Happy Lawsuit Abuse Awareness Week
From over at RedState there is a post on the House's declaration of " Lawsuit Abuse Awareness Week" that is definitely worth reading. It brings us to a discussion that branches out from the posting on frivolous lawsuits against the gun industry.
Such lawsuits have been part and parcel of our legal system likely since we had a legal system. There have been attempts to curtail them in the past, most not meeting any success. Still, they are here to stay and they cost us dearly. According to the NFIB, such suits cost Americans over $200 billion a year, they note an approximate 5% tax on wages.
Some meaningful changes are being introduced, such as adding teeth to Rule 11 of Federal Rules and Civil Procedures, a section of the law actually prohibiting frivolous suits already on the books. Whether they will succeed is a coin toss, but as always those of you willing to call and right your Congressman please do so. Every little letter helps.
Going beyond that a little, beyond the "my neighbor's cat peed on my ficus and now I have mental anguish" lawsuits, to the "I'm overweight or I smoked or I participated in any vice for 50 years and now the company that supplied me with the means has to pay" type of lawsuits.
Such lawsuits, I feel fall under the realm of personal responsibility, a very libertarian and conservative quality. If you didn't have the willpower not take that last smoke, down that last creampuff, drink that last cup of mocha supercaff frapuccino or suck up glue fumes, it's really your own fault, now isn't it? Don't look over to your lawyer, this question is directed to those that believe such lawsuits have merit. Look into yourself, realize you just didn't have the willpower to avoid the vice, and live with it, or possibly die with it. We all make choices for good or bad. I'm certainly no exception. But I'm not going to sue Smirnoff for that particularly bad hangover from college or Ruby Tuesday's for placing in front of me the gift-of-the-gods Collosal burger. These are choices mature adults make, and it's not up to the rest of us (who are ALWAYS the ones such assailed companies pass on the higher costs to) to compensate you for your weakness.
My major commenter, castastrophile (what is your name btw? :)), believes that if such industries cover up or try to ignore product liability, then such cases have merit, and he has a point. If a company knowingly promotes a product as safe and healthy and people get injured or die from it, then that company is guilty of negligence, a law that I believe is quite worthy. But I'd also offer that at no time in living history did any sane person think putting tar-filled smoke in your lungs was good for you, or that the Big Mac was health food. Only infants are that naive and in my opinion would have any recourse. And it's not just like now people have been dieing from lung cancer and heart attacks from this stuff.I had two grandparents dead from lung cancer over 20 years ago. They smoked Lucky Strikes. Guess what we thought killed them then? LUCKY FRICKIN STRIKES. It didn't take a hidden tobacco study or WhiteLies.com to enlighten me either. I relied on this little thing called common sense.
The same goes for all VICE-related lawsuits. They are Vices, which are by definition bad for you. Let's check dictionary.com
An evil, degrading, or immoral practice or habit.
A serious moral failing.
Wicked or evil conduct or habits; corruption.
Sexual immorality, especially prostitution.
A slight personal failing; a foible: the vice of untidiness. A flaw or imperfection; a defect.
A physical defect or weakness. An undesirable habit, such as crib-biting, in a domestic animal.
See, this sort of denotes Vice as a negative thing. Not much room for warm and fuzzy there.
Therefore, if someone knowingly participates in a vice-related activity, even just eating the wrong food or smoking the wrong cigarette or engaging an unusual sexual habit or any number of other things that the "moral-free '90's" seemed to indicate are ok, then that's their personal choice and instead of being allowed to profit by proclaiming themselves victims, they must suffer the consequences of their actions. Can a junkie sue a pusher for selling him crack that was too good? Not likely. Same goes for Ronald McDonald being guilty for hooking you up with that Big 'N Tasty. It was your call. You went up to him. You knowingly ate that food. You pay the price. You you you. Personal responsibility, which goes hand in hand with personal liberty.
If you start eliminating personal responsibility as a prereq for these things, pretty soon big Daddy gubmint is going to come in and start removing personal liberty to try and stem the effects, either at the behest of their corporate donors or because some do-gooder leftist thinks he can run your life better than you can.
This sickness in our law was born in the courts. Time to smother it in its crib.
From over at RedState there is a post on the House's declaration of " Lawsuit Abuse Awareness Week" that is definitely worth reading. It brings us to a discussion that branches out from the posting on frivolous lawsuits against the gun industry.
Such lawsuits have been part and parcel of our legal system likely since we had a legal system. There have been attempts to curtail them in the past, most not meeting any success. Still, they are here to stay and they cost us dearly. According to the NFIB, such suits cost Americans over $200 billion a year, they note an approximate 5% tax on wages.
Some meaningful changes are being introduced, such as adding teeth to Rule 11 of Federal Rules and Civil Procedures, a section of the law actually prohibiting frivolous suits already on the books. Whether they will succeed is a coin toss, but as always those of you willing to call and right your Congressman please do so. Every little letter helps.
Going beyond that a little, beyond the "my neighbor's cat peed on my ficus and now I have mental anguish" lawsuits, to the "I'm overweight or I smoked or I participated in any vice for 50 years and now the company that supplied me with the means has to pay" type of lawsuits.
Such lawsuits, I feel fall under the realm of personal responsibility, a very libertarian and conservative quality. If you didn't have the willpower not take that last smoke, down that last creampuff, drink that last cup of mocha supercaff frapuccino or suck up glue fumes, it's really your own fault, now isn't it? Don't look over to your lawyer, this question is directed to those that believe such lawsuits have merit. Look into yourself, realize you just didn't have the willpower to avoid the vice, and live with it, or possibly die with it. We all make choices for good or bad. I'm certainly no exception. But I'm not going to sue Smirnoff for that particularly bad hangover from college or Ruby Tuesday's for placing in front of me the gift-of-the-gods Collosal burger. These are choices mature adults make, and it's not up to the rest of us (who are ALWAYS the ones such assailed companies pass on the higher costs to) to compensate you for your weakness.
My major commenter, castastrophile (what is your name btw? :)), believes that if such industries cover up or try to ignore product liability, then such cases have merit, and he has a point. If a company knowingly promotes a product as safe and healthy and people get injured or die from it, then that company is guilty of negligence, a law that I believe is quite worthy. But I'd also offer that at no time in living history did any sane person think putting tar-filled smoke in your lungs was good for you, or that the Big Mac was health food. Only infants are that naive and in my opinion would have any recourse. And it's not just like now people have been dieing from lung cancer and heart attacks from this stuff.I had two grandparents dead from lung cancer over 20 years ago. They smoked Lucky Strikes. Guess what we thought killed them then? LUCKY FRICKIN STRIKES. It didn't take a hidden tobacco study or WhiteLies.com to enlighten me either. I relied on this little thing called common sense.
The same goes for all VICE-related lawsuits. They are Vices, which are by definition bad for you. Let's check dictionary.com
An evil, degrading, or immoral practice or habit.
A serious moral failing.
Wicked or evil conduct or habits; corruption.
Sexual immorality, especially prostitution.
A slight personal failing; a foible: the vice of untidiness. A flaw or imperfection; a defect.
A physical defect or weakness. An undesirable habit, such as crib-biting, in a domestic animal.
See, this sort of denotes Vice as a negative thing. Not much room for warm and fuzzy there.
Therefore, if someone knowingly participates in a vice-related activity, even just eating the wrong food or smoking the wrong cigarette or engaging an unusual sexual habit or any number of other things that the "moral-free '90's" seemed to indicate are ok, then that's their personal choice and instead of being allowed to profit by proclaiming themselves victims, they must suffer the consequences of their actions. Can a junkie sue a pusher for selling him crack that was too good? Not likely. Same goes for Ronald McDonald being guilty for hooking you up with that Big 'N Tasty. It was your call. You went up to him. You knowingly ate that food. You pay the price. You you you. Personal responsibility, which goes hand in hand with personal liberty.
If you start eliminating personal responsibility as a prereq for these things, pretty soon big Daddy gubmint is going to come in and start removing personal liberty to try and stem the effects, either at the behest of their corporate donors or because some do-gooder leftist thinks he can run your life better than you can.
This sickness in our law was born in the courts. Time to smother it in its crib.
posted by Rob Beck | 1:55 PM
5 Comments:
I can give you the point when it comes to cigarettes, or alcohol, but when it comes to fast food, lifestyle drugs (pharm is another industry that's ripe for a wave of lotto winners) and the like, the line is less distinct.
I don't know how many people really understand the damage that can result from using these products, and there is a certain logic to the premise that when you market a product, there's an implicit promise that it's not going to injure you. The burden is on the individual who's packing, selling, and advertising the product to ensure that using it isn't going to make you die or go blind.
Certainly, once we can call the side effects well-known, it's a different story. But I don't know how logical it is to assume that most people understand that calling McBurgers "food" is quite a stretch.
-Eric Cole, Los Angeles, CA
That's true, the burden is on the manufacturer to ensure a safe product, but we already have a gargantuan agency in the FDA to make sure this happens. From first-hand experience, I can assure you they crawl up the rears of such companies with a microscope if they feel there is any flaw or defect.
A Big Mac or designer drug isn't in itself inherently harmful, though. It's the over indulgence that is, and that's the personal responsibility angle. McDonalds can't make you eat only one sandwich if you want another. It's supply and demand. Your personal self-control has to come into play somewhere, and that's what the trial lawyers pushing these junk lawsuits are purposefully ignoring.
Overindulgence, yes. It's the job of a judge and a jury to determine whether a plaintiff's behavior qualifies as the intended use of a product or as overindulgence. If I'm too busy to cook and wind up eating fast food 15 times a week, is that overindulgence?
I really don't know what that kind of diet would do to a person, but I know plenty of people eat like that and don't think twice about it. Should they be able to collect? Well, probably not. But I do know that if you take away any chance of a lawsuit, McBusiness has zero incentive to keep their loyal customers healthy.
I can grant you that there's potential for abuse within the present system, but I can't accept the proposition that we should just let the government take care of these things. We've seen what happens when we do that.
Barring whole classes of lawsuit based on the potential for abuse just strikes me as a really bad idea. You're basically making a conclusive presumption that "everybody knows" something that everybody doesn't necessarily know.
I mean, you and I both know that snake oil doesn't cure what ails you, we haven't won a free cruise, and that guy from Nigeria isn't looking to cut us in on a fortune. Shall we then bar claims against con men? The moment you draw a line, people are just going to set up their tents just beyond it and start fleecing people. And it'll be legal.
That guy in Nigeria lied? Damn.
Yes, I agree the idea of having government just slap a bandaid on this by barring whole classes of lawsuits won't help things much. And almost universally, when the government tries to help, bad things happen. Here's the reality of our problem, though. 2% of the GDP currently goes to fighting, settling, and paying out lawsuits. That figure is growing. That's more than some countries' total production.
Who gets rich out of these? Do you think the smokers who fought and won the tobacco settlements got rich? I don't think the fast food or gun maker suits would pay out much to the victims either. What the class action lawsuit industry has done is bankrupt companies, make some headlines, make the cost of doing business in the US much higher, and most importantly, vastly enrich trial lawyers.
With this in mind, short of the government attempting to run band-aids over the worst wounds, what should we do? I'd honestly like to know your opinion on that one. How do we end-run the trial lawyers while at the same time protecting people's rights against fraud or wrongful claims?
Like I (sort of) said: My preferred solution is to eliminate the liability shield of corporate personhood.
As things presently stand, an entire corporate structure is held liable for actions or negligence perpetrated (usually) by a very few. Those who actually acted or failed to act should be held accountable, not innocent employees and consumers. Going directly after the individuals responsible would keep the much deeper "pockets" of the larger structure from being raided. But like I said, that solution never seems to be on the table.
Of course, I realize that "abolish corporate personhood" has become more of a moonbat warcry than a position. Even so, there are plenty of valid arguments against corporate personhood, not the least of which is the fact that a corporation is technically an organ of the state, vested with rights and privileges which you and I don't have. That in itself is a corruption. To take it one step further and start restricting people's right to seek remedy when one of these constructs may have harmed them is a step in the wrong direction, IMO.
And that is what this is about, after all. I mean, I can understand people -- like yourself -- having an honest concern about the collateral impact of excessive litigation, but you've got to admit that the motivation driving the "tort reform" movement a desire to protect big business, not the little guy. Most suits in US courts are filed by corporations against other corporations, and yet when people think of litigation, they think of ambulance chasers and chili finger.
I had to groan when I read the transcript of Gee-Dub's SotU and saw the word "asbestos" in there -- for Pete's sake, he might as well have just said Halliburton . . .
Incidentally: I wonder what percentage of the GDP changes hands every year by means of theft, fraud, or coercion. It's all relative.
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