The Stella Awards were inspired by Stella Liebeck. In 1992, Stella, then 79, spilled a cup of McDonald’s coffee onto her lap, burning herself. A New Mexico jury awarded her $2.9 million in damages. Ever since, the name “Stella Award” has been applied to any wild, outrageous, or ridiculous lawsuits.
Barney sent me what appears to be 2003’s list of winners, as it’s not listed on their web site (2002’s Winners are here). Read on below for the full, hilarious, results….
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:
A 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 that 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 reenter 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 (tail bone). 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 RV 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 morons buying their recreation vehicles.
Comments
Bad news. You’ve been snookered.
http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.htm
Also, the lady, Stella Liebeck, had a genuine case against McDonalds. She received third degree burns on 6% of her body from the coffee, that was served at a temperature of 185-190 degrees. McDonalds knew their coffee was unfit for comsumption and dangerous. Now imagine having your penis destroyed by hot coffee (basically what happened to her crotch, she had to have skin grafts), and then imagine the whole world saying it was a stupid lawsuit and using your name for the awards… (Not you personally, but in general…)
Read more about Stella Liebeck here:
http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.htm
(Yes, it’s a lawyers site. But the facts of the trial are public record. This is just a good summary.)
http://caoc.com/facts.htm is the Liebeck URL. Stupid cut and paste.
Crap…ah well….figures. I forget to check Snopes one time, and somebody catches it — aw well…thanks, Claire!
Two comments: Claire’s defense of Stella Liebeck’s lawsuit is absurd. 185 degrees makes coffee “unfit for consumption”? Nonsense. Did you ever had a cup of hot tea, Claire? Put a teabag in the cup, pour boiling water on it (212 degrees) and 10 seconds later start sipping. Hot — really hot — coffee is a tradition going back at least century in America. The fact is, the stupid old lady put a cup of hot coffee between her legs and started driving. Jeez.
Second comment: The 1st place winner, Mr Grazinski and his mobile home, is identical to a joke that goes back quite a while. I distinctly remember telling it at a Thanksgiving dinner in Glendale, California in the mid-90s. Odd, isn’t it?
Umm, no. The lady did NOT start driving, she was a passenger, and the car was fully STOPPED at the time the coffee spilled. Did you even follow the links at all? Second of all, I do not drink tea 10 seconds after pouring boiling water on it, and anyone who does will have a burned tongue and throat. Tea should steep for at least three minutes (longer for herbal tea), and five minutes is average for optimum flavor. For green tea, it’s recommended that the water should NOT be boiling, and should be 160- 185 degrees, with a 3-5 minute steeping time. The water will cool considerably, in either case. Furthermore, most restaurants serve coffee at or around 150 degrees, home coffee averages 135-140 degrees, and neither will cause third degree burns within 2-7 seconds on contact with skin. I don’t think it’s reasonable for a restaurant to be selling beverages hot enough to cause third degree burns.
I agree with Kent. Reguardless of the temprature of the liquid, you should not be able to sue someone because you dumped it in your lap. Do they need a warning label on it? “Hey, don’t dump this hot cofee in your lap moron!”
If the drive through guy/gal spilled it on here, then I’d say she has a case, but if she spilled it on herself then, well, thats her own fault.
Even if it is against health code to sell liquid at that temperature, the restaurant should simply be fined for that. They should only be responsible for someone using that liquid in the manner which it was intended to be used (i.e. drinking it).
If I KNEW that the coffee I was holding was capable of causing third degree burns if I spilled it on myself I would NEVER buy it. Most people wouldn’t. If McDonalds had printed “This coffee will cause third degree burns if you spill it on yourself” in big letters on the cup, then I’d say you were right. But they admitted they knew their customers were not aware of the danger their coffee posed, and they had no intention of either warning them, or lowering the temperature, despite 700 complaints of burns, including many with burns similar to Liebeck’s. I think it’s pretty safe to say that while people expect hot coffee to hurt if they spill it on themselves, people don’t expect to get third degree burns serious enough to require skin grafts.
Even if they dont know or expect it will cause 3rd degree burns, its not McDonalds’ fault if they spill it on themselves anyhow.
Even if they put the warning in big letters on the cup, people would still buy it, people would still spill it, and im sure people would still sue. Look at the tobacco companies. They have a label on their cigarettes that says they could kill you, yet people still buy them, people still use them, and their family sues when they die. Warning labels are next to useless. Isn’t the “Caution:HOT” sign on the cup enough to make you think, “Hey, I probably shouldnt dump this in my lap”
Its funny that the link you provided says that she was “20% at fault in the spill”. So McDonalds was 80% at fault for spilling the coffee in her lap? That discredits anything else they might say on that page for me.
Sorry, but your “stella awards” as seen on your site are bogus. I know the real ones are not as fun, but… :
Bogus Stella Awards:
http://www.stellaawards.com/bogus.html
The true Stella Awards:
http://www.stellaawards.com/
2003 winners:
http://www.stellaawards.com/2003.html
Doug
I think the law should protect all situations when you get hurt. On Sept,9th I was going up a few steps to go into the bank. a rug was laying at the top of the foundation, it was rolled up not all the way. I don;t know how it got like that. I tried to step over the rug and when I steped down it moved and causght my left foot and I went into the wall. I suffered a big brusie on right leg, gash inmy right hand and both hands fratucure. I was told that its nothing can be done because it happen on the outside of the bank. it was my fault I should have watched where I was going.
The bank paid all my medical bills and that was it. I say this , because i just read where a woman fell over a child and receive money.
http://www.stellaawards.com/
Actually, the Stella awards ARE real… just not THOSE awards. This here is the real deal, regularly updated and legally defensible (which it has to be, because a lot of lawyers don’t like it very much…).
“Its funny that the link you provided says that she was “20% at fault in the spill”. So McDonalds was 80% at fault for spilling the coffee in her lap? That discredits anything else they might say on that page for me.”
A pity about your poor reasoning powers. She was 20% at fault for being harmed — notably, she wouldn’t have been harmed if the cup had contained, say, water at room temperature.