The 2006 TRUE Stella Awards

If you are not familiar with Randy Cassingham and his "This is True" publication, his purpose is to expose the ridiculous lawsuits that people drag through our court system each year. He does an annual "TRUE Stella Awards" which highlights the most ridiculous cases of the year. The name is in "honor" of Stella, the lady who sued McDonalds for serving HOT coffee which she spilled on her lap and burned herself with.

The TRUE Stella Awards -- 2006 Winners

by Randy Cassingham - Issued 31 January 2007

Unlike the FAKE cases that have been highly circulated online for the
last several years, (click HERE 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

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, is lawyer explained, "With public officials, we expect them to own up o their mistakes and correct them." Yet Clymer had the gall to sue he manufacturer of his pickup truck, and the dealer he bought it rom, because he "somehow lost consciousness" and the truck "somehow roduced 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 orced 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 ompetitor. They claim by not being ranked higher in Google, Google is somehow infringing KinderStart's Constitutional right to free speech. ven 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.

Copyright 2007 www.StellaAwards.com. Reprinted with permission.