Stella Award

[pkt]

It's decisions like these that give the judicial system a bad name.

PK

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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 McDonalds, the teens who allege that eating at McDonalds has made them fat, was filed after the 2002 award voting was closed. This suit will top the 2002 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 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 subsisted 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 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 a 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.

[Peach]

Unfortunately, as I explained at length recently in another thread, the McDonald's coffee case was in no way frivolous. There are certainly frivolous suits, but please read
http://www.centerjd.org/free/mythbus..._mcdonalds.htm for a good summary of the reasons why this really unfortunate woman does not deserve the bad rap and why this is a lousy example of lawsuit abuse.

[KShan5[PrFC]]

Ummit is frivolous.

"After the car stopped, she tried to hold the cup securely between her knees while removing the lid. However, the cup tipped over, pouring scalding hot coffee onto her"

The fact that the case even got to trial is a joke. She cannot open up a cup of coffee and spills it....SUE McDONALDS....that is a frivolous law suit if I have ever seen one. It is not even like she hit a speed bump in the drive through......she stopped and could not complete motor skills that one learns in the third grade.

[a517dogg]

Not frivolous.

a) she's 79 years old

b) coffee should not be sold at 190 degrees fahrenheit because it is very dangerous

c) "McDonald's admitted that it has known about the risk of serious burns from its scalding hot coffee for more than 10 years -- the risk was brought to its attention through numerous other claims and suits, to no avail;"

[Inquartata]

What has age to do with it? Are you saying old people ought to be treated differently by a business? Or that their stupidities should be excused, and they should not be expected to take responsibility for them?

The other two points I concede you, and they are valid, however her actions were contributory at the least.

[Popper]

That must be the most scary thing about america.. that you actually defend these ridiculous lawsuits.. but the most ridiculous about it is the money paid to the "victims". Its all just absurd..

So if the woman is old.. are you not to sell coffee to senior citizens? And so if the coffee is hot? Does she not have a sense of feelings in her hands (paper cups are not well insulated)? Sounds to me that it is her nursinghome that shuld be held responsible for letting her out on her own..

And again.. because of the astronomical amounts paid out.. your ****ry has to be filled with golddiggers that will stop at nothing to use the system..

felt good to let out some supressed anger

[Peach]

Her actions were indeed contributory, which was why she wasn't awarded very much in compensatory damages in the first place. The reason for the excessive punitive damages (which were sensibly reduced by the judge) was not because of sympathy for the woman but because McDonald's systematically and obviously acted badly (refusing to change the temperature in the face of numerous requests and burn cases, admitting that it had no good reason for serving the coffee that hot, admitting that it knew it was dangerous, refusing to deal with the badly burned woman at all when she made an earlier, reasonable request). The case has taken on apocryphal dimensions, and does not deserve to be the bad example for tort reform, especially since she originally sought no more than $20,000 to help with her serious medical bills.

Pick something else where the corporation wasn't so obviously at fault. The way Philadelphians sue SEPTA, for instance.

However, since the narration of these tales so obviously serve the moral function of urban legends and are so satisfying to people's sense of outrage, I suppose it's like arguing against the Tooth Fairy.

[Philistine]

Originally posted by pkt
It's decisions like these that give the judicial system a bad name.
{snip}

You realize, of course, that none of these lawsuits (other than the McDonalds one) actually took place?

Snopes

WRT the McDonalds lawsuit, McDonalds admitted it was aware that the coffee at the temperature kept by it (significantly higher than its competitors) was unfit for consumption at that temperature and that it was aware of hundreds of other complaints of burns including other third degree burns from spilled (or drunk) coffee.

While one could certainly anticipate being scalded by spilled coffee, third-degree burns requiring significant skin grafts seems a bit much.

As Peach said, there are silly verdicts out there. This isn't one of them.

--Philistine

[jeff]

It's gullible people retelling made up stories like these that gives the Internet a bad name.

[KShan5[PrFC]]

To me this is as bad as someone playing baseball and gettinghit with a pitch which causes injury....then you sue the baseball company. The baseball can be thrown hard and hit someone just not its purpose, thus not the company's fault, but the pitcher's. And because a woman cannot figure out how to open a cup....get over it, it's her fault.

[darius]

Please don't consider the law as a potential career.

Let's fix your analogy:

If the batter could prove that the ball company manufactured a ball that was specifically designed to injure hitters ("new, with EZ-break stitches, and razorblades inside, when you need to throw it high and fast!"), knew about it, and continued doing so despite the fact that every other ball company just made normal baseballs, then yes...they'd be liable.

darius

[Philistine]

Originally posted by KShan5[PrFC]
To me this is as bad as someone playing baseball and gettinghit with a pitch which causes injury....then you sue the baseball company. The baseball can be thrown hard and hit someone just not its purpose, thus not the company's fault, but the pitcher's. And because a woman cannot figure out how to open a cup....get over it, it's her fault.

No. It's not.

It's the same as playing baseball and having the pitcher substitute a ball made out of solid steel for a regular ball because it's easier for him to strike people out.

You're aware of and accept the possibility of the bruise by a thrown baseball (scalding by spilled normal coffee), but not of the fractured skull from the steel ball (3rd degree burns from McDonalds Coffee). And it's not suing the baseball company, its suing the pitcher.

Have you ever seen someone with a third-degree burn? Do you think anyone would expect to get a third-degree burn from a cup of coffee?

--Philistine

EDIT: I see Darius got there before me.

[a517dogg]

Age does have something to do with it - my grandma's hands shake when she drinks from a cup (they didn't use to, they shake because of her age). If your hands are shaking when you're drinking a cup full of hot scalding coffee, you are going to spill it on yourself and burn yourself.

[Peach]

Speaking of spilling coffee, a few years ago I spilled a normal-temperature cup of coffee on my jean-clad legs, and the jeans retained the heat (I was out of the house and didn't think of taking them off immediately until it was too late) and gave me a swathe of enormous weeping blisters that lasted for weeks.

[KShan5[PrFC]]

Originally posted by a517dogg
Age does have something to do with it - my grandma's hands shake when she drinks from a cup (they didn't use to, they shake because of her age). If your hands are shaking when you're drinking a cup full of hot scalding coffee, you are going to spill it on yourself and burn yourself.

Right...but how is that McDonald's fault?

[Inquartata]

Originally posted by a517dogg
Age does have something to do with it - my grandma's hands shake when she drinks from a cup (they didn't use to, they shake because of her age). If your hands are shaking when you're drinking a cup full of hot scalding coffee, you are going to spill it on yourself and burn yourself.

Aaaand...companies should be required to take this into account and treat them differently from others on this account?

I'm not really sure which side you're arguing. Your first post seemed to be saying that her lawsuit was justified partly because she was 79. Your last seems to say her age might have made it her fault, thus LESS justified. What exactly ARE you saying, anyway?

[dunastor]

Maybe they could ask for an ID or medical proof that your sound enough to be buying coffee there....

[Inquartata]

Perhaps they could put a notation on the driver's licenses they probably shouldn't have anymore...

[2Sirius]

Hey, I'm starting to resemble these remarks.

For your information, a 16 to 18 year old driver is statistically much more likely to be involved in a traffic accident than an elderly person. And even if they are involved in an accident -- how much damage can they do going only 15 miles an hour - on the freeway - during rush hour! But that's beside the point.

[KShan5[PrFC]]

It has nothing to do with a traffic accident, it has to do witht eh fact that some lady doesn't know how to open up a cup of coffee correctly, thus she has the right to sue people for her own lack of motor skills.