The Stella awards!!! you gotta read this.

[Elcoholic]

I picked this from another forum where some guy got an email of this so no link.

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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 (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 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 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 drivers 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.

[gubi-gubi]

Wow what the hell is going on lol? The courts have gone crazy. I always thought those cases where someone was robbing someone then sued them were a myth. If you are robbing someone then there should be some law that you can't even try to sue. They should pay the people they robbed... Are these cases infront of a jury or just a judge or something? I doubt a jury would come to those decisions.

[-spike-]

*EDIT* I hate our legal system. Its totally fucked.

Tottaly, not total. It was almost 4 in the morning, its hard to think that late.

[Batz Kage]

I hate our legal system. Its total fucked.

You can say that again.

[Zagatto]

It's too bad that the Stella Awards are awarded to entirely fictional lawsuits.
A quick trip over to Snopes http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp shows the reference material for all of these law suits and how they are products of people's minds. They also go on to tell of equally frivolous lawsuits but goes on to show that those have all been thrown out of court.

I'm sad to say it but the web page also shows legislation pushed through by George W. Bush when he was governor that I totally agree with. I guess our current president has done at least one thing in his career that I can admire him for... too bad I can't say the same for his run in his current office.

[Elcoholic]

Its fake? Thank God!

Appologies for making you worry about your system although the Stella case was real.

I wonder if that case of the old lady who wanted to dry her doggie in the microwave was real? She supposedly sued the microwave company for not putting in the manual that it kills living animals.

There's hundreds of those myths floating arround about weird lawsuits in the US. I just read another one that some guy won xx million in a case against philip morris a few days ago. He died in 1997 from cancer and claimed that he never knew smoking was harmfull in the 40 years he smoked.

Anyway, good to know its not THAT bad across the pond

EDIT: microwave story is fake too and was actually originally part of this same list but canceled because it would make it an obvious fake.

http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp
This site talks about it and also has some real cases that thankfully were thrown out of court. Also states Bush's law that Zagatto talks about at the bottom of the article.

EDIT2, aw shit. I just noticed i posted the exact same link as you Zagatto. Sorry

[Cidien]

I hate our legal system. Its total fucked.

The sad thing is it's the best one in the world right now. There's so many stupid things people can do. We used to own an empty lot and we told these two kids to stop riding on it at least 5-6 times (dumbasses never listen) and guess what? A friend of a neighbor broke his wrist and we had to pay all his medical expenses. The sad (kinda) thing is he had like 5 friends in my neighborhood. Nobody will let the kid come over anymore because they don't want to deal with the dumbass mother that might sue them for something.

[desfunk]

Thank god it's fake. I was about to say just how lame america's legal system is.

[Elcoholic]

The sad thing is it's the best one in the world right now.

That is highly debatable. Two things I think are very bad in your system is

1. Jury verdicts. Judges are trained to let their emotions and possible prior knowledge (example Michael Jackson case) to not influence their decission. Jury's don't have this training.

2. ALOT of cases don't really go to court. Many people plea guilty to get reduced sentence and then there's no defence possible. There are so many things that can go wrong in an investigation that would cause the case to be thrown out. Also many of these guilty pleads (sp?) are presured by policemen. I've heard many of these instances with (dutch) drug dealers who were caught at customs and are presured to plead guilty.

Then there's the death penalty but that's a whole other discussion.

[Cidien]

If they plead guilty they most likely are guilty. Plea bargaining also does suck but if we didn't have it we wouldn't have a system because it would be too backed up to get anything done. And I don't see anything wrong with the death penalty, especially as we use it. Hell i'm for killing rapists (not statatory obviously) instead of the lame crap that happens to them. How hard is it to not hold down a girl against her will and screw her? I don't see how anyone gets off like that....

[vegeta76]

Here's yet another interesting link lol: http://www.stellaawards.com/2005.html

[Andromeda18_]

That is highly debatable.

I agree with you, that's highly debatable, to say the least. And I must say you see the whole jury thing from a very nice point of view. Personally I wouldn't want to be judged by a "jury of my peers" unless it was my last resort. That's a very pretty sentence isn't it? "A jury of my peers" The problem is those peers of mine will likely be influenced by their own biased and prejudiced opinions. Like you said, "Judges are trained to let their emotions and possible prior knowledge (example Michael Jackson case) to not influence their decission". Not to mention most people aren't too happy with jury duty (that's why there are so many websites on the net teaching how to get away from it), many verdicts are hastily decided just because they want to go home early.
There's no such thing as the perfect legal system but jury system certainly isn't the best, in my opinion.

[Elcoholic]

If they plead guilty they most likely are guilty. Plea bargaining also does suck but if we didn't have it we wouldn't have a system because it would be too backed up to get anything done. And I don't see anything wrong with the death penalty, especially as we use it. Hell i'm for killing rapists (not statatory obviously) instead of the lame crap that happens to them. How hard is it to not hold down a girl against her will and screw her? I don't see how anyone gets off like that....

Most likely guilty yes. But for example there are cases where the evidence is planted. Evidence which policemen can use to presure an suspected criminal from pleaing guilty so they get a reduced sentence for something they didn't do. Its just one example of many.

Also yes it helps with speeding up prosecution but is that the measurement for a succesfull system? I also think that many appointed attorey's might abuse this way of prosecuting to speed things up for themselfs.

The death penalty is a subject i'm not 100% clear of myself to be honest. On one side I think if you knowingly take a life you should be taken from your own. But three things I don't like about the way in general and the way its implemented in the US.

1. I think its a sign of civilasation to not have it. And also it puts us (my country) appart from what we see as barbaric countries like Iran, former Afghanisan.

2. People are sometimes found to be not guilty after many years. We've had 2 cases in my country in the past year where people were set free after 5+ years of wrongfull detention. Don't know about US cases but its a good posibility (especialy with jury's although I don't know if they decide those kind of penalties).

3. The Us has no problem with sentencing mentaly unstable people to death. I don't think this is right and I think this is also a big point of discussion in the US right now.


Damn, that's a mighty fine post for me if I say so myself since I'm royaly fucked up right now

[Puppet Master]

They don't want people who will allow personal feelings affect their judgement. Add the fact that it causes many to miss work and some jobs at the very least don't pay for days taken off for that who would want to do it?

[Elcoholic]

They don't want people who will allow personal feelings affect their judgement.

No,but as I understand it the jury is picked by the prosecution and defence and they are not impartial at all. They pick who they think will vote for their case.