It's time again for the annual '2008 Stella Awards' !

For those unfamiliar with these awards, they are named after 81 year old
Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued
the McDonald's in New Mexico where she purchased the coffee.

You may remember, she took the lid off of the coffee and put it between her
knees while she was driving. Who would ever think she could get burned
doing that, right?

These awards are for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the
U.S. You know, the kinds of cases that make you shake your head.

Here are the Stella's for the past year:

7th Place :

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 store owners were understandably surprised
by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son.

6th Place :

Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles , California won $74,000 plus medical
expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. 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 :

Terrence Dickson, of Bristol , Pennsylvania , was leaving a house he had
just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the
automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the
garage door to open. Worse, he couldn't re-enter the house because the
door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it
shut. Forced to sit for eight, count 'em, EIGHT days on a case of Pepsi
and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner's insurance
company claiming undue mental anguish. Amazingly, the jury said the
insurance company must pay Dickinson $500,000 for his anguish. We should
all have this kind of anguish.

4th Place :

Jerry Williams, of Little Rock , Arkansas , garnered 4th place in the
Stella's when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being
bitten on the rear by his next door neighbor's beagle-even though the
beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. Williams did not get
as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have
been provoked at the time of the rear bite because Williams had climbed
over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet
gun.

3rd Place :

Third place goes to Amber Carson of Lancaster , Pennsylvania , because a
jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she
slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her tailbone. The reason the
soft drink was on the floor: 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
nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor
knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to
sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover
charge, the jury said that the night club had to pay her $12,000...plus
dental expenses.

And 1st Place :(are you ready for this)

This year's runaway First Place Stella Award winner was...Mrs. Merv
Grazinski, of Oklahoma City , Oklahoma , who purchased a 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 driver's seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to
make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the
freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski
sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner's manual that she couldn't
actually leave the driver's seat while the cruise control was set. The
Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down...$1,750,000 PLUS a new
motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result for
this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also
buy a motor home.

"For those unfamiliar with these awards, they are named after 81 year old
Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued
the McDonald's in New Mexico where she purchased the coffee.

You may remember, she took the lid off of the coffee and put it between her
knees while she was driving. Who would ever think she could get burned
doing that, right?"

Without casting any doubt on the truth or humour of the latest winner stories, the original TRUE "Stella" story is this:

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm

The inventors of the "Stella" awards chose a bad example and are now spending a lot of time and effort trying to defend their choice rather than intelligently renaming the award based on a more appropriate example, of which I'm sure there are thousands in the States!

what about the pies at pools they look pretty hot,never tried one myself but seen other people trying to eat them,at first i thought they were impersonating harris then i noticed they were tring to eat a pie