Two major problems with jury trials. First, in a case like this, the litigation team will do everything they can to get jurists who are very emotional, and also likely not very able to understand some of the technical / medical information that the defense might present.

Second, the jury is only allowed to consider the evidence presented, and cannot take into account anything else. If relevant testimony is somehow barred for whatever reason, they won’t hear it.

Frankly, “a jury of my peers” would not be likely to happen. Not that I’m so brilliant – I’m not – but there are a lot of really stupid people out there. Just ask Bill Engvall. 🙂

What’s insensitive is a lawyer taking a personal injury case on behalf of the child’s estate, rather than respectfully declining it, when the lawyer should know that the likely result is a dismissal which will only cause more heartache for the bereaved parents.

Without benefit of scientific analysis, I tend to think that if Glade is fatal on inhalation it would not be on the market or since it is on the market, we would have seen rather more Glade related deaths than I can bring to mind.

So, who is the elitist here, the liberals/Democrats or the conservatives/Republicans?

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2003/04/25_stawickie_paincap/

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/lit13.htm

And “100,000 people are killed each year by mistakes (frivolous human beings using those pesky frivolous lawsuits to find justice). ”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PMdBkNv3Vs

This all makes for a nice blog but why not stick to empirical evidence?

Anything but spo. Rather it was a simple analysis of the chemicals involved and the likelihood of it causing the event to which they were attributed. Which is what the mother is claiming.

But from my vantage point I am left with a sizable disconnect between the mother’s description of the event and the results. Based on the mother’s demonstration of how it occurred I find it difficult to connect the dots as to how he “shot it into his nose” and if he did manage it anyone’s natural reaction to a spray in the face would be to pull back from it, limiting the amount inhaled. It is possible that he has some sort of reaction to one of the chemicals in the smell’um component. But if that were the case (and assuming the mother had used the spray in the house before this event) the child should have exhibited some allergic reaction prior to “squeezing” the can.

My most charitable guess is that he could have Valsalva’ed from the shock of getting sprayed in the nose which could have caused the cardiac crisis, but that is strictly a guess and even if correct would mean that the event itself and not the contents of the can caused the death.