Colorado Teens Fined for Giving Cookies to Neighbor

[Michael Fisher]

Things like this remind us how little hope there really is left.   

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&e=2&u=/nm/odd_cookies_dc

[Kat Kanning]

Was just about to post this.  Glad to see Justice is alive and well in the US.

===

Colorado Teens Fined for Giving Cookies to Neighbor

Fri Feb 4,10:49 PM ET
   
Add to My Yahoo!    Oddly Enough - Reuters

DURANGO, Colo. (Reuters) - A Colorado judge ordered two teen-age girls to pay about $900 for the distress a neighbor said they caused by giving her home-made cookies adorned with paper hearts.

   

The pair were ordered to pay $871.70 plus $39 in court costs after neighbor Wanita Renea Young, 49, filed a lawsuit complaining that the unsolicited cookies, left at her house after the girls knocked on her door, had triggered an anxiety attack that sent her to the hospital the next day.

Taylor Ostergaard, then 17, and Lindsey Jo Zellitte, 18, paid the judgment on Thursday after a small claims court ruling by La Plata County Court Judge Doug Walker, a court clerk said on Friday.

The girls baked cookies as a surprise for several of their rural Colorado neighbors on July 31 and dropped off small batches on their porches, accompanied by red or pink paper hearts and the message: "Have a great night."

The Denver Post newspaper reported on Friday that the girls had decided to stay home and bake the cookies rather than go to a dance where there might be cursing and drinking.

It reported that six neighbors wrote letters entered as evidence in the case thanking the girls for the cookies.

But Young said she was frightened because the two had knocked on her door at about 10:30 p.m. and run off after leaving the cookies.

She went to a hospital emergency room the next day, fearing that she had suffered a heart attack, court records said.

The judge awarded Young her medical costs, but did not award punitive damages. He said he did not think the girls had acted maliciously but that 10:30 was fairly late at night for them to be out.

[Lloyd Danforth]

Scaring in the First Degree!

[Pat K]

Beware the cookie terrorists!

[GT]

Lloyd, I noticed your signature about the shorts. I Think that's what happened in Ms Young's case.

[Kat Kanning]

That's gross!  Someone report Lloyd to a moderator!

[Lloyd Danforth]

Due to 8,196 complaints, the moderator has forced me to change my signature.  You know, the one about how 'Some days you wipe, wipe, wipe and your asshole still prints a picture of itself in your shorts.'

[AlanM]

Like your new signature Lloyd. 

[Russell Kanning]

The judge awarded Young her medical costs, but did not award punitive damages. He said he did not think the girls had acted maliciously but that 10:30 was fairly late at night for them to be out.

Zee young vuns shall be in their beds by 10pm

[intergraph19]

What a wonderful example of how messed up our judicial system has become.  There was a time when a judge would have either thrown this case out, or at least told the woman who was so "distressed" by this action to seek professional help for her irrational paranoia.  I have a great deal of pity for her that she would be so adversely affected by such a sweet gesture and obvious good intentions.