“Gatekeeper awards” from Common Good

Common Good, the advocacy group chaired by author Philip K. Howard (The Death of Common Sense, The Collapse of the Common Good) and whose motto is “Reforming America’s Lawsuit Culture”, on Apr. 8 announced its first “Gatekeeper Awards” honoring judges who throw out lawsuits that would better never have been filed. Among the cases praised: […]

Common Good, the advocacy group chaired by author Philip K. Howard (The Death of Common Sense, The Collapse of the Common Good) and whose motto is “Reforming America’s Lawsuit Culture”, on Apr. 8 announced its first “Gatekeeper Awards” honoring judges who throw out lawsuits that would better never have been filed. Among the cases praised: a Pennsylvania Supreme Court opinion excluding scientific testimony to the effect that Doritos, the snack food, is intrinsically unsafe in texture; a Virginia high court ruling upholding assumption of risk in the case of a baseball spectator hit by a ball; a Third Circuit decision holding that a “public school third-grader cannot sue for being prevented from soliciting classmates’ signatures for a petition opposing a voluntary class trip to the circus”; an Eighth Circuit opinion excluding punitive damages in the case of a patently accidental air crash; and the Nevada Supreme Court’s ruling (see Nov. 7) that a passenger cannot sue a homeowner over injuries sustained when a car crashed into a flowerbed.

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