The True Stella Awards: Honoring Real Cases of Greedy Opportunists, Frivolous Lawsuits, and the Law Run Amok

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

Named for Stella Liebeck—the woman who spilled hot McDonal‛s coffee on herself and then won a lawsuit against the fast-food chain—humorist Randy Cassingha‛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 nam”

-The songwriter who left a minut‛s silence on his record only to be sued by the estate of another songwriter who copyrighted his own“silen” 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

"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." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Named for the woman who spilled hot coffee on herself and won a lawsuit against a fast-food chain, the "Stella" collection honors real cases of greedy opportunists, frivolous lawsuits, and the law run amok.

Randy Cassingham is the founder of the Web site ww.StellaAwards.com and the weekly news site www.ThisIsTrue.com, which has a readership of over 120,000 subscribers. He is a former engineer at NAS‛s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.