Michael Readers in Germany have probably heard of the incredible US court case from 1994 against the fast food chain McDonald's that a woman had brought, because she had spilled scalding hot coffee on her lap due to her own clumsiness. The woman was named Stella Liebeck and has become a symbol for the abuse of the American court system. In memoriam of this landmark case, Author Randy Cassingham regularly hands out the so-called "Stella Award" to the most outrageous court cases, and he has compiled the awarded cases in the book The True Stella Awards in an entertaining and educational way.

A liability lawsuit can be quickly filed here in the US, and it is customary that the plaintiff does not have to pay anything even if the judge dismisses the case or if the accused company is acquitted. One just needs to find a lawyer who smells money in the circumstances and takes on the case and costs against a success fee of up to 50% of the possibly awarded damages sum. No risk for the plaintiff!

In America, it is not the judge who decides whether a defendant is guilty, but, as already described in Rundbrief 09/2002, Otto Normalverbraucher in a twelve-member jury. Members of the jury think: "Well, let's give this poor guy a nice sum of money, who knows, maybe I'll sue a bad and powerful company myself one day and then I'll get a cut too!" What Otto doesn't consider here is that companies calculate the costs of their offerings accordingly and simply pass them on to consumers through price increases.

The victims of this abuse of the judicial system are often doctors who can no longer save themselves from patient lawsuits in states like Kansas and simply move elsewhere, where there are not hordes of good-for-nothings waiting for the slightest misdiagnosis to squeeze out tens of thousands of dollars through lawsuits. Doctors of course have insurance to cover this, but premiums are constantly increasing due to the permanent abuse. As a result, there is now an acute shortage of doctors in rural areas of Kansas.

The legal principle of Joint and Several Liability provides another lever for scammers of all kinds. "Joint Liability" means that, for example, both partners of a married couple are responsible for repaying a loan taken out. "Several Liability" means that, for example, two companies involved in a project are each liable for their respective share if something goes wrong. The rule of "Joint and several liability" which is in effect in 46 of the 50 states allows the plaintiff to use a mixed tactic in their lawsuits: In the case of "Pisco vs. Coors", for example, a drunk teenager died and the mother sued three parties: his girlfriend who lent him her car, her mother who bought her the car, and the beer company Coors, whose beverage the teenager had been drinking. This sounds crazy, but if it had been determined that Coors was only 1% at fault, the company would be liable for the total damage under "Joint and several liability" because Coors has much more money than the other parties. When Coors stood up and threatened to sue the mother and her lawyer on basis of filing a "frivolous lawsuit", the gang of scammers dropped the demands against the beer manufacturer.

In the book, the following case hasn't been recorded because it is too new: In 2005, a certain Roy Pearson sued a small Korean immigrant-run dry cleaning business in Washington DC for an astonishing 67 million dollars because the family business had lost the pants of a suit he had brought in for cleaning. The case actually went to court in 2007, was dismissed, but the Koreans were left with $83,000 in legal fees. In America, you don't automatically get those fees reimbursed if you win, you have to request it and fight for it in court. The immigrants then chose to forego that, as the case itself had made international waves and sympathetic citizens had covered the costs with donations. The plaintiff, incidentally, was a judge himself, who later lost his job because of the case. He is still suing against it today.

The coffee-spilling Stella, by the way, was initially awarded 2.86 million dollars by the jury of the proceedings. A judge in most states can then adjust the amount if he finds that the jury granted excessive amounts, and that's what he did: $640,000 was the verdict. What Stella ultimately got, however, is not publicly known, as she reached an out-of-court settlement with McDonald's. Companies often do this, even if it is costly for them, so that the damage amount is not be made public. Otherwise, hordes of copycats would swiftly come with more lawsuits.

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• More topics you might be interested in:

  	Barack Obama, 44th President of the USA
  	Nader and the Endless Campaign
  	Top Product: Garage Door Opener
  	Time Zones
  	The Fair Credit Reporting Act
  	Proposition Number 8 (Same Sex Marriage)
  	Open Studios and Berkeley Art Center
  	A screwdriver opens the door lock
  	Solution to the Time Zone Trivia Question