Frog-phobic man awarded $1.6M over runoff flooding

Paul Marinaccio Sr. traces his fear of frogs to a childhood incident in Italy when a man holding bullfrogs chased him away after he’d wandered from the vineyard where his parents worked. Decades later, he found himself describing his phobia to a jury, calling himself "a prisoner in my own home" after runoff water from a nearby development turned his 40-acre property into wetlands and inundated it with frogs. "I am petrified. I go home at night and I can’t get in my garage because of the frogs," Marinaccio testified in 2009. "They’re right in front of the damn door, OK?"