And you thought the O.J. Verdict was bad!!!
Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania, was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since the automatic door opener was malfunctioning. He couldn’t reenter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation, and Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the homeowner’s insurance claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of $500,000.
On a more local note:
This year’s favorite could easily be Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip home, having driven onto the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, the R.V. left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the owner’s manual that he couldn’t actually do this. The jury awarded him $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. The company actually changed their manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons buying their recreation vehicles.
Ya’ gotta love the legal system in this country.
October 10th, 2005 at 11:19 pm
Both of these stories are urban legends that have been widely circulated via email. See this Snopes link. The burglar is #3 and cruise control is below #7. There’s another Snopes link about the evolution of the cruise control story.
Snopes.com is a good source to check and see if those far out stories you hear are actually true before propagating them to others (hint, hint).
October 11th, 2005 at 6:19 am
Yeah, you have to watch those stories that are “too good/bad to be true”…… Thankfully, we’ve got “Watchdog Jek” to help sort ’em out…….
Thanx goes out to Jek for taking the time to research such things…..
October 12th, 2005 at 10:17 am
Thanks, for the clarification, jek. May be urban legend, but wouldn’t really surprise me in this day & age.
October 17th, 2005 at 9:33 am
And then there is the case of the can of Chili. The women sued to have her kitchen painted. The directions on the can said simply “heat and serve”…..nothing about opening the can first. She got the paint job and Nalley’s changed the lable and instuctions. Jek, no need to research. I was there. (and no it wasnt our kithchen) I worked for Nalley’s at the time.