Fwd: FW: True Stella Awards: 2006 Winners!

["Brian Loe" <knobdy () gmail com>]

Couple of entries toward the end which backup my reason for posting
here - I think.


-----Original Message-----
From: Stella Awards [mailto:lyris () lyris net]
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 5:00 PM
To: truestellaawards () brianloe com
Subject: True Stella Awards: 2006 Winners!

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True Stella Awards #79: 31 January 2007              www.StellaAwards.com
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The TRUE Stella Awards -- 2006 Runners-Up and Winner by Randy Cassingham

 Unlike the FAKE cases that have been highly circulated online for the last
several years (see http://www.StellaAwards.com/bogus.html for details), the
following cases have been researched from public sources and are confirmed
TRUE by the ONLY legitimate source for the Stella
Awards: www.StellaAwards.com . To confirm this copy is legitimate, see
http://www.StellaAwards.com/2006.html

 PLEASE DO FORWARD this issue -- it's allowed so long as you send it in its
entirety. MEDIA OUTLETS: See http://www.StellaAwards.com/2006.html
*BEFORE* running the awards as that page has permission info and will have
any needed updates and corrections.

                                  -v-

2006 Runners-Up and Winner:

#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 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.

                                  -v-

TO CONFIRM THE VALIDITY OF THESE CASES, get more information on the True
 Stella Awards, or sign up for a free e-mail subscription to new cases
 as they are issued, see http://www.StellaAwards.com/2006.html

BLOGGERS AND WEB SITE OWNERS: http://www.StellaAwards.com/2006.html also
 links to a pre-formatted copy you can post online.

WANT TO SEE THE FULL WRITE-UPS of all of these cases? A PDF file is
 available for a small fee. See http://www.StellaAwards.com/2006.html
 for info.

NOTE: If the summary doesn't state an outcome for a case, it's probably
 still pending. Unlike the fantasy world of the urban legend Stella
 Awards, in real life the courts are so clogged, and "justice" so slow,
 that it can take many years for a case to conclude. Sorry, but there
 are no pat endings in the real world. If YOU hear of an update, please
 DO send us a URL so we can update our readers. Thanks.

Copyright 2007 www.StellaAwards.com . This message may be forwarded as
 long as it remains complete and unaltered.

     ----------==========**********O**********==========----------
                   REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD
           Want proof? Check out the ATTORNEYS HALL OF SHAME.
 Been screwed over by an attorney or a judge (they are attorneys, too)?
 Only family, friends and co-workers will listen to you? Not any more!
 Now you can now Rant to the world about your favorite bottom feeding
 shyster. Go to http://www.AttorneysHallOfShame.com to post your Rant
 and induct your attorney, or just to see if he/she is already listed.
     ----------==========**********O**********==========----------

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

 I'm sure quite a few people will take issue with the winner: the case was
thrown out so no harm, no foul, right? Wrong. When faced with an actual suit
for $832 million, both parties HAD to hire attorneys to fight it, no matter
how ridiculous it seemed. Do nothing, and the bozo would win. Sure the guy
would have lost had it gone to trial, but no matter:
they had to gear up a defense, and at considerable expense. Meanwhile,
legitimate cases had to wait in line that much longer while this case got
out of the way. The True Stella Awards isn't about outrageous cases that
succeed, it's about outrageous cases that are filed -- and what it says
about not just our legal system, but our society that people seem to feel
they have a right to get huge compensation for every possible slight they
feel they've been subjected to.

 While the time pressures of my regular job (I write a weekly column of
weird-but-true news stories: see http://www.thisistrue.com for details) kept
me from doing as many case write-ups as I would have liked, that doesn't
mean there weren't plenty of cases to choose from. Here's just a brief
sampling of cases which were brought to my attention but I didn't get a
chance to research or write up in 2006:

-- The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs lost a laptop containing the
 personal identity details of 26.5 million active and retired soldiers.
 They planed to contact that huge group to alert them and give advice
 on how to safeguard themselves from identity theft, but lawyers got a
 court to order them NOT to do that, since that would mitigate any
 possible damage to the servicemen and -women, and thus limit any
 recovery for the $26.5 billion lawsuit they were preparing against the
 government.

-- A couple in Minnesota didn't buckle their kid into a car seat properly
 and got in an accident, and the child was injured. Even though it was
 their own fault, they got their 8-year-old child to sue them so they
 could get a bigger payout from their auto insurance.

-- Anyone can post an ad on the "Craigslist" web site. According to a
 lawsuit filed against the site, some housing ads there are
 discriminatory. Even though Craigslist doesn't review ads unless
 someone reports them as inappropriate (and physically could never do
 so, since there are 8 million new ads every month), the lawsuit claims
 Craigslist is to blame for the discriminatory ads.

-- A convicted murderer (who was sentenced to death) claims he was
 victimized by jailers during a suicide attempt, and claims the
 resulting "severe mental and physical injuries" has "brought about
 delirium or insanity." Only $35 million will help him through that,
 though he didn't explain how he expects to take it with him to the
 afterlife.

-- Cops in Milwaukee say they have to wear a uniform on the job, yet the
 city doesn't pay them for the time it takes them to get dressed. They
 not only demand to be paid for that time, but to get back pay for all
 the time they took to get dressed in the past.

-- Family whose dog was run over doesn't sue over the property value of
 the dog, but rather $1.625 million for "loss of companionship".

-- Two men trespassed in a rail yard and climbed atop the train -- an
 electric train! -- and were shocked by the circuits. They sued and
 were awarded $24.2 million.

 And they go on and on. The most common comment/question I get from readers
is, Yes, we can see that there's a problem with lawsuits, but what can we DO
about it? I've long said the solution is complex; a band- aid (e.g.,
limiting dollar damages) just won't do, and in fact could cause more harm
than good. But there IS something that society must do, and even things we
mere mortal citizens can do on an individual level.
But to really explain it needs a lot more room than I can take here.
That's where the True Stella Awards book comes in: I was given 288 pages to
not just relate the details of scores of cases, but to use those cases to
create a big picture view of the problem AND the potential solutions.
I actually took 352 pages, and the publisher allowed me to go over my limit
because they think the topic is important.

 This problem needs to come out of the shadows; it needs to be discussed;
it needs to be debated in public -- a public MUCH larger than the (as of
midnight) 88,189 of you who get this newsletter. Indeed, the book's primary
purpose is to help drive that debate, with case after case of examples of
patently ridiculous lawsuits and analysis. It's all guaranteed to make you
mad, but as the first reviewer says, "the facts of the cases are funny all
by themselves." (Booklist) In other words, it's an entertaining and fun
read, not a bunch of legalese.

 For more info on the book see http://www.StellaAwards.com/book.html

 Last, thanks much to the sponsors who make this newsletter possible --
they pay the freight so I can send this newsletter out for no charge. I hope
you'll at least review the ONE ad that's in every issue (right after the
case descriptions above), and check out the advertiser's site if it's of
interest.

--Randy Cassingham

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