Fake Lawsuits To Promote Message. Who Benefits?
Have you ever been on the receiving end of one of those chain e-mails? We aren’t talking about spam, but e-mails that have been forwarded to you by people that you know. Many of them contain jokes, but more often than not they contain political information. Usually the subject heading says something like “You won’t believe this,” or “The REAL costs of (whatever.)”
There was an article in the Washington Postabout chain e-mails which held that most of them consist of pie-in-the-sky facts and figures and have no real basis in reality. The article also states that the majority of them don’t just come from a random delusional paranoid, but are actually created by political operatives who support a cause or candidate. They are constructed with deliberate misinformation and are made to give you the idea that you are receiving “privileged” information, which is the sort of information that “they” (whoever “they” may be) don’t want you to know.
We weren’t particularly surprised by this article. One of the most popular chain e-mails is one involving so-called frivolous lawsuits. It’s called “The Stella Awards,” and it’s been around for about twelve years. Despite its age we are still getting it forwarded to us at least three times a year.
Here is what it says:
This is what’s wrong with America.
Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $780,000 by a jury 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 son.
Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles won $74,000 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.
Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Penn., 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. Dickson 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.
Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, was awarded $14,500 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.
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.
Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, successfully sued the owner of a nightclub 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 and dental expenses.
These are all terrible cases of injustice, aren’t they? It’s enough to make you immediately support whichever legal restrictions on the Seventh Amendment are put in front of you. This is exactly what the e-mail is designed to do.
It is effective. It evokes outrage in the reader, and it is utterly and completely false.
We don’t mean that these cases are exaggerations, or that the numbers were stilted one way or another. We mean that not one of these cases actually happened. They are fictions.
It wouldn’t occur to most people to search a legal database for proof of these cases, and even if it did occur to them, they probably wouldn’t know where to begin. So for a great many people out there, this completely fraudulent e-mail stands as concrete evidence that our legal system is out of control.
What compounds this insult to the truth is the fact that these so-called “Stella” awards are named after Stella Leibeck, who was equally slandered as a filer of “frivolous lawsuits” after she burned herself quite badly from near-boiling McDonald’s coffee.
To be sure, there are cases where people who are essentially victims of their own bad behavior of folly file lawsuits, but in 99,999 out of 100,000 instances, these cases are thrown out before they get anywhere. So not only are these cases fiction, but even if they weren’t fiction, the awards would never be given to the plaintiff’s. These would never even be put before a jury, and we would be amazed if there were any attorney who actually agreed to argue these cases.
The next time you see a story of someone filing a lawsuit over completely foolish reasons and then winning a ridiculous amount of money, remember the “Stella Awards” e-mail, and think about who would benefit from a greatly diminished 7th Amendment. It most certainly wouldn’t be you.
Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Maryland. If you or a loved one has been hurt in an accident in Virginia, D.C. or Maryland, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation today.
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