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Heard about the Winnebago driver who put on the cruise control so he can
go into the back and make a cup of coffee, and then won a million bucks
from the manufacturer when it crashed? Of course you have, and it's
a BOGUS story! Heard about the old woman who sued McDonalds after she
spilled hot coffee over herself? Yes, that's a true story! Her name is
Stella Liebeck, and now there's a book featuring all similarly idiotic
cases of libel! Order it from http://www.stellaawards.com/book.html
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The 2006 True Stella Awards
Issued 31 January 2007
(Click here to confirm these are legitimate.)
#5: Marcy Meckler.
While shopping at a mall, Meckler stepped outside and was "attacked" by
a squirrel that lived among the trees and bushes. And "while frantically
attempting to escape from the squirrel and detach it from her leg,
[Meckler] fell and suffered severe injuries," her resulting lawsuit
says. That's the mall's fault, the lawsuit claims, demanding in excess
of $50,000, based on the mall's "failure to warn" her that squirrels
live outside.
#4: Ron and Kristie Simmons.
The couple's 4-year-old son, Justin, was killed in a tragic lawnmower
accident in a licensed daycare facility, and the death was clearly
the result of negligence by the daycare providers. The providers were
clearly deserving of being sued, yet when the Simmons's discovered
the daycare only had $100,000 in insurance, they dropped the case
against them and instead sued the manufacturer of the 16-year-old
lawn mower because the mower didn't have a safety device that 1) had
not been invented at the time of the mower's manufacture, and 2) no
safety agency had even suggested needed to be invented. A sympathetic
jury still awarded the family $2 million.
#3: Robert Clymer.
An FBI agent working a high-profile case in Las Vegas, Clymer allegedly
created a disturbance, lost the magazine from his pistol, then crashed
his pickup truck in a drunken stupor -- his blood-alcohol level was
0.306 percent, more than three times the legal limit for driving in
Nevada. He pled guilty to drunk driving because, his lawyer explained,
"With public officials, we expect them to own up to their mistakes and
correct them." Yet Clymer had the gall to sue the manufacturer of his
pickup truck, and the dealer he bought it from, because he "somehow
lost consciousness" and the truck "somehow produced a heavy smoke
that filled the passenger cab." Yep: the drunk-driving accident
wasn't his fault, but the truck's fault. Just the kind of guy you
want carrying a gun in the name of the law.
#2: KinderStart.com.
The specialty search engine says Google should be forced to include the
KinderStart site in its listings, reveal how its "Page Rank" system
works, and pay them lots of money because they're a competitor. They
claim by not being ranked higher in Google, Google is somehow infringing
KinderStart's Constitutional right to free speech. Even if by some
stretch they were a competitor of Google, why in the world would they
think it's Google's responsibility to help them succeed? And if
Google's "review" of their site is negative, wouldn't a government
court order forcing them to change it infringe on Google's
Constitutional right to free speech?
And the winner of the 2006 True Stella Award:
Allen Ray Heckard.
Even though Heckard is 3 inches shorter, 25 pounds lighter, and 8 years
older than former basketball star Michael Jordan, the Portland, Oregon,
man says he looks a lot like Jordan, and is often confused for him --
and thus he deserves $52 million "for defamation and permanent injury"
-- plus $364 million in "punitive damage for emotional pain and
suffering", plus the SAME amount from Nike co-founder Phil Knight, for
a grand total of $832 million. He dropped the suit after Nike's lawyers
chatted with him, where they presumably explained how they'd counter-sue
if he pressed on.
©2007 by Randy Cassingham,
StellaAwards.com. Reprinted with permission.
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[Contributed by Randy Cassingham]
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