Stella Awards email is a hoax! Tort deformers, perhaps prompted by the Chamber of Commerce, decided to MAKE UP FICTIONAL CASES for Stella Awards. The ridiculous award is named after a woman horribly burned in the "McDonald's Case" see Urban Legend's Red Hot McDonald's Page and Urban Legend's Legal Begal Page.

This email that has a story about a man who set his Winnebago on cruise control and got up to make coffee and the RV crashed. Supposedly, he sues the manufacturer for failing to tell him to stay in the driver's seat and a jury awards $1.75 million.... It's ALL a lie!

The Chamber of Commerce and others want you to believe this garbage so you let them take away your rights via tort deform and damages caps. Many in Congress buy this, just as I'm sure some of you believed this. In fact, Wisconsin lawyers brought the following FICTIONAL EMAIL to me, not knowing it was fake and asserting that this is why "there are too many lawsuits" and "juries are stupid." Well, like the email, it's all a lie. Here's what the Stella Awards email says:

This is what's wrong with the world:

January 2000: Kathleen Robertson of Austin Texas was
awarded $780,000.00 by a jury of her peers after breaking
her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running
amuck inside a furniture store. The owners of the
store were understandably surprised at the verdict,
considering the misbehaving tyke was Ms. Robertson's

June 1998: A 19 year old Carl Truman of Los Angeles
won $74,000.00 and medical expenses when his neighbor
ran his hand over with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman
apparently didn't notice someone was at the wheel
of the car whose hubcap he was trying to steal

October 1998: A Terrence Dickson of Bristol Pennsylvania
was exiting a house he finished robbing by way of
the garage. He was not able to get the garage door
to go up, because 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,
so 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. This
upset Mr. Dickson, so he sued the homeowner's insurance
claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish.
The jury agreed to the tune of half a million dollars
and change.

October 1999: Jerry Williams of Little Rock Arkansas
was awarded $14,500.00 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-in yard, as was Mr. Williams. The award was
less than sought after because the jury felt the
dog may have been provoked by Mr. Williams who,
at the time, was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet
gun.

May 2000: A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to
pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania $113,500
after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke
her coccyx. The beverage was on the floor because
Ms. Carson threw it at her boyfriend 30 seconds
earlier during an argument

December 1997: 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 $12,000.00 and
dental expenses

And the winner is: Mr. Merv Grazinksi of Oklahoma City.
In November 2000, Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand
new 32 foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip
home, having joined 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 Winnie left the freeway, crashed
and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not
advising him in the handbook that he could not actually
do this. He was awarded $1,750,000 plus a new Winnebago.
(Winnebago actually changed their handbooks after
this court case, just in case there are any other
complete morons buying their vehicles).

REMEMBER this Stella Awards e-mail 100% FALSE as branded by http://www.snopes.com. Snoops says "all of the entries in the list are fabrications - a search for news stories about each of these cases failed to turn up anything, as did a search for each law case."