Have you heard the story about the guy who sued Winnebago claiming he should have been warned that setting the cruise control on his RV didn’t mean it was safe to leave the driver’s seat to fix a sandwich while the RV was cruising down the road?
Or how about the woman who was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler inside a furniture store?
Yes? You’ve seen the email describing these and five other lawsuits that are listed as the winners of this year’s “Stella Awards” for the most frivolous lawsuits in America? The email that starts by saying “These are real lawsuits but hard to believe?”
Well, don’t believe it.
Even though these “awards” were named after Stella Liebeck, the woman who sued McDonald’s after burning herself on that infamous spilled cup of coffee, Stella’s lawsuit is the only one described in that email note that is true.
If you’ve seen the Stella email and believed it, you’re not alone. I have received that note from unsuspecting friends hundreds of times. And now that I’m doing a lot of radio interviews around the country to talk about the most recent winners of our annual Wacky Warning Label Contest, I’m finding out that the “Stella Awards” are still being mentioned frequently by callers and hosts nine years after the email note was created.
While I’ve done my own research on this, the leading debunker of urban legends, Snopes.com, has also exposed this email as a fraud, and you can see their take on it here. After revealing that the “Stella Awards” are pure fiction, Snopes also takes the time to point out that there is no shortage of outrageous lawsuits in the courts that are real. Many of the real lawsuits they cite were brought to their attention by yours truly over the years.
One reason I want to take the time to set the record straight about the “Stella Awards” is that there’s no need for anyone to use stories about fictitious lawsuits to make the case that there’s a huge problem with lawsuit abuse in America. My blog and others are filled with examples of real loony lawsuits that have made real victims of innocent people. So don’t get burned by Stella.
Another reason I bring up the “Stella Awards” is because some people might think that since the hilarious lawsuits described in that email are bogus, the hilarious warning labels we talk about in our contest are also too funny to be true. Rest assured, we spend a lot of time verifying that the labels in our contest each year are real. You can see pictures of all of this year’s finalists here.
In the future, if someone sends you the Stella email note, send them a link to BobDorigoJones.com.
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Thanks for the clarification. I fell for this hook, line and sinker! Whoever made these up had a great imagination, and sense of humor. They did make me laugh!