Hundreds of blogs have noted the case from Durango, Colo. (see our Feb. 4 post) in which Wanita Renea Young sued teenagers Taylor Ostergaard and Lindsey Jo Zellitti, who’d baked homemade cookies, delivered them to various homes including Young’s as a surprise, and in doing so scared Young by banging on her door at 10:30 p.m., causing her an anxiety attack. A selection of comments:
* “I find it a bit amusing that the lady is claiming that the banging on the door made her think that burglars were present…we all know how burglars knock before entering…” (commenter Mark Noonan at Dean Esmay)
* “Young said she believes that the girls should not have been running from door to door late at night. “Something bad could have happened to them,” she said.
Something bad….yeah, like getting sued!” (all-encompassingly)
* “I hate articles like this. You can’t get any decent coverage of a legal issue unless it’s coming from a legal source. … We can’t fairly critique [the judge’s] decision because we don’t know what evidence it was based on. We don’t know what evidence it was based on because the article is clearly and fundamentally biased in favor of the defendants.” (Drew Vogel of the Terminus blog, commenting at Dean Esmay)
* “The karmic beauty, of course, is that for $900 this lady will be known the world over for fifteen minutes of ignominy and a couple of decent girls will wind up on the talk show circuit or have some good material for college essays.” (commenter docpops at Metafilter)
A sampling of others (warning, serious rudeness in some): BoingBoing, Ben Kepple, WizBang, RajeRant (“It’s times like this that I’m ashamed to be a lawyer”), Cliffs of Insanity, FishTown Chatter, Distorted Perspective, Ambulance Down.
4 Comments
C is for Cookie
Because these girls knocked on the door and left cookies, Young suffered an “anxiety attack” and wound up in the ER the next day claiming that she thought she was having a heart attack.
Judge Judy, Please Report to Colorado, STAT!
What exactly is the tort here? Trespass? Negligence? Negligent infliction of emotional distress? I’m stumped. UPDATE: Overlawyered has a good follow-up post with links and excerpts…
the cookie curmudgeon checks in
Somebody needs to register a cautionary dissent to the tongue-clucking
Meanwhile, at the White House, The Tort-Reformer-In-Chief Is Mulling Legislation That Would Make All Small-Claims Actions Automatically Removable to Federal Court
For four days, good-hearted citizens across the land have been expressing shock and outrage about the two girls who were sued by a neighbor for delivering cookies as a gift–and lost, to the tune of nine-hundred big ones. But today,