From: Ellen K. 

Yes, ISTR we had a big thread about the coffee case where previously
unreported information was posted.

But the ones in the email I got (and posted here) stretch the credibility!!!

On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 19:42:22 -0500, "Steve Ewing"
 wrote in message
:

>On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:57:23 -0800, Ellen K.
> wrote:
>
>> No idea if these are true, but they are definitely amusing:
>>
>>> Once again, it's time to review the winners of the Annual Stella
>>> Awards. The Stella's are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who
>>> spilled coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonalds. That case
>>> inspired the Stella Awards for the most frivolous successful lawsuits
>>> in the United States.
>
>Funny, ha ha, but let us remember that the McDonald's coffee case was
>*not* frivolous:
>
>http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.htm
>=====
>Some celebrated "outrageous" suits wherein judgement went for the
>plaintiff prove upon closer examination to be far less
"outrageous" than
>originally presented in the media. (For example, the "woman scalded by hot
>coffee" suit, which at first blush looked like the height of frivolity
>proved to be a perfectly legitimate action taken against a corporation
>that knew, thanks to a string of similar scaldings it had quietly been
>paying off, that its coffee was not just hot, but dangerously hot. The
>Association of Trial Lawyers of America provides an excellent description
>of this case).
>=====
>
>The URL to the ATLA site on the case is:
>    http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp#coffee
>and is worth reading.
>
>The snopes.com page includes most of the cases mentioned in your post, as
>well as some real (as verified by snopes.com, anyway) cases, like this one:
>=====
>In 1994, a student at the University of Idaho unsuccessfully sued that
>institution over his fall from a third-floor dorm window. He'd been
>mooning other students when the window gave way. It was contended the
>University failed to provide a safe environment for students or to
>properly warn them of the dangers inherent to upper-story windows.
>=====
>
>Some stuff is funny, wrong or not, but sometimes, as in the coffee case,
>an injustice is being done (at least that's how *I* feel) when these are
>circulated as truth.

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