5 Ridiculous Lawsuits That Won - Hoax Analysis

Story:

1. Kara Walton (Claymont, Delaware) won a lawsuit against a night club owner in a city nearby. Ms. Walton was trying to sneak in the club through the ladies room window so she would avoid paying the $3.50 entry charge. She fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her front teeth. The night club owner was sentenced to pay Walton $12,000 plus dental expenses.

2. Amber Carson (Lancaster, Pennsylvania) won a lawsuit against a restaurant in Philadelphia and received $113,500. What happened was Amber slipped on a spilled drink while in the restaurant and broke her tailbone. Well, that’s only fair, you might think. But what you don’t know is the reason the soft drink was on the floor : Amber had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds before the accident during a fight.

3. Carl Truman, 19 (Los Angeles, California) won $74,000 plus medical expenses in a lawsuit against his neighbour. The latter ran over Truman’s hand with a Honda Accord. Why Truman was in the way of the car? He was trying to steal his neighbour’s hubcaps but didn’t notice there was someone at the wheel.

4. Kathleen Robertson (Austin, Texas) was awarded $80,000 after breaking her ankle in a furniture store. She tripped over a toddler who was running inside the store. There is only one detail: the running toddler was her own son.

5. Terrence Dickson (Bristol, Pennsylvania) was awarded the amazing $500 000 in a lawsuit against an insurance company. Dickson was leaving a house he had just burglarized through the garage. Unfortunately, there was some malfunction and the garage door didn’t open. What’s worse is he was stuck in the garage because the door leading to the house got locked when he pulled it shut. He survived EIGHT whole days in the garage only on a case of Pepsi and dry dog food which he found there. Once he was saved, he sued the homeowner’s insurance company claiming undue mental anguish and, apparently, won the case.

Analysis:

The set of messages claim to mention five ridiculous lawsuits in the past that have won. They are NOT facts.

These messages have been circulating since many years, under various titles like Craziest and Weirdest Lawsuits of all times. It is a fact that there have been many weird cases of law suits in the past that have won, however, our search for all these news stories and law cases did not yield any authentic information or credible sources of them. Some versions of these messages mention the source as Stella Awards.

Stella Awards were an offshoot of a weekly news column called ‘This is True’, which was written by Colorado writer Randy Cassingham – featuring wacky yet true news stories. These awards were given between 2002 and 2007 to people who filed outrageous and frivolous lawsuits. Stella Awards was in fact named after Stella Liebeck of Albuquerque, New Mexico, who successfully sued McDonalds for $2.86 million in 1992 after burning herself on coffee that was “too hot”. The coffee spilled from the cup when she attempted to remove the lid and caused third degree burns. However, the ridiculous lawsuits in question were not listed in Stella Awards either, they were in fact termed as bogus and fabricated stories. Rightly so, because the list of those bogus ‘ridiculous lawsuits’ also featured few other cases that were circulating online along with the above messages. You can read the other bogus, funny law suit stories below:

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.
The “winner” every year: In November, 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.
And just so you know that cooler heads do occasionally prevail: Kenmore Inc., the makers of Dorothy Johnson’s microwave, were found not liable for the death of Mrs. Johnson’s poodle after she gave it a bath and attempted to dry it by putting the poor creature in her microwave for, “just a few minutes, on low,” The case was quickly dismissed.

So clearly, these weird lawsuits are just fabricated stories and hoax messages, perhaps intended as witty humor to create internet ‘sensation’, or even criticize the frivolous lawsuits like Stella Awards used to do. And like it happens many a times, this is the result of internet becoming a platform for spreading false information, without verifying the authenticity.