RFD: People who sue everybody

My favourite US sueing story is this:

A burglar breaks into a guy's house. In the process of burgling him, he trips over something, falls, and breaks his leg. The burglar then sues the guy for the injury. And wins.

I don't know if it's true or not, but I've heard it so often...

Because of lawsuit happy people, everything in the US now has labels on it that treat the consumer as if they are idiots. Coffee bought from a fast food place will be emblazoned with the warning "Coffe is hot!" and frozen food will have warnings on the package like "please remove from packaging before toasting." The best one I have seen is in a package of microwaveable pretzels. Each pretzel comes in its own little package with a cardboard backing. Written on the piece of cardboard in large letters is: DO NOT EAT! They have to do all this to avoid ridiculous lawsuits from people who are just too stupid to follow directions and want to blame companies for not making everything idiot proof.

are these the same people who caused - please open other side - to be writtne on tetrapacks, cos they rock - i'd be so fucked if it weren't for those words.

Screwing a corporation out of vast amounts of money on a piss-easy pretext does not, in itself, seem 'stupid'. I wonder sometimes if the anti-suing brigade are secretly jealous of the sue-masters' superior survival and adaptation skills in the modern corporate environment.

New Scientist opinion/feedback column collects daft attempts at labelling, such as:
On Tesco instant hot-oat cereal: "Breakfast has been shown by many leading nutritionists to be one of the most important meals of the day." (Other important ones being , er...)
Espresso KTo4 kettle: "The appliance is switched on by setting the on/off switch into the 'on' position..."
Dyroach insecticide: "Keep out of reach of children, uninformed people and animals.."
On a pack of potatoes: "Scrub prick and boil"

How funny. I just sat on a jury in a personal injury lawsuit against the City of Chicago. The plaintiff had *no* evidence. I can't believe it even went to trial. She said she stepped in a pothole and broke her ankle, but she had no photos or eyewitness testimony to prove there was a pothole. What gall to waste my time and tax money when you have no evidence. Some working-class types lose money when they have to serve on a jury. As I was an alternate juror, I don't know the outcome, but I got a sense that the other jurors were fed up with these lawsuits. Of course huge corporations are not the most sympathetic defendants, but it's the whiny nature of some of these complaints, and the fact that nowadays people have to blame someone else for *everything* that pisses me off. It's not unrelated, IMO, to the disregard for the rights of the accused in *criminal* trials, not to mention the existence of the death penalty in the US.

I also don't like the idea of putting a price tag on injuries and deaths. I can understand the penalties as a way to "send a message" to an unethical corporation, but there is still this idea that throwing money at injured people makes things alright that doesn't sit well with me.

A court in the UK threw out a case accusing a woman of ordering her rottweiler to bite a police officer in about a minute ...

A woman is suing Portsmouth Football Club, for getting hit in the face twice last season by wayward shots! Some of the richest lawyers in the US are those dealing with litigation against tobacco companies...

The Portsmouth case is a bit more involved than that because she's elderly and disabled and the disabled seating area at Fratton Park is just to the side of the goal, a pretty dangerous spot. She was knocked out twice, I think, and still has problems as a result, so it's not as if it's just someone trying to get money out of a business for the sake of it.

There are cases in the U.S. all the time with people suing teams and stadiums for getting hit with balls, hockey pucks, etc. I don't understand because it says right on your ticket 'will not be held responsible for injury..blah blah' so I wonder how these lawsuits make it into court at all. As one who works on a daily basis with lawyers, judges, etc., I can say I have seen my share of outrageous lawsuits. The ones in landord tenant cases alone are enough to make your head spin. You have people who haven't paid their rent in months suing a landlord who is throwing them out. The justice system makes no sense sometimes.

Disclaimers on tickets and so on are not worth the paper they are written on in general (and are often bald face lies which contravene the law). From a health and safety point of view once a paying customer is in your venue you are responsible for all forseeable injuries. If you are in a football stadium is it foreseeable that a football will go into the crowd and potentailly cause damage. Well, yes it is. Unless you are actively seen to have considered the potential problem and put steps in place to cover your back, you will be liable. And that holds in the UK.

The Portsmouth woman is a perfect example. The standard defence for being hit by footballs may well be that by the time a ball reaches the crowd they have had enough time to defend themselves (ie put hands in front of face/duck). Exqually the ball will have less power having travelled an extra twenty yards. However seating disabled punters ten yards from a goal - an area often peppered by high speed free kicks could be seen to be negligent. Even if other alternatives are not available.

Put it like this. You put your bag into a cloakroom. They give you a ticket. You go back, your bag is gone. You know that bit on the sign that says they are not liable for loss or damage. That sign - my friend - is bollocks. Get sueing. (Or easier in the UK, go to a small claims court and take a piece of Vince Powers arse.)

Exqually : it almost looks like it should be a word. Worth shitloads in Scrabble too. Oh and be warned, "From a health and safety point of view" is easily my phrase of the month.

Arrrgh, suing, a topic I loathe...

Um, well, there are loads of good reasons to sue people. The problem is a lot of people take those good reasons and then abuse them to the point where anyone even vaguely associated with the abused-good- reasons gets labelled that way.

I do have a special place in my imaginary hell for smokers who sue tobacco companies though. If you started since, say, 1965 or 1970, what the hell right do you have? I mean, what did you think was gonna happen? IT SAYS ON THE SIDE OF THE BOX THAT YOU WILL DIE. Jesus mary and joseph.

My favorite thing in the world, though, is the fact that PLASTIC BAGS - regular plastic grocery bags - are now required to say "This is not a toy!!!" on them. I mean, what kind of sad arse childhood is that if you think a plastic bag you put cucumbers in is a toy? I pity that child. I'd want to suffocate to death in a plastic bag if I was that child too. I mean, I was poor and we still had proper toys, not plastic goddamned bags. Plastic bags! Not toys! Duh!

I once studied the trends in medical litigation awards for a London law firm. After two months of research I concluded that they went up roughly in line with average earnings. Money well spent from my employer, I feel.

Come on Ally - did you never play "suffocate the little brother" with your elder sister when you were a kid? Surely putting "This is not a toy" on the bag gives it an adult allure. I knew my Dad's Stanley Knife wasn't a toy which was why I loved it so. Better to put pictures of clowns on them - that will scare the kids away.

I don't have an elder sister, pfff.

ally. isn't the flipside of the argument, that the tobacco companies, until like 95 or something denied/refuted evidence that it was damaging, tried to fudge the issue. obviously its clear what smoking does, but the tobacco companies didn't help their case by trying to muddy the waters etc etc..

You get the gist anyway. And did you never use cardboard boxes as trains / cars / spaceships as a wee one? Surely it would follow that placcy bags could be balloons, jellyfish or gas masks (if you were playing Zepplin Crash In Mustard Gas Filled Seaside Resort).

Pete: I never did any of that, and I'm now wondering for your sanity. Didn't your parents give you proper toys, GI Joes and Voltron and Barbies?

Gareth: That's irrelevant, they still posted the warnings as per the Surgeon General, and the evidence was all there. It's like getting skin cancer and suing the sun.

To continue bullying Pete from the other thread: he had no toys as a child, has never climbed a tree and was only introduced to fresh fruit and vegetables a couple of years ago when we started sharing a flat and I bought avocadoes.

Povster.

What the hell is a Volton? GI Joes are Action Man over here - and I had one until he parachuted into my neighbours garden and the nasty man next door wouldn't let me have it back because it broke a poxy roase or something. My sis had Sindy instead of Barbie (more wholesome British version) but still prefered torturing me with plastic bags and the infamous aeroplane game down the stairs.

Vis a vis smokers: you've got to remember that they are generally wide boy spiv types. So not only do they hope they can do something blatently damaging to their health and get away without cancer (like every extant oldest man in the world) but if they can get a couple of quid out of the tobacco companies they aren't going to say no. Especially considering how much money they have paid out to Mr Phillip Morris and so on.

Well, yes, I understand that most of the suing smokers are tossers like that, but it still drives me mad. It's stupid and pointless.

Re: oldest man/woman in world. When said gerontocrats have a b'day and are asked to what they owe it all, they DO INDEED ALWAYS SAY: I've smoked a cigar every day since I turned 15, and I eat nothing but cumberland sausages with blood gravy. Except when they're from Uzbekhistan or similar, when they attribute it to yoghurt and chasing girls.

The current oldest woman in the world (who is young as these things go, 112 or something), apparently gave up smoking at 89 because she read it might be bad for you.

That explains why she's 112. I'm going to do that too.