Worth watching. Seems the trickle is becoming a dam burst…
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/21/outi … index.html
First the blogs… then the chans? 
What do people have against free speech? Blogs, chans, forums… whoops, guess we need to start watching our discussions here now as well.
So frakking tired of this.
Well, “free speech” and “anonymous speech” aren’t necessarily the same thing. They may be tangentially related, but they’re not the same thing.
Some would say that “Information wants to be free” and all cultural transactions should be more open and transparent. I think that’s a respectable viewpoint to come from in demanding limits to anonymity.
Avoid wage-slavery, then you can’t be fired for blogging. 
It sucks when a company fires someone because of their blog, but on the other hand, many customers ARE complete idiots and will think that an employee’s unofficial blog represents some sort of company policy, and raise hell over it.
Neither the law nor the general culture really yet knows how to deal with the vast amount of information the net makes available, and what is or isn’t okay to use against someone. There was an incident recently where a newspaper, clearly having a slow news day, decided to run a story about kids who’d survived some horrible incident when they were young and were now teenagers, and posted pictures of them drunkenly partying (taken from the web) in order to shame them for not being perfect saints after their ordeals… job applicants and lawsuit participants alike will have everything they’ve ever put online trawled through…
The problem in this country… well world… is that they have allowed the lawyer mentality to conquer both common sense and individual responsibility. Someone says something “wrong”… sue them. Someone does something you don’t like… sue them. Some idiot puts a ladder on ice and manages to break his ass… sue the ladder company. Someone tries to loot a house and manages to cut himself on a knife… sue the theft victim.
Sadly, the last two actually won the damn cases… what the frak is wrong with people?
Cite or it didn’t happen
The most famous cases of ‘stupid lawsuits’ often WERE clearly the fault of the person being sued, but they’ve tried to convince the public how ridiculous it is to get opinions on their side so they can hope to weasel out of paying.
Some have claimed that the entire reason health care is so overpriced is because of malpractice lawsuits and therefore doctors shouldn’t have to pay compensation if they LEAVE YOU PERMANENTLY CRIPPLED. There’s sort of an angle at work there.
Now, of course, there are ridiculous cases out there. ISTR reading a case in the papers recently where a very small child was playing in a graveyard and managed to tug on a loose gravestone and cause it to fall on him, crushing and killing him. Tragic accident. However, the upset parents raised enough fuss that for a while the local government had to go around putting warnings and ‘topple protectors’ on every single grave to try and tell people not to do that…
The most famous?
Hot coffee between the legs… clearly McDonald’s fault.
Ladder on ice… clearly the ladder company was to blame.
Burglar falling and cutting himself while stealing… really can’t be sarcastic about this one. I mean, come on.
Kid drowning in a pool that was locked, covered, and surrounded by a mesh fence: kid cuts through fence, breaks lock, and then drowns… clearly the owners of the pool must have armed guards and be present 24 hours every day.
… there are far too many frivolous lawsuits that are not only levelled at people, but that actually go to court and suck money and time from the defendants at the very best. As the above clearly shows, they can lose such stupid lawsuits as well.
It wasn’t McD’s fault she spilled the coffee, but it was their fault that the coffee was so dangerously hot that it caused third-degree burns in a matter of seconds, sending the woman to hospital for a week, and having caused injuries for hundreds of other people before her.
It’s hardly unreasonable for her to have tried to get the big corporation to pay the $11,000 for her treatment which she may not have been able to cover on her own, given the state of medical care in the US. Had they simply paid her medical costs, the whole stupid lawsuit wouldn’t have happened.
It’s a perfect example of something people keep tossing around the internet as a ‘ridiculous lawsuit’ when it’s not really that ridiculous if you actually look at it. You may not agree that McD’s was at fault, but surely pure common sense can show that it wasn’t a frivolous claim.
I’d have to know the specifics of the case. Reference? If they sold a ladder that was specifically meant to be used on ice and claimed it wouldn’t slip and it did, then yes, they would be at fault.
The only thing I’m turning up in a quick search for a ladder-and-ice lawsuit was one where it wasn’t the ladder manufacturer who was being sued, it was the building designers, for designing a shaft with no access other than lowering a freestanding ladder into it (which then slipped because of ice the person lowering the ladder could not possibly see).
Again, what’s your cite? Without knowing the specifics I cannot possibly comment.
It is, for example, illegal to rig Home-Alone style death traps. If someone breaks into your house, trips a tripwire, and six steak knives come flying out and pin them to the wall, then yes, you ARE going to get in trouble for that.
I’ll try to get the cites, but I’ll have to find my old paralegal folder. For short reference:
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regular use ladder. Some dolt thought that placing a normal ladder was simple common sense… ladder slipped and lawsuit.
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burglar… fell from the skylight onto a kitchen table, cut himself. Even the judge heading my class did not understand this one.
As for the hot coffee… anyone dumb enough to put hot liquid in such a position deserves whatever they get. It is one thing if they merely dropped the cup and were burned to such a degree, but I feel no sympathy for such an idiot in this case. But that’s right, individual responsibility has been flung out the window in much of the world.
If those stories are as you describe them then yes, they’re bizarre. But I still want to see the whole story because people often look at things in a very one-sided manner.
… I am baffled by how you think this represents an irresponsible idiot. It was an accident, and an accident with horrifically painful consequences that the person could not have anticipated. Plenty of people rest their coffee briefly between their legs when driving. (I don’t drink coffee OR drive, but I’ve seen people do it.) It’s not like trying to shave your head with a chainsaw or something.
In my experience, most people who go on about personal responsibility are trying to avoid responsibility.
If a person trips and falls outside your building, perhaps they should have been more careful. If your building is a business catering to old people and several old people every year trip and hurt themselves outside your building, perhaps you should take some responsibility yourself and try to figure out a way to stop it happening.
How do you want people to take ‘personal responsibility’? If a terrible accident cripples you for life and leaves you piled with medical bills you can never pay off, it just sucks to be you and you should get used to being homeless and crippled?
Casually looking at the details of the McDonald’s case, I can clearly see it from both sides. While McDonald’s clearly served the coffee at too high a temperature, even if the temperature were lowered to what the plaintiff’s attorneys suggested (her attorneys suggested that the lower temperature would have increased the time before a burn occurred, something later proven as scientifically false in a similar case in the UK), she still would have been burned because of what she was wearing (cotton sweatpants, which held the liquid against her skin) and the fact that she sat in the hot puddle for over 90 seconds. Also, nowhere do I find mention that she wasn’t able bodied enough to get out of her seat after the spill (the car was parked), though because of what she was wearing it probably wouldn’t have made much difference. One of the more idiotic points in the case, indicative of a larger problem, is that the jury found that the warning that the product was hot wasn’t large enough. I’m sorry, but unless it has an ambiguous name (e.g. Frappuccino), it should be obvious that coffee is going to be hot if it isn’t prefaced with the word “iced” (or lukewarm, but then I don’t think we have to worry about anyone marketing such a thing). Lastly, the plaintiff was clearly at fault for the manner in which she tried to take the top off the coffee container, both in that she placed it between her knees and that she pulled the far side of the lid toward her. Simple understanding of how the world works (i.e. physics) should have made it clear that trying to open the container that way would tilt it towards her, and I see no mention that she suffered from any kind of dementia which might have impaired her judgment.
Given the facts of the case, I can not in good faith say that the consequences weren’t foreseeable. Also, just because lots of people do it doesn’t mean it is a smart idea. Why should a corporation be responsible someone not mindful of the situation, even if lots of people do it?
This only goes so far. If reasonable accommodations have been made in such an instance (e.g. rails and ramps), then no blame can be leveled against the business.
Unfortunately, bad things happen. If reasonable fault can be found, then certainly the party at fault should be penalized. However, the problem that has appeared in modern western society is that people feel a finger has to be pointed at someone every single time something bad happens. The most egregious form of this is when people try and shift the blame from themselves to another party. Certainly it is unfortunate that something bad happened, but why should someone else pay for your actions? In a perfect world, nobody would be homeless, crippled, or without what they need. Until the day that such a world exists, some people will end up in such situations. So yes, it is tough luck for such people, and they are deserving of compassion and aid. Hopefully such people get it.
Common human decency?
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to try and get a corporation to help out to take care of someone who suffered actual physical consequences (instead of some of the ridiculous fakers who do exist out there… there are people who make a business out of faking bad service or injury to try and get free money. Those are Bad People.)
I do recognise that not everyone agrees and I’m not that upset by someone thinking McD’s shouldn’t pay out - I just object to the categorisation of the lawsuit as ‘frivolous’. There are plenty of fakers out there, pick on them instead?
I’m not even talking about ‘blame’ exactly… just that if there’s clearly a general problem, it does seem irresponsible to do nothing.
As a game designer, if my customers keep consistently doing something stupid - even if it’s a stupid thing to do and they shouldn’t be doing it - it’s a cue that I need to change something in the game to try to redirect their stupidness.
Oh yes, some people definitely go overboard trying to find someone to blame… or rather, someone with MONEY to blame, even when there’s an obvious culprit available. There’s a case that bloggers are upset about at the moment where some woman is suing a hotel because she was raped in their parking lot and thinks they should somehow have prevented it. Which is stupid. Of course, the hotel’s answer to the lawsuit was to say that it was her OWN fault she got raped because she didn’t fight hard enough. Which is even more stupid.
Neither side seems to recognise that it’s the fault of the actual criminal.
I have a suspicion that to SOME extent the problem comes from the massive insurance industries in the US and their adversarial relationship with their customers. If you have no insurance, you have to find someone else to blame in order to get medical care. If you have insurance, you may need to find someone else to blame in order to KEEP your insurance or to keep your premiums from shooting up.
That’s certainly not the whole of it, though… some people are just bored, lazy, and small-minded. They sit at home and see all these ads for ambulance-chasing lawyers and think they can get a free ride. Bah!
That rape incident really pisses me off… first, someone should have noticed something of that magnitude happening in a hotel parking lot. Now, depending on the hotel, my expectations of security within a parking lot will change. Fairly modest and anything higher class, definite glaring problem if the hotel did nothing. Seedy, low rent district hotel/motel… well, slighlty less expecations of security comptence. So completely blaming the hotel might not be correct, though one does wonder why there was no one that helped her and did so quickly. Hotel doesn’t exactly scream secluded and with no one present… one has to shut out the world completely to miss something like that.
However, the moment the hotel made such a crass statement the woman should have been granted a truck load of cash on the spot. Saying something that asinine and callous just deserves to be punished.
I really don’t understand rapists though. All I know is that my eyes would be overcome in a red haze and my hands would soon follow if I came upon such a scene. No mercy.
The government is getting into Cloud Computing technology, as a commercial vendor and provider. Seems like they’re going to sell more than cars, eh?
I remember that one. It was a posterchild case at the time for those seeking better treatment for victims how criminals had more rights than victims.
I tried looking for information on this case, but I couldn’t locate it anywhere. I think it’s a bit of an urban legend, that got popularized in the movie Lair Lair. I’m not saying there couldn’t have been a case like this… just nothing I can find real documentation about… and you’d think there’d be documentation about something like this, since it’s cited so much.
HOWEVER!!!
I did find this case, which mentions someone falling through the skylight of a building they were planning to rob, and successfully suing them.
So it’s probably a combination of Lair Lair and this actual case getting combined.
Now reward Narg with twincest!! 
EDIT
On a side note, some of you might want to consider reading this:
Now whatever your views on this situation are, when you examine the case even closer, you’ll discover that under Common Law Principles, no citizen is required to render assistance to another in need of emergency service at an accident scene. Now think on that for a moment… This means if I see you trapped in a burning car, that crashed into a fuel tanker truck, and I had an obvious chance to save you but I didn’t so you died – [u]NOTHING[/u] will happen to me. However if I did save you, but something happened to you because I tried to save you, I [u]CAN[/u] be sued. So what does this tell me? If I see someone in need, [u]LET THEM DIE[/u]. It’s safer that way.
So if ever see some trapped or dying, I honestly will [u]DO NOTHING[/u], because the law protects me if I [u]DO NOTHING[/u].
Sad but true. You are however, legally compelled to call 911 in some States - though not all.
I happen to be a resident of one of those “don’t give a shit” States.
I would love to reward you with twincest… however, I am sure you have a horde far worthier than mine. Considering that twincest, and incest for that matter, are easy to find in Japanese erotica I should have a varitable tower of these precious scriptures. I am ashamed :oops:
As for the other story: it’s California. Were you expecting common sense, intelligence, and decency?
Reading the description of that case, I shall now issue my Solomonic wisdom!
The owners of the unsafe skylight shall be fined, and the money shall go to ME.
That is, in my personal set of morals, given that he was up there for the purposes of committing a crime, he shouldn’t be able to claim any money from the situation other than (perhaps) slightly less than the cost of his medical bills, to be paid directly to the medical provider and not to him. He shouldn’t GAIN from the situation.
However, if the building was indeed unsafe in a way that could easily have led to injury of someone other than a burglar, they shouldn’t get off scot-free just because it happened to be a crook who fell through. If I were in a position to set punishments, I’d have to think of something else to do to them that did not result in enriching the crook.
This is just my personal opinion and not the law!
As for the California thing… well, it’s complicated, and really something that should have to be decided on a case by case basis. If you read the whole findlaw article, they mention the possibility that someone may falsely perceive an emergency that isn’t present. If you’re in an upstairs flat and you smell smoke and PANIC and decide the apartment building is on fire and throw your children out the window to their deaths, you may have been ‘just trying to help’ and still have done something terribly wrong. The fact that you thought you were saving them from a horrible death by fire doesn’t necessarily make your actions justifiable. There’s no easy answer there.
It would be grossly unfair to require the average citizen to attempt a rescue under unsafe conditions. If you see someone in a burning car next to a fuel tanker, maybe you could get in there and get them out, or maybe you’d just get blown to smithereens with them.
Especially given that the unsafe conditions might lead you to attempt something stupidly dangerous and likely to do more harm than good, if you were both panicky and not an expert. Like trying to smash YOUR car into the burning car at a different angle in order to knock it free from danger!
Also, just because you can be sued doesn’t mean they’ll win. The trial may still find that your actions were completely reasonable.
Though they might not win a case, the simple act of suing someone could be enough to cripple somebody. The time, effort, and money to set up a defense is more than enough to bring most people to their knees. Even with re-imbursement on the fees, there is irreperable damage caused.