Hey, here's an angle that I've not heard.

Adex_Xeda · Post by **Adex_Xeda** » October 22, 2004, 1:35 pm

http://www.theeagle.com/brazossunday/101704hoax.php

Have you guys heard any similar articles that argue this same stance?

miir · Post by **miir** » October 22, 2004, 1:39 pm

I never heard of any of those 'lawsuits' mentioned in that 'article'.

But then again, I don't consider the National Enquirer or Weekly World News as 'news' sources.

All those stories were widely reported

Horseshit.

Adex_Xeda · Post by **Adex_Xeda** » October 22, 2004, 1:44 pm

I'm not so focused on the article as I am the theme. Have you read about hyped up stories pushed by insurance companies in an effort to win popular support for lawsuit restrictions?

Lohrno · Post by **Lohrno** » October 22, 2004, 1:53 pm

I've heard some stories...Stupid lawsuits are definitely a problem. Lawsuit restrictions are not the solution though. We need better judges.
Like the famous McDonalds case, if the judge just said "WTF? You didn't think hot coffee would be hot?"

-=Lohrno

Arundel Pajo · Post by **Arundel Pajo** » October 22, 2004, 2:06 pm

Lohrno wrote:I've heard some stories...Stupid lawsuits are definitely a problem. Lawsuit restrictions are not the solution though. We need better judges.
Like the famous McDonalds case, if the judge just said "WTF? You didn't think hot coffee would be hot?"

-=Lohrno

Look up the details of the famous McDonald's case sometime. Not that there aren't way too many frivolous lawsuits around, but there were some rather extenuating circumstances surrounding that particular case - like the fact that the McDonald's in question had their coffee pumped up to nearly 3x the corporate maximim allowed temperature and the old woman in question suffered third degree burns on her genitals, requiring skin grafts.

Midnyte_Ragebringer · October 22, 2004, 2:17 pm

Arundel Pajo wrote:
Lohrno wrote:I've heard some stories...Stupid lawsuits are definitely a problem. Lawsuit restrictions are not the solution though. We need better judges.
Like the famous McDonalds case, if the judge just said "WTF? You didn't think hot coffee would be hot?"

-=Lohrno
Look up the details of the famous McDonald's case sometime. Not that there aren't way too many frivolous lawsuits around, but there were some rather extenuating circumstances surrounding that particular case - like the fact that the McDonald's in question had their coffee pumped up to nearly 3x the corporate maximim allowed temperature and the old woman in question suffered third degree burns on her genitals, requiring skin grafts.

How can you make it too hot? Once it reaches a certain degree it begins to boil. Was the cup of coffee boiling? LOL I think not. The stupid bitch put the coffee between her legs and spilt it on herself and then raped the system and started a trend that is disgusting and destructive to the entire civilized world. We shouldn't have to pay for her stupidity.

masteen · Post by **masteen** » October 22, 2004, 2:21 pm

Unless their maximum corporate allowed temperature for coffee is only 70 degrees F.

Arundel Pajo · Post by **Arundel Pajo** » October 22, 2004, 2:29 pm

Midnyte_Ragebringer wrote:
Arundel Pajo wrote:
Lohrno wrote:I've heard some stories...Stupid lawsuits are definitely a problem. Lawsuit restrictions are not the solution though. We need better judges.
Like the famous McDonalds case, if the judge just said "WTF? You didn't think hot coffee would be hot?"

-=Lohrno
Look up the details of the famous McDonald's case sometime. Not that there aren't way too many frivolous lawsuits around, but there were some rather extenuating circumstances surrounding that particular case - like the fact that the McDonald's in question had their coffee pumped up to nearly 3x the corporate maximim allowed temperature and the old woman in question suffered third degree burns on her genitals, requiring skin grafts.
How can you make it too hot? Once it reaches a certain degree it begins to boil. Was the cup of coffee boiling? LOL I think not. The stupid bitch put the coffee between her legs and spilt it on herself and then raped the system and started a trend that is disgusting and destructive to the entire civilized world. We shouldn't have to pay for her stupidity.

Actually yes - it was boiling.

edit. Look, I'm not saying that frivolous, jacked up lawsuits aren't stupid and way too common. Check out rates on medical malpractice insurance. The one thing I really give the Bush admin credit for is passing tort reform.

All I'm saying is that there's more to this particlar famous case than has made the internet rounds, and if my grandmother needed skin grafts on her genitals because some McDonald's manager decided to jack up the temp on his coffee above company standards, then yeah - I might want some action taken, too.

Post by **Sylvus** » October 22, 2004, 2:43 pm

man, i remember this comedian had a bit about that mcdonald's case, and he said something like "a 70 year old woman who burned her genitals sued mcdonald's for $7M... What's the blue book on a 70 Vagina, it can't be that high"

i laughed

miir · Post by **miir** » October 22, 2004, 2:55 pm

So if these frivolous lawsuits are so widespread and 'widely reported' why is it that we can only seem to remember one specific lawsuit involving Mcdonald's and hot coffee that is over 18 years old?

Speaking of which, here is a nice summation of that particular 'frivolous' lawsuit: http://www.osmond-riba.org/lis/essay_mcdonalds.htm

Midnyte_Ragebringer · October 22, 2004, 3:17 pm

Sylvus wrote:man, i remember this comedian had a bit about that mcdonald's case, and he said something like "a 70 year old woman who burned her genitals sued mcdonald's for $7M... What's the blue book on a 70 Vagina, it can't be that high"

i laughed

omg That's funny !!! hehe

Lohrno · Post by **Lohrno** » October 22, 2004, 3:53 pm

miir wrote:So if these frivolous lawsuits are so widespread and 'widely reported' why is it that we can only seem to remember one specific lawsuit involving Mcdonald's and hot coffee that is over 18 years old?

Speaking of which, here is a nice summation of that particular 'frivolous' lawsuit: http://www.osmond-riba.org/lis/essay_mcdonalds.htm

Actually I remember hearing a case of a burglar who fell through a skylight when trying to steal from the place. He fell on some knives and sued the homeowner. I think it's likely debunked on snopes.com though.

-=Lohrno

Fredonia Coldheart · Post by **Fredonia Coldheart** » October 22, 2004, 4:14 pm

I remembered the case of the psychic suing her doctor after recieving medical treatment that caused her to loose her psychic abilities. She was actually awarded $1million but the judge overturned the verdict.

When searching the internet for info about that case, found this interesting article - though it is a bit old.

http://www.productslaw.com/tortr4.html

When the Verdict Is Just a Fantasy

By WILLIAM GLABERSON
Here's another story about the United States' out-of-control courts: Southern Pacific Railroad was so besieged by frivolous lawsuits in one Texas county that it ripped up 28 miles of track and shut down operations in the early 1990s.

Like similar anecdotes in almost every state, the tale of the disgusted railroad has been repeated for years in Texas. It even made its way into a conservative research center's report as proof of what most people believe anyway: Havoc is being wreaked and jobs lost by an irrational legal system.

But, like many legal horror stories, it may not have been 100 percent true. "It was kind of a coincidence of timing," said Mark Davis, a spokesman for Union Pacific, which merged with Southern Pacific in 1996. "Southern Pacific was studying that line to be abandoned anyway."

For years, across the country, accounts of bizarre jury verdicts and huge damage awards (like the $2.9 million collected by the McDonald's customer who spilled coffee on herself) have been used to prove that the courts are wacky or worse. But increasingly, some political scientists, legal scholars and consumer advocates are suggesting that outlandish examples have created a distorted picture of the legal system.

Huge punitive damage awards, for example, have become everyday events, right? Actually, a study of courts in the nation's 75 largest counties conducted by the National Center for State Courts found that only 364 of 762,000 cases ended in punitive damages, or 0.047 percent.

OK, but isn't it true that more and more liability claims are filed every year? Actually, a study of 16 states by the same center showed that the number of liability suits has declined by 9 percent since 1986.

Well, didn't that McDonald's coffee drinker laugh all the way to the bank? Maybe, but she was 81 years old, the coffee was scalding and she needed skin grafts for third-degree burns. And she settled for about $600,000 after a judge reduced the jury award.

Marc Galanter, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, described these popular stories about the courts as "legal legends," in the Arizona Law Review last year. The label is sticking and some scholars and consumer advocates are starting to systematically challenge their accuracy.

They say legends like the one about the Texas railroad have been used to maximum effect by a national business-supported movement to make it harder for plaintiffs to win lawsuits under tort law, which governs civil injury claims.

Just last week, the Alabama Legislature passed sweeping tort law changes, including a bill that would put a cap on punitive damages awarded by juries. Virtually every state has considered similar measures since the mid-1980s, and most have passed some measures to limit lawsuits.

"The story of tort reform across the country is that it is one of the most carefully developed and exquisitely executed political campaigns ever," said Andrew Popper, a law professor at American University in Washington who is an expert on personal injury law and identifies himself as a supporter of consumer rights.

One advocate's distortion, of course, is another's innocent spin. David Shaffer, president of the Public Policy Institute, a New York business group pushing for lawsuit limits in New York, said examples of ostensible outrages are used by consumer advocates as well as business groups. "It's done on both sides," he said. "The trial lawyers drag in pictures portraying some person who has been a victim of a terrible accident."

Even if there are occasional exaggerations, some business lobbyists say, there are enough large verdicts to intimidate corporations into large settlements and to inhibit innovation by making companies fearful of bringing out new products that might attract lawsuits. The possibility of huge jury awards and the expense of battling suits, they say, combine to keep useful products off consumers' shelves.

But some lawyers and academics argue that consistently far-fetched accounts of court rulings have warped the debate about the legal system. And shrewd public relations by business and other groups pushing to limit lawsuits may be only part of the reason.

Unusual or big verdicts make news, said Michael McCann, a political science professor at the University of Washington. McCann and William Haltom of the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., found in a study that the large McDonald's verdict got extensive front-page coverage in 1994. But only about half the newspapers carried articles when the judge later reduced the punitive damages to $480,000.

In similar research, Oscar Chase, a law professor at New York University, found in a survey of cases in the New York area that the average verdict reported by The New York Times in 1989 was $20.5 million. But including the much larger number of cases that did not attract media attention, the average verdict was really $1.1 million.

"Policy-makers," Chase said in an interview, "can't reliably use their impressions from reading the press about issues like whether the court system is out of control."

The problem, some legal experts say, is that policy-makers do rely on such impressions. In his law review article, Galanter traced the long afterlife of an infamous 1986 case involving a Philadelphia psychic who won a $1 million verdict. She had claimed she had an allergic reaction to medical treatment and lost her psychic powers.

The story of the psychic's verdict was widely circulated. Eventually, Galanter learned, it found its way into a 1991 report of the President's Council on Competitiveness, which referred to such bizarre cases as "almost commonplace" but did not disclose that the psychic's verdict had been reversed and that she had collected nothing.

Business groups say they are at a disadvantage in a public relations war that often spotlights alarming accounts of supposedly risky products, dangerous drugs and cancer-causing chemicals. "Emotions are stirred more when people are frightened for their own safety than they are by large damage awards that are not going to be paid out of their own money," said Victor Schwartz, a Washington lawyer who lobbies for businesses on tort issues.

But consumer groups say accounts of ostensible outrages in the courts seem more methodically misleading than reports about product dangers. A recent report by Citizens for Corporate Accountability and Individual Rights, a New York consumer group, said the Public Policy Institute had "misreported and misused" every case it described in its efforts to show that the New York courts were out of control.

"They usually don't mention that the defendant did anything wrong," said the consumer group's executive director, Joanne Doroshow, a former associate of Ralph Nader.

One supposedly outrageous case the Institute cited in a report last year involved an award of $650,000 given by New York City to the family of a drunk driver who was killed in an accident while driving the wrong way on a parkway. The Institute did not disclose that the court said the city's signs "virtually invited wrong-way entry," the consumer group said.

Asked whether the report was misleading, Shaffer of the Public Policy Institute said anecdotes were less important than the harmful impact of the overall legal system on corporate innovation. "It is impossible," he added, "to include complete information about everything."

True or false, legal legends do make effective debating points. In a series of interviews recently in Texas, several leaders of a movement to end "lawsuit abuse" mentioned the case of the railroad that abandoned Matagorda County in Texas because of excessive lawsuits.

Richard Weekley, a Houston businessman who is a leader of Texans for Lawsuit Reform, said in a recent interview that he had used the railroad story for years in speeches as an example of legal craziness. Audiences are horrified, he said. "People sit there and say, 'Why is a railroad tearing up 28 miles of track?"' Weekley said.

In response to an inquiry from a reporter, Davis, the railroad spokesman, said "Litigation was last on the totem pole" among reasons for ceasing operations in Matagorda County. "Traffic was down to one freight car a year."

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » October 22, 2004, 4:30 pm

well 2 states have caps on Court settlements against doctors: West Virginia and California.

In neither state have doctors seen a decrease in their malpractice insurance premiums.

so perhaps when Kerry says that lawsuit amounts are a part of the problem , but puts it at a single percentage point of the cost structure, then maybe there is a larger problem that we should be focused on.

And the lobbyists on all sides are lining it up so their side gets the biggest slice of the pie.

Rekaar. · Post by **Rekaar.** » October 22, 2004, 4:36 pm

The threat of a lawsuit has to go down universally or none of the care policies that make rates so high will go anywere but up.

Post by **Sylvus** » October 22, 2004, 4:40 pm

Rekaar. wrote:The threat of a lawsuit has to go down universally or none of the care policies that make rates so high will go anywere but up.

Yep. Or the lawsuits aren't that big a part of the problem. One of the two.

masteen · Post by **masteen** » October 22, 2004, 4:57 pm

I guarantee that the hojillion lobbyists that the insurance companies, doctors, and lawyers have fortified in DC are more responsible for the skyrocketing rates than litigation is.

Chidoro · Post by **Chidoro** » October 22, 2004, 5:10 pm

masteen wrote:I guarantee that the hojillion lobbyists that the insurance companies, doctors, and lawyers have fortified are more responsible for the skyrocketing rates than litigation is.

That's a huge portion of it. Another is the fact that hospitals eat the majority of the costs for the uninsured. W/out getting too deep into it, Bush saying tort reform effects your premiums in any significant way is him trying to spin Kerry/Edwards as a greedy lawyers. In actuality it has almost nothing to do with your premiums.
Truth is, if hospitals were getting paid for all of their charges, they could cut better reimbursement deals with insurers which, in turn, gives better rates to the individual.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » October 22, 2004, 5:19 pm

yeah its the lawsuits.

and the reason your dad's Lipitor costs $2.75 a pill is because of all the R&D Pfizer (or whoever) is pumping into the next generation!

their Advertising budgets are more than twice their R&D budgets by the way.

and i'm not even sure the doctor schmoosing falls in that bucket. i know a woman who sold surgical screws and she basically woudl get phone calls from doctors to go out and pay for their drinks that night.

and thats why those screws cost $800. And the doctor, the manufacturer, and the hospital sure as fuck aren't going to eat the cost, your insurance company is.

which is why they jack the prices, to keep their profit margins high, and the cycle perpetuates. Insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and a few other players in this mega-industry are making an absolute fucking killing in the current market - with the end consumer paying the freight.

i have no problem with all of the players making money. they should. healthcare is vitally important, and there should be incentive to excel and perform in the field, but there also need to be some control mechanisms in place to keep consumer costs in line. Because otherwise the burden gets increasingly shifted to taxpayers. additionally, the fact that healthcare is such a cornerstone of society, i think it is wholly appropriate for their to be more government influence over the industrial "levers" than in such industries as consumer electronics.

Deward · Post by **Deward** » October 22, 2004, 6:03 pm

Those articles all state that jury awards are going down but that is because the Insurance companies have learned that it is cheaper to settle through and arbitrator or out of court. I recently took a law class and while I can't remember the exact percentage, the majority of cases never reach trial.

I personally believe that some awards are out of whack. Some companies deserve to be sued though. I would personally put jury awards at a maximum of 10% of the losing companies Gross Income for the year. Some companies, like tobacco, deserve everything they are getting for knowlingly selling a dangerous product and lieing through their teeth about it. People who still smoke, knowing the dangers, should be shit out of luck in my opinion.

Doctors should have some protection from frivolous lawsuits. I knew of one case a few years ago where the doctor was being sued because the baby was born retarded or something. The doctor warned the couple that if they didn't deliver early then the baby would be fucked up but the parents refused induction anyway and then sued the doctor afterwards. A doctor that has performed an operation 500 times and then makes a mistake (non negligent) shouldn't have to worry about losing his practice to a greedy fuck. If the same doctor was drunk though then sue all you want.

Raistin · Post by **Raistin** » October 22, 2004, 6:37 pm

Or hey I have a idea.

How about doctors not cutting off the wrong leg/arm/fingers/toes. Or removing vital organs that are intended for a diffrent patiant, and they just screwed up because they were rushing. Or hey, how about them scaples . Im sure every one who goes in to surgery loves to take home a nice sharp object, or even glove inside their body.

Yes some lawsuits are pure crap. But you also want to cap what a person can get from a doctor fucking up a major heart surgery on the wrong person , only to have them die? What do you tell the family. "shit Im sorry, wont happen again."?

Damn right it wont. Thats when they get the shit sued out of them, and they can no longer practice. THERES A REASON WHY MEDICAL LIABLITY INSURANCE IS GOING UP AND THATS BECAUSE DOCTORS ARE FUCKING UP PEOPLES LIVES.

Doctors should be happy. Its weeding out the majoirty of doctors who are fuck offs who shouldnt even practice. Sure there should be some limits to things, but the Judges shouldnt be as lax on commonsense lawsuits.

Thess · Post by **Thess** » October 22, 2004, 6:41 pm

I wouldn't say they are fuckups, I'd say working 24+ hour shifts is a bad thing.

Tenuvil · Post by **Tenuvil** » October 22, 2004, 6:54 pm

Here's a great real example of a bad judgment:

[google]Johnson vs. Derby Cycles[/google]
Johnson vs Derby Cycles (Essex County Court of Common Pleas, New Jersey, 1993) got to the heart of the controversy. Johnson was a high-school student with an evening job. He bought a new bicycle built by Derby Cycle Co., expressly to ride to and from his job, which ended at midnight. The bicycle was sold to him with the required all-reflector system. The bicycle shop did not advise him to use a headlamp. The bicycle safety booklet that Derby published and supplied to conform to the CPSC regulation informed the cyclist to use a headlamp for off-road cycling at night. Johnson had cycled when younger in Trinidad, but not recently. With less than one week of experience riding to and from work, he left work one evening. His return took him over a ridge of hills with an 8% descent. While he was on that descent, probably traveling between 30 and 35 mph on a road zoned for 35 mph, a motorist ascending the road suddenly turned left in front of Johnson. Johnson collided with the car and was severely and permanently injured in body and in brain.

Johnson's attorney sued Derby Cycles. During the litigation, Derby's officers stated that they relied on the CPSC's regulation for safety requirements, that they had no idea that the all-reflector system was unsafe, and that they did not know that state laws required the use of headlamps when cycling at night.

Johnson won a verdict of $7 million, later reduced to an actual payment of about $2 million. The case attracted a very large amount of attention. The facts of the case reflect exactly the predictions that the CPSC had received twenty years before. That is, the all-reflector system could not perform the functions of the headlamp, but the presence of the front reflector misled users (in this case, both the cyclist and the bicycle manufacturer) into believing that it did, producing catastrophic injuries to the cyclist and similar financial burden on the manufacturer.

Just for clarification, Derby Cycles is the parent company of the manufacturer of the bicycle that Johnson rode to his demise that night. Not the shop that sold the bike to Johnson, not the company that designed and fabricated it, but the conglomerate that owns the company that made it (read: "the deepest pockets").

Lohrno · Post by **Lohrno** » October 22, 2004, 7:00 pm

Raistin wrote:Or hey I have a idea.

How about doctors not cutting off the wrong leg/arm/fingers/toes. Or removing vital organs that are intended for a diffrent patiant, and they just screwed up because they were rushing. Or hey, how about them scaples . Im sure every one who goes in to surgery loves to take home a nice sharp object, or even glove inside their body.

Yes some lawsuits are pure crap. But you also want to cap what a person can get from a doctor fucking up a major heart surgery on the wrong person , only to have them die? What do you tell the family. "shit Im sorry, wont happen again."?

Damn right it wont. Thats when they get the shit sued out of them, and they can no longer practice. THERES A REASON WHY MEDICAL LIABLITY INSURANCE IS GOING UP AND THATS BECAUSE DOCTORS ARE FUCKING UP PEOPLES LIVES.

Doctors should be happy. Its weeding out the majoirty of doctors who are fuck offs who shouldnt even practice. Sure there should be some limits to things, but the Judges shouldnt be as lax on commonsense lawsuits.

Exactly.

-=Lohrno

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » October 22, 2004, 7:02 pm

I wouldn't mind being on the receiving end of an out of wack jury award. I stubbed my toe at work on a box that shouldn't have been there and it hurt really bad. $10,000,000 awarded for the bruised big toe.

Tenuvil · Post by **Tenuvil** » October 22, 2004, 7:12 pm

I'M JIM ADLER THE TEXAS HAMMAR!!1!

Toshira · Post by **Toshira** » October 22, 2004, 9:55 pm

Lohrno wrote:I've heard some stories...Stupid lawsuits are definitely a problem. Lawsuit restrictions are not the solution though. We need better judges.
Like the famous McDonalds case, if the judge just said "WTF? You didn't think hot coffee would be hot?"

-=Lohrno

Hi, let's go over this one last time, m'kay?

The woman was sitting in the passenger seat of a car with the coffee between her legs trying to take the top off and it spilled. The coffee inflicted third degree burns which caused severe damage that forced her to have skin grafts and disfigurement in her groin and genital area. She asked McDonalds (before hiring an attorney) to pay for her medical bills of $11,000. McDonalds refused and offered $800 instead.

She hired an attorney who demanded $90,000 dollars for damages. McDonalds refused. The attorney filed suit, and during the fact-finding portion found that McDonalds kept its coffee hot enough to burn more than 700 other people.

The attorney now demanded more damages and a request for punitive damages as well.

The jury awarded the woman $200,000 in compensatory damages and then reduced it to $160,000 because it considered that she was partly at fault. Like it or not, this is how Torts work. McDonalds = 80% at fault for serving its coffee at 180-190 degrees and not warning customers of the temperature, and the woman 20% at fault for not being careful enough while opening the cup.

The Jury (not a judge, yo), then added an additional sum of punitive damages in the amount of 2.7 million after weighing the evidence, they considered McDonalds to be either reckless and/or malicious. That sum, by the way, staggeering as it is, represents 2 days of coffee sales alone from McDonalds. Punitive damages are sometimes used as A) punishment or B) deterrent. In this case, it was both.

The Judge reduced the Jury's punitve damage award to $480,000 (omg those activist judges are so out of control!).

Both sides appealed. A few days later, both sides settled out of court with a non-disclosure agreement.

You can read more of the facts of this case: here

Lohrno · Post by **Lohrno** » October 22, 2004, 10:01 pm

Okay sorry, I suppose the media did not report all of that because I did not hear any of that. Poor woman... But my point is really just that Judges shouldn't award the really ridiculous ones.

-=Lohrno

Truant · Post by **Truant** » October 23, 2004, 10:33 am

Adex_Xeda wrote:I'm not so focused on the article as I am the theme. Have you read about hyped up stories pushed by insurance companies in an effort to win popular support for lawsuit restrictions?

They run tv ads here in Nevada asking voters to vote one way or another.

Hesten · Post by **Hesten** » October 23, 2004, 11:07 am

As an european, im sure i only hear about the ridiculous cases from the US court system.
But when i was in the US the last time, we went to a IHOP to get some breakfast, and after eating, my aunt fell out on the parking lot. A simple case of not seeing where she was going, and tripped. Nothing serious, she hit her lip, thats all, bled a little.

Result in Denmark for a accident like this:
The person tripping would most likely go into the store and try to ask for some paper or something to wipe the blood off, and maybe borrow the bathroom to clean herself up.

Result in the US:
The IHOP manager ran out, almost grey in the face of fear of the horrible upcuming lawsuit, got 2 of the store persons to come with water and paper towels and everything he could think off to get us out of there FAST, spend like 10 min with us trying to make sure we were happy and feeling that we were treated nicely. (and after those 10 min we got pretty tired of him and his fake interest in us, and my cousin took out a camera and took a few pictures of my aunt and the area she fell in. THAT got him to go away

)

To me, the difference between those 2 reations to a simple accident show that there might be something wrong with the US way to handle lawsuits.

Bojangels · Post by **Bojangels** » October 25, 2004, 11:25 am

Bah that just means Americans are more friendly than you Euros.