It's time again for the annual "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. That's right, these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts
that happened in the U.S. You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch your head. So keep
your head scratcher handy. Here are the Stella's for the past year:

To kick things off the right way, there was a three-way tie for 5th : 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 verd ict, considering the running toddler was her son.

Also in 5th place is Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California - you knew California had to be
in the list somewhere, right? Truman won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbour ran over
his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the heel of the
car when he was trying to steal his neighbour's hubcaps.

The last of the 5th Place winners was Terrence Dickson, of Bristol, Pennsylvania, who 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 subsist for eight - count 'em, 8 - 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 Dickson $500,000 for his anguish. We should all have
this kind of anguish.

Keep scratching. There are more...

Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, garnered 4th Place in the Stellas when he was awarded
$14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbour'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 butt
bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a
pellet gun.

Third Place went to Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, because a jury ordered a Philadelphia
restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on 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. What ever happened to people being responsible for
their own actions?

Hang in there, there are only two more Stellas to go.

Second 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 the night club had to pay her $12,000...oh, yeah, plus dental
expenses. Go figure.

Finally, (may I have a fanfare played on 50 kazoos please) 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, no less - having driven
on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's se at 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 - you are sitting down, right? - $1,750,000 PLUS a
new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case
Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might buy a motor home.

__________________

An unwavering defender of those I see worth protecting.

"promote the general welfare, not provide the general welfare"

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.