Suing Nice Neighbors
This has got to be one of the most preposterously ridiculous lawsuits I’ve ever heard of — and I’ve heard of a lot! Two teenage girls in Durango, Colorado, decided to make cookies for their neighbors, just to be nice. In response, one of the neighbors sued them — and won damages!!!
As reported in the Denver Post:
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.
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.
“The victory wasn’t sweet,” Young said Thursday afternoon. “I’m not gloating about it. I just hope the girls learned a lesson.”
Yeah, I’ll bet they learned a lesson — like, never do anything nice for you neighbors! They might sue you!
Another lesson they might have learned — better to go to the dance with all that drinking and cursing, than have some good clean fun like baking cookies for your neighbors.
I don’t wish ill on anybody, but it would be poetic justice if Ms. Young were to get a flat tire on the median strip of a busy highway, and have 5,000 cars pass by over the next six hours with no one stopping to help or call the auto club.
Taylor’s mother, Jill Ostergaard, said her daughter “cried and cried” after Judge Doug Walker handed down his decision in La Plata County Small Claims Court.
“She felt she was being punished for doing something nice,” Jill Ostergaard said.
Well, that’s because she was being punished for doing something nice. Smart girl!
The judge said that he didn’t think the girls acted maliciously but that it was pretty late at night for them to be out. He didn’t award any punitive damages.
Yeah, they shouldn’t have been out making cookies. They should have been at the dance, cursing and drinking! Judge, that’ll be an excellent defense next time some 17- and 18-year-olds are hauled into your court for underage drinking. “Your honor, we were going to make cookies for our neighbors, but we heard what you did to those other kids and didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the law. So we had to go out drinking instead!”
I don’t wish ill on anybody, but it would be poetic justice if the judge’s car got smashed by a drunk driver heading home from a dance after deciding it was too risky to make cookies for the neighbors — and have 5,000 cars pass by over the next six hours with no one stopping to help or call the auto club.
Taylor and Lindsey declined to comment Thursday, saying only that they didn’t want to say anything hurtful.
Translation: They were afraid they might get sued for slander if they said what any intelligent person would say in those circumstances.
The bad part is, they’re right!
The girls wrote letters of apology to Young. Taylor’s letter, written a few days after the episode, said in part: “I didn’t realize this would cause trouble for you. … I just wanted you to know that someone cared about you and your family.”
The families had offered to pay Young’s medical bills if she would agree to indemnify the families against future claims.
They apologized! They offered to pay! For the offense of giving free cookies!
But was that good enough for Wanita Renea Young? Of course not! Time to sue!
Young wouldn’t sign the agreement. She said the families’ apologies rang false and weren’t delivered in person. The matter went to court.
The apologies weren’t delivered in person?!?!?!? What is this, some kind of trap? The cookies themselves were delivered in person, and look what happened to girls after that? Why did Wanita Renea Young want the girls to deliever the apologies in person? So she could shoot them? If you were those girls, would you ever deliever anything in person to that woman, ever again?
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.
Yeah, they could have gotten sued! By someone who thought an apology was not enough to make up for the horrible offense of delivering cookies!
(Hat tip: James Taranto.)
By the way, if you would like to give Wanita Renea Young a piece of your mind, I don’t know how to reach her, but I do know there is only one person with last name Young and first initial W in Durgango, CO, listed in the white pages at Switchboard.com. And if you’d like to have a word with the (mis)judge, he is listed as a licensed attorney in the Colorado Bar and his attorney registration number is 10004.
Of course, if you’d like to send a message of support, the Ostergaard and Zellitti families are also listed at Switchboard.com, where they are the only families in Durango, CO with those names.
Perhaps we should take up a collection to pay the judgement, with the proviso that they use any excess funds for college expenses, or cookies they eat themselves.
By the way, any comment on this from the Girl Scouts?
