…is the warning on the sign on a seven-story boat photographed by Detroit News blogger John LaPlante.
Posts Tagged ‘personal responsibility’
Enter land with forbidden vehicle, then sue
Via Common Good “Society Watch“, and we can’t do better than to just repeat their description of the case:
The mission of the Earth Conservancy, a non-profit organization in Northeastern Pennsylvania, is to revitalize “16,300 acres of former coal company-owned land. … More than 10,000 acres of Earth Conservancy land has been dedicated to open space and recreational activities.” But the Conservancy now faces a lawsuit from the mother of 30-year-old James Bertrand, who died “when the Jeep in which he was a passenger ran off a dirt roadway, down an embankment and into a 15- to 20-foot-deep waterhole on conservancy property.” The property in question is open to the public, but motorized vehicles are strictly prohibited. Had Bertrand obeyed the rules, says conservancy executive director Mike Dziak, the accident would have been avoided.
(Kasia Kopec, “Woman sues Earth Conservancy over son’s drowning in 2004 four-wheeling accident”, Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader, Mar. 29)
The city doesn’t always pay
Reader Bob Woolley of St. Paul, Minn. calls our attention to Durdahl v. City of Hastings, a Minnesota Court of Appeals decision filed May 17, which he summarizes as follows:
The plaintiff was a passenger in a car driven at excessive speeds by a drunk driver. The driver lost control and skidded into a parked semi-truck. The driver and one passenger were killed; two passengers survived with injuries. The case is one of those passengers suing the *city* for having granted a construction company permission to park its truck on the side of the road at a construction site. The city had done this because the site was too muddy for the truck to enter, and the volume of material to be loaded and unloaded made it impractical for the truck to park farther away. Obviously, that makes it the city’s fault that this woman’s driver was drunk and trying to take a 30 mph curve at 83 mph, right?
Fortunately, the court of appeals affirmed the sensible decision of the trial court, which was to dismiss the case.
Report from London
Ted (who reports that he’s having trouble posting directly while away) writes as follows:
I’m less than twelve hours into my first trip to London, and one can see right up front how badly the compensation culture has stunted the US compared to the UK. My ride from the airport was in a Mini Mayfair, which is even smaller than the small Mini Cooper, but one can also drive around the city in something called a “Smart Car,” an even teenier two-seater akin to the one Sam Lowry drove in Brazil. Any manufacturer trying to sell a car like that in the US would risk getting socked with punitive damages the first time the car ended up a loser in a collision with an SUV; after all, the disingenuous plaintiff’s attorney would say, the manufacturer was clearly more concerned with profits than with safety by daring to sell a small car. (Never mind the environmental differences, or the fact that the availability of a cheap SmartCar could vastly improve the lives of many working poor.)
The escalators in the Underground move about 60% faster than the ones in the DC Metro. I’m looking forward to studying whether London has a worse safety record with its escalators. I would hypothesize that, aside from the King’s Cross fire, they do not: people are just more careful, because (1) the escalators are plainly dangerous, rather than giving the illusion of safety that a slow escalator does; and (2) Brits know that if they hurt themselves, they can’t blame someone else, much less potentially collect millions (Feb. 13). It’s just so nice to be treated like an adult.
I wouldn’t trade the American way for the British way, but we could learn a thing or two.
Compulsive gambler
Donald Carroll says the Borgata casino in Atlantic City was too helpful in getting his credit reinstated. (Judy DeHaven, “Gambler says Borgata took him on limo ride back to debt”, Newark Star-Ledger, Apr. 3). See Apr. 28, 2004 and links from there (& letter to the editor, May 10).
Falls off his mountain bike
By reader acclaim, from Canada:
A mountain biker who launched a million-dollar lawsuit after falling off his bike has lit a fire under Collingwood area bike enthusiasts who fear the suit will close their trails. James Leone is suing the Toronto Outing Club and its Kolapore Uplands Wilderness Ski Trails Committee as well as the Town of The Blue Mountains, the Grey-Bruce Trails Network and the province for an accident he had while mountain biking last August.
The 31-year-old personal injury lawyer from Toronto claims he suffered fractured vertebrae and several soft-tissue injuries when his bicycle came to an abrupt stop after hitting a hole in the trail, sending him over the handlebars.
A trail specialist with the International Mountain Bike Association, Laura Woolner, said the case could have an “enormous impact on non-profit clubs” because of the need to buy expensive insurance: “Essentially it could shut them down,” she said. (Tracy McLaughlin, “Lawsuit a threat to trails”, Toronto Sun, Apr. 17). Fark has a long, disrespectful thread. More: the hazards of mountain biking also figured in Ted’s Mar. 29 entry.
N.J. appeals court: parents can’t waive kids’ rights
A New Jersey appellate panel, split 2-1, has ruled that parents can’t sign a legally binding waiver of their kids’ right to sue a skateboard park for injuries. And kids can’t sign such a waiver either. If the result is that one or another recreational activity just isn’t offered to kids at all, well, tough noogies. Appeal is likely, but for now the message is: your family’s right to sue is far too important to let you decide whether to give it away. And quit that muttering about “choice”, bud; we’re making the choices around here. (Henry Gottlieb, “Parents Can’t Waive Child’s Right to Sue for Skateboard Park Injuries”, New Jersey Law Journal, Mar. 24). For more on kids’ recreation, follow these links as well as the many newer links on our personal responsibility page.
U.K.: “Safe for 72 years, now Cake Walk must close”
“Health and safety officers have closed Britain’s last ‘moving staircase’ fairground attraction, even though the ride has operated in complete safety for the past 72 years.” The owner of the former Butlin’s camp at Felixstowe says he believes the cakewalk, which has been running since 1933, is the last one left in Britain; “inspectors from the Health and Safety Executive have ruled that it must be closed because it no longer meets modern safety standards.” (David Sapsted, Daily Telegraph, Mar. 26; “Health and safety takes the cake”, Suffolk Evening Star, Mar. 25).
Weidner v. United States: blame the controllers because pilot became disoriented
Yet it has become customary for lawsuits to make grand charges that controllers are responsible for crashes — even in cases where the responsibility clearly resided between the left and right earcups of the pilot’s headset. Why do they do this? It isn’t because lawyers are against controllers (at least, not any more than they are against all of us). It’s because controllers work for the FAA — part of the federal government — the ultimate in deep pockets. In other words, it’s the reason lawyers do anything: in the legal profession, it’s all about money.
Aero-News.Net has an impressive refutation of a ruling against the FAA in a case involving the crash of an inexperienced lawyer-pilot, Donald Weidner, that killed him and three passengers. The FAA, found 65% responsible by Judge Timothy Corrigan in a bench trial, settled for $9.5 million. (Kevin R.C. O’Brien, “I Blew The ILS: It Must Be YOUR Fault”, Mar. 21 and Mar. 22; “FAA To Pay $9.5 Million To Families From JIA Plane Crash”, WJXT-4, Mar. 9; “Judge Finds FAA Largely To Blame For 2001 Plane Crash”, WJXT-4, Nov. 16; Case No. 3:02-cv-01114-TJC-MCR (M.D. Fla.)).
UK: “£500,000 for youth injured in fall while trespassing”
Carl Murphy, 18, of Merseyside, England, has received £567,000 for injuries sustained while criminally trespassing on the roof of a private warehouse in 1996, from which he fell 40 feet, sustaining multiple injuries. Murphy, who has convictions for robbery, burglary and assault, “received his compensation after suing the company that owned the warehouse. He claimed that if the perimeter fence had not been in disrepair he would not have been able to gain entry and suffer his injuries.” Although groups representing victims of crime expressed anger at his getting a sum 50 times higher than a murder victim’s family could expect to receive from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, Murphy was unapologetic about his windfall, saying he planned to buy “a few houses and a flash car”: “This money is mine now and I’ll do what I want.” Murphy “was expelled from two schools in just over two years after his recovery and his family blamed the fall for his bad behaviour.” And more: “His mother, Diane, and her partner, Kevin Parsons, both 36, are currently serving three years in prison for setting up a heroin and crack cocaine business from their council house.” (Daily Telegraph, Mar. 14; Peter Zimonjic, “I’ll buy houses and a flash car, says yob awarded £567,000”, Daily Telegraph, Mar. 20; Joanna Bale, “Trespasser who fell through roof wins payout of £567,000”, The Times, Mar. 14).
Among other lessons to be drawn from the case, it kind of casts doubt on the idea, often heard from trial lawyers on this side of the Atlantic, that people wouldn’t feel such a need to sue if they had UK-style socialized medicine to take care of their injuries for them. More: Ralph Reiland comments in the American Spectator (Nov. 30).