Thanks to Michael from Chasing the Wind for highlighting an amazing story from the U.S.
This article from the Denver Post tells about a couple of girls who decided to do something nice for their neighbours and ended up being dragged through the courts and being fined $900.
Durango – Two teenage girls decided one summer’s evening to skip a dance where there might be cursing and drinking to stay home and bake cookies for their neighbors.
Big mistake.
They were sued, successfully, for an unauthorized cookie drop on one porch.
The July 31 deliveries consisted of half a dozen chocolate-chip and sugar cookies accompanied by big hearts cut out of red or pink construction paper with the message: “Have a great night.”
The notes were signed, “Love, The T and L Club,” code for Taylor Ostergaard, then 17, and Lindsey Jo Zellitti, 18.
Sounds like an innocent enough idea that should be encouraged doesn’t it? So what could the problem?
Inside one of the nine scattered rural homes south of Durango that got cookies that night, a 49-year-old woman became so terrified by the knocks on her door around 10:30 p.m. that she called the sheriff’s department. Deputies determined that no crime had been committed.
But Wanita Renea Young ended up in the hospital emergency room the next day after suffering a severe anxiety attack she thought might be a heart attack.
A Durango judge Thursday awarded Young almost $900 to recoup her medical bills. She received nothing for pain and suffering.
Why should two young ladies, trying to do a good deed, be sued because some woman suffers from irrational fears? I agree that 10:30 is a bit late to be knocking on doors but the article also points out that the girls only visited houses where the lights were on. The woman in question also had her 18 year old daughter and her mother at home with her so it wasn’t as if she was home alone.
What’s the world coming to when people can not only take such ridiculous cases to court but have their case validated by winning?
Posted by Rodney Olsen
Do you think some of your friends would enjoy reading Beware of cookies? Please use the buttons below to share the post. Thanks.
I can’t help myself. That woman sounds like a moron! Or is it the judge who is the moron? Well, you know the saying “no good deed goes unpunished”.
Here’s the meat of the whole article:
“She thought perhaps they were burglars or some neighbors she had tangled with in the past, she said.”
Looks to me like the “dear soul” has had problems in the past with other neighbors. I live in Denver, not far from where it occurred and the issue is the hot topics on all the redio talk shows.
It’s just one more example of why we here in the US need tort reform.
Oh I wish I could listen in on those talk shows!! I bet someone gave those girls the money to pay that $900. but really, how ridiculous. Have our judges become devoid of all common sense? (In Canada there are some pretty crazy things that happen in the courtroom as well).
I blame the judge. The bitch neighbor clearly overreacted and wanted to be a victim, and the judge went along.
Those are the worst people we have in our society, the ones who want to be victims.
She said she was attacked by a neighbor in the past? I wonder why.
Remember the movie titled “It’s a mad mad mad mad world”? Often think this movie should be re-made. Same title, just a different script, using stories like this from real life!