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 the fine after a 49 year-old woman 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.
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 the woman 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 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.
If only those girls had gone to the party and misbehaved like normal teens.
