Dumb and Rich

It should come as no surprise to many of us but it still does startle me at times when I read about weird people out there and how stupid they can be. Having said that there are times when these stupid people make a lot of money by filing some wild lawsuits and actually winning them. Every year there is held, an award ceremony which picks out the best outrageous and frivolous award amongst the others and these awards are known as the "Stella Awards". This is named after Stella Liebeck who won around $2.9 Million USD in damages after she spilled a hot coffee onto her lap at McDonalds, thereby burning herself. Now when did hot coffee become an issue and since when was being careless and ditzy amount to $2.9 million and if it does then why wasn't I told this before. I have been wasting these many years where I could be going around suing companies for being a complete idiot. Anyhow coming back to the Stella Awards, if you go to their website there are lot of interesting and well quite amusing cases and some of them actually make you think twice about being...or well at least thinking you are smart as by being the other way at least you make a lot of money. Now it is said that not all the stories making the rounds on the net are true but apparently the ones on their website are the real deal. One of the best ones according to me is the winner from 2005, where this guy actually sued David Blaine and David Copperfield (Magicians) claiming that they were defying the laws of physics and must be using "Godly powers" and as he was God (this should have made all the alarm bells go off), they were stealing that power from him and thus he should receive 10% of their lifelong earnings. Now only in a western country would this case be even entertained and I can just imagine someone trying to pull of something like this in the Asian courts, I would assume a bit of police heavy handedness coupled with a lot of mocking would ensure that Mr. God gave away all his "godly powers" away for free.

So the next time you see someone trip and fall, make sure you don't laugh for you never know if that person could take you for a trip to court over that.