1. January 2000: Kathleen Robertson of Austin Texas was awarded $780,000.00 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running amok inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict,
considering the misbehaving tyke was Ms. Robertson's son.

2. June 1998: A 19 year old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000.00 and medical expenses when his neighbor ran his hand over with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently didn't notice someone was at the wheel of the car whose hubcap he was trying to steal.

3. October 1998: A Terrence Dickson of Bristol, PA, was exiting a house he finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up, 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, so 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. This upset Mr. Dickson, so he sued the homeowner's insurance claiming the situation caused him undue mental
anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of half a million dollars and change.

4. October 1999: Jerry Williams of Little Rock, AK was awarded $14,500.00 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbor's beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced-in yard, as was Mr. Williams. The award was less than sought after because the jury felt the dog may have been provoked by Mr. Williams who, at the time, was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.

5. May 2000: A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, PA, $113,500.00 after she slipped on a spilled
soft drink and broke her coccyx. The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson threw it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.

6. December 1997: Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, successfully sued the owner of a night club in a neighboring city when she fell
from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. This occurred while Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through
the window in the lady's room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000.00 and dental expenses

[b]Edited to add that these are not real and were only posted for entertainment purposes.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled flame fests.[/b]

Lawyers do not want intelligent jurors, they want easily manipulated jurors.  Smart people will be weeded out in voir dire.

Jurys are made up of the lowest common denominator, which comes as a suprise to many jurors.

OK Aggie, these are just *too* much.  There's gotta be more to these stories than what's here.  Where'd you get this stuff?

This is the legal system that will protect all of us when the citizens of "America" decide we don't need our guns anymore...

Are we doing this again? Go to www.snopes.com and put in a search for lawsuits!

Can you say "URBAN LEGEND?"

Careful.  I'm on a jury right now and I am the foreperson.  I feel that we have an excellent group deciding a [b]nasty[/b] criminal case.

Juries deliberate based upon the evidence that they receive.  Nothing more, nothing less.

SWS that sounds nice but it isn't always true.  I am glad that it is true on your jury.

I guess it can only be humorous if it is true?
Just something to lighten our day. I didn't mean to offend someone's sensible nature.

Aggie1

What was the point of this thread?  Deliberately generating false information to get yourself off?

Anyone who was awake during the OJ trial has enough contempt for the legal system as it is.

Why are you trying undermine the jury system?  The system usually works - you usually hear about the outrages, and not the ones where the jurors call BS on the whole indictment.  The first is as it should be, and shame on the media for not covering the second.

I'll stop because I really don't know where to stop, and I will refrain from posting stupid Texan anecdotes.