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Bar News - March 7, 2003 Tales of Wacky Litigation: Trivial Pursuits or Motivated Myths? By: Stephen E. Chappelear DID YOU HEAR the one about the flaky lawsuit that never was? There's a story making its way around the Internet right now about the "Stella" awards given to bizarre lawsuits in which wacky juries gave outlandish awards. Like the lady who received $780,000 after she broke her ankle tripping over her little boy who was running amok inside a furniture store. Or the guy who received $74,000 after his neighbor ran over his hand while he was trying to steal a hubcap off the car. There's a big problem with these stories, though. None of them are true. That's right. They are all pure fiction. None of these so-called cases ever really happened. They are just the product of fertile imaginations, urban legends. My concern about the circulation of these falsehoods, as the president of the Ohio State Bar Association, isn't that they poke fun at lawyers. Lawyers have thick skins, and shrug off these jibes. My real concern is that these stories, and others like them, unfairly demean our court system, judges, juries and the individuals with legitimate disputes who have to apply to our courts for justice. Our justice system is not an abstract concept from a civics textbook. It is a living, working reality. Every day, lawyers are in our courtrooms, helping their clients, presenting their cases to fair and impartial judges trained in the law. Juries, made up of you and your neighbors, listen to the testimony and look at the exhibits, and render reasonable, commonsense verdicts. That's what really happens at the courthouse. And, while strange lawsuits sometimes do get filed (which receive inordinate publicity), our system works well to handle those claims. Witness the recent decision of the New York court dismissing the claim by obese children who sued McDonald's claiming that a fast food diet led to their obesity. The case was dismissed without a trial. There are sanctions available to punish the filing of frivolous lawsuits, to compensate those few companies and individuals who are victimized in these instances. The danger of the "Stella" awards is that they can undermine confidence in our justice system and in particular the cherished right to a jury trial. I know from representing individuals and companies in jury trials all over Ohio for 25 years that jurors are conscientious, diligent and do their duty of carefully reviewing the evidence and following the judge's instructions. It is in all of our best interests to preserve our right to jury trials, which goes back many hundreds of years. The people who make up the "Stella" stories have a devious political purpose and agenda. They are trying to fool you, to subtly influence you to reject jury trials, judges, and lawyers, for their own purposes. They want you to think that litigation is a trivial pursuit, rather than the very serious undertaking it really is. The truth may not be as entertaining as colorful stories, but it is much more comforting to those who must depend on our courts to resolve their real-life problems. Ohio attorney Stephen E. Chappelear is president of the Ohio State Bar Association. This article is reprinted with permission of the author and the OSBA.
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