Stella Award

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The Stella Awards are awards given to people who file ridiculous lawsuits, named after a woman named Stella Liebeck who, in 1992, spilled a cup of McDonalds' coffee onto her lap, causing third degree burns. She sued McDonalds and was awarded USD$2.9 million in damages, subsequently reduced by the judge to $640,000, though a later secret settlement was reached between Liebeck and McDonalds. The Stella Award is given to people who file outrageous and frivolous lawsuits.^[1]

There are also a number of false Stella Awards circulating on the Internet.^[2]^[3]

The awards are the subject of a 2005 book, The True Stella Awards: Honoring real cases of greedy opportunists, frivolous lawsuits, and the law run amok. Because of the number of fake Stella Awards circulating online, the author of the book, Randy Cassingham, created a website and newsletter discussing real cases of outrageous lawsuits. Now, both StellaAwards.com and TrueStellaAwards.com are run by the author. Cassingham notes he did not coin the term "Stella Awards", nor does he think Stella Liebeck's lawsuit was frivolous. But he used the term, preceding it with "True", because it had already become well known from the bogus online items.

Cassingham used to write all the case write-ups himself. But in May of 2007, two attorneys started helping him. Jeffrey Anbinder, also a published New York author, made his debut in the May 2007 issue (issue #80) of the True Stella Awards newsletter.

In May of 2007 (issue #80), Cassingham awarded his first "Anti-Stella Award". The recipient is McNeil "Mac" Brown, who lost his wife to a runaway car emerging from a carwash. Brown was left to raise their 18 month old son alone. After winning a lawsuit for the wrongful death of his wife for an award of USD$7.5 million, Brown refused to move forward with punitive damages. He declared the original award "enough" and ended the proceedings. The jury said they were ready to give a punitive award in the "tens of millions", but Brown said his intent was never to destroy the defendant and that his case was never about the money, but only to honor the memory of his late wife, Brenda.