The True Stella Awards: Honoring real cases of greedy opportunists, frivolous lawsuits, and the law run amok [Hardcover]

Randy Cassingham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 2005

Gathered from the popular Web site www.StellaAwards.com, The True Stella Awards is an outrageous collection of America’s most ridiculous and frivolous lawsuits.

Named for Stella Liebeck—the woman who spilled hot McDonald’s coffee on herself and then won a lawsuit against the fast-food chain—humorist Randy Cassingham’s popular Web site chronicles the hard-to-believe and amusing claims that have been brought before U.S. courts.

Now, for the first time in book form, The True Stella Awards presents some of the most outlandish and unbelievable-but-true lawsuits in America. Some of the Stella Award cases include:
-The man who legally changed his name to Jack Ass, and then sued MTV for $50 million because their TV show and movie Jackass infringed on his trademark and demeaned his “good name”
-The songwriter who left a minute’s silence on his record only to be sued by the estate of another songwriter who copyrighted his own “silent” song
-The man who sued an amusement park after being the victim of the ultimate "Act of God": he was hit by lightning while standing next to his own car in the parking lot.

“How did [Cassingham] get so popular so fast? Well, for one thing, he writes funny stuff.”
—The New York Times

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Depending on whether you're an attorney specializing in product liability cases, it's disheartening or it's not to read about the hunter who sued an ammunition manufacturer that failed to warn him its ammunition was not "suitable for killing a charging lion," or the California city that sued a non-lethal taser manufacturer for failing to "adequately teach police officers the difference between the Taser and their own handguns." The book "honors" lawsuits of the frivolous and ridiculous varieties by awarding them Stella Awards (named after Stella Liebeck, who famously spilled hot McDonald's coffee in her lap, then sued the chain). Though most lawsuits are summarized in a wink-and-a-nudge tone, the humorist author does allow himself a brief moment of activism in citing the ballooning costs-in dollars and wasted legal resources-of the "lawsuit industry," which cost litigants $250 billion in 2004. Just as likely to make readers shake their heads as chuckle, Cassingham has collected an astonishing array of cases: an Alabama woman was awarded $100,000 after being locked in a storage shed for two months; an Ohio man sued Delta Airlines after sitting next to an obese passenger on a two-hour flight; a mortgage company sued a couple whose identity had been stolen. A nifty little gift for anyone who appreciates absurdist trivia, the book's thumbnail case summaries make for easy spot reading.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The Stella Awards are named for Stella Lie-beck, the woman who, in a much-publicized case, sued McDonald's after spilling coffee on herself. Like the Darwin Awards, which celebrate stupidity, the Stellas honor frivolous lawsuits. Cassingham, creator of the This Is True Web site, which deals with the strange but true, swears that all of the lawsuits described herein are true, and he even provides his sources. Among the Stella winners: the mother whose son drank a lot of beer, stole his girlfriend's car, and drove himself into a light pole, prompting Mom to sue the company that made the beer, the girlfriend, the girlfriend's mother, and the guy who owned the house where her son drank the beer. And let's not forget the man who sued McDonald's because a burrito gave him a nosebleed, the lottery winner who sued because he thought he should have won more, and on and on. The author describes the suits in the most straightforward of prose, but it hardly matters: the facts of the cases are funny enough all by themselves. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult (November 3, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525949135
• ISBN-13: 978-0525949138
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,120,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I couldn't put it down, November 21, 2005

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The True Stella Awards: Honoring real cases of greedy opportunists, frivolous lawsuits, and the law run amok (Hardcover)

It's a good thing this book arrived on a Saturday or I would never have made it to school!! Once I started reading the cases I couldn't stop. It's hard to believe that people would really go to court and try to get somebody else to pay for their own stupidity..I mean..if my Dad was stupid enough to use a metal pole to pull something of the electric line, I wouldn't want the whole world to know about it. Or if my Mom got locked in a storage shed and didn't bother to bang on the door or try to get out, (I know, the book says that lady had emotional problems, but still !!).

I hope everyone will pay attention to the last part of the book where the writer gives ideas about how to get people to stop filing these kind of lawsuits.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book that everyone should read, November 22, 2005

By 

M. Kooiman "nerdette" (Richardson, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The True Stella Awards: Honoring real cases of greedy opportunists, frivolous lawsuits, and the law run amok (Hardcover)

I've been a reader of the "This is True" and "The True Stella Awards" newsletters for years so I was eager to read this book by Randy Cassingham. Like the young reader said in an earlier review, it was hard to put the book down. The cases are interesting and amusing. The author gets his message across loud and clear: first with many, many cases (each getting an even bigger "eye roll" than the last) and then by bringing us back to Earth with suggestions for how we can fix the system.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth every penny, but..., October 18, 2006

By 

L. F. Smith (E. Wenatchee, WA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The True Stella Awards : Honoring real cases of greedy opportunists, frivolous lawsuits, and the law run amok (Hardcover)

This book is worth every penny you'll spend on it. Nearly every page will leave you bug-eyed with incredulity, and many of them will also cause you to irritate anyone nearby as you constantly say, "You're not gonna believe this one!" The appeal of the book derives from the combination of the wackiness of the real-world legal cases Cassingham has selected for examination and his lethal style. He's one of those few writers who can channel Ambrose Bierce, if you see what I mean.

Now, there is something that worried me a bit. I agree with Cassingham's thesis that the US legal system is being crushed under the burden of frivolous lawsuits brought by greedy lawyers representing defendants who won't take responsibility for their own actions. However, after reading page after page of examples, there's a temptation to throw the baby out with the bath water. That is, the system seems so dysfunctional that maybe it would be best to abandon it.

The reality is that in the US, suing someone is what we do instead of fighting in the streets. The system is certainly irritating and expensive, but what's the alternative?

Despite that reservation, I really liked the book. It's rare to get so much enjoyment for so little money.