person be considered an act of God, so it wouldn't be possible to sue.

I have no doubt that one day someone in America will figure out a way to sue god.