As published by the Association of Trial Lawyers of America
You may have received an e-mail that contains this unbelievable story:
A man sets his Winnebago motor home on cruise control and gets up to make a cup of coffee in the moving
vehicle. It crashes. He sues the manufacturer for failing to tell him to stay in the driver's seat. A jury awards him
$1.75 million and a new motor home, and the company changes its handbook.
There's a simple reason this story sounds unbelievable. IT'S PHONY. THE CASE NEVER HAPPENED. It's
fabricated and so are six other "lawsuits" summarized in the same e-mail, which has been widely circulated in
various forms on the Internet over the last few years.
The e-mail of anonymous origin claims that the Winnebago case is the latest winner of the annual "Stella
Award" for the most frivolous lawsuit in the United States. "Stella" is a mocking reference to Stella Liebeck, an
elderly woman who won a lawsuit against McDonald's. Some versions of the e-mail claim she "won $2.9
million for spilling a cup of McDonald's coffee on herself." That, too, is a myth. For the facts about Ms.
Liebeck's case and the horrible third-degree burns she suffered.
The 2002 version of the e-mail reads as follows:
This is what's wrong with the world:
- January 2000: Kathleen Robertson of Austin Texas was awarded $780,000.00 by a jury of her peers
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.
- June 1998: A 19 year old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000.00 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.
- October 1998: A Terrence Dickson of Bristol Pennsylvania 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. This upset Mr. Dickson, so he 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.
- October 1999: Jerry Williams of Little Rock Arkansas was awarded $14,500.00 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.
- May 2000: A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania $113,500.00 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.
- December 1997: Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware successfully sued the owner of a night club 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 $12,000.00 and dental expenses.
- And the winner is: Mr. Merv Grazinksi of Oklahoma City. In November 2000, 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. (Winnebago actually changed their handbooks after this court case, just in case there are any other complete morons buying their vehicles).
Trial lawyers aren't the only ones who say these cases are fake.
The "Stella" e-mail has been branded "false" by Snopes.com, a widely respected Web site dedicated to rooting out urban and Internet myths. According to Snopes.com, "all of the entries in the list are fabrications - a search for news stories about each of these cases failed to turn up anything, as did a search for each law case.
"Snopes.com's analysis of this phony e-mail also mentions that "some versions bear the following footer, although many omit it."
PLEASE ASSIST OUR LAW OFFICES IN A TORT REFORM PROGRAM. WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO PUT A STOP TO THESE INSANE JURY AWARDS BY SENDING THIS E-MAIL OUT TO THE PUBLIC IN THE HOPES OF SWAYING PUBLIC OPINION. PLEASE FORWARD IT TO EVERY EMAIL ADDRESS YOU KNOW. Mary R. Hogelmen, Esq. Law Offices of Hogelmen, Hogelmen, and Thomas Dayton Ohio
As Snopes.com points out, "[t]here is no law firm of Hogelmen, Hogelmen, and Thomas in Dayton, Ohio, as a call to directory assistance quickly confirmed. This detail was included to give the mailing credibility in the eyes of those who received it - if a law firm had pulled this list together to build grassroots support for its tort reform program, then it went without saying a pack of lawyers had properly researched each item and were guaranteeing the information provided. But of course this detail was as false as everything else in the e-mail."
Unfortunately, the seven cases in the "Stella" e-mail aren't the only fake lawsuits in circulation. An earlier version of the e-mail included another phony case about a microwaved poodle. Phony lawsuits are a common problem on the Internet and even in mainstream newspaper articles. They all share one characteristic - no citation to a source.
So where do these cases come from? All indications are that they're part of a massive campaign by corporate America and its allies to propagandize for tort "reform" - limits on the legal rights of individuals to hold corporate wrongdoers accountable for causing death and injury. Another common strategy is to cite outrageous cases without disclosing the fact that they were dismissed by a judge shortly after being filed.
As Snopes.com notes, such dismissals prove that America's civil-justice system works and that there are adequate safeguards against baseless cases. But big business interests don't want working Americans to understand that.
Corporate lobby groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - which has launched a multimillion-dollar advertising war against trial lawyers - intentionally mislead the public in an attempt to convince Americans that our legal system is broken and needs fixing. They want Americans to distrust their fellow citizens who serve on juries - our friends, relatives, neighbors and coworkers.
The truth is that businesses are the biggest users and abusers of the legal system. According to the American Bar Association, the number of contract cases (in which businesses often initiate the lawsuit) filed in state courts in 2000 was 50 percent higher than the number of injury cases by individuals. In addition, the number of product liability lawsuits by consumers against businesses declined about 20 percent between 1996 and 2000, the ABA says.
A report by two national consumer groups found that corporate America is hypocritical when it comes to our legal system - seeking to destroy individual rights while "maintaining unfettered access to our nation's courts as their own private playground." The report found that "American businesses often file anti-competitive litigation, designed to intimidate or harass." The complete report by Public Citizen and Citizen Action is available to download Here.
Here are just a few examples of ridiculous cases filed by businesses: John Deere & Company sued Farmhand Inc. for allegedly using the same color green on its front-end loaders as Deere used on its tractors. Hormel Foods, the maker of SPAM luncheon meat, sued to stop the creator of the Muppets from naming a wild boar "Spa'am" in a movie. The claim? SPAM sales would suffer from being linked to "evil in porcine form." For the record, both cases were dismissed - as they should have been.
What can you do to stop the spread of lies about our civil justice system? A prompt written response is the best tactic, whether it's a note to a well-meaning person who forwards fake cases on the Internet or a letter to a newspaper that publishes misleading information. With dubious e-mails, ask the sender for more details, especially the case names or citations. In most instances, these details can't be provided because they don't exist.
Be suspicious of newspaper stories that list outrageous cases without citations. A quick "key word" search on the Internet often will reveal that the cases were dismissed long ago or don't say what the article claims they say. And sometimes even those cases reported by news organizations never existed.
Remember, things like the "Stella Award" aren't just cute or harmless jabs at trial lawyers and our legal system. They clearly are part of a massive disinformation campaign designed to undermine Americans' confidence in our legal system and to benefit powerful corporate interests at the expense of average people harmed by corporate wrongdoing and indifference.
We're all responsible for getting the truth out.
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