Only in America

Weird cases are drawn to our attention and so we thought we would provide some light hearted humour. We have ranked them in order. Enjoy.

Third Place: Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms Robertson’s son.

Second Place: Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbour’s beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner’s fenced yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have been just a little provoked at the time by Mr Williams who had climbed over the fence into the yard and was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.

Our runaway winner was Mrs Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: (This story sounds eerily familiar, like an urban legend, but it is apparently a matter of public record in 2005 at the Superior Court in Oklahoma City, and it just goes to show that you can’t protect stupid people from themselves).

Mrs Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, (from a football game), having driven onto the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver’s seat to go into the back and make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the RV left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mrs Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising her in the owner’s manual that she couldn’t actually do this. The jury awarded her $1,750,000 plus a new motor home.

It is said the Winnebago company actually changed their vehicle operating manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons in the world!