Caltrops - Motherfucking News





	[quote name="I need clarification"][quote name="Damocles"]Besides, do you think judges are morons?[/quote] Actually, I believe he <A HREF = "http://www.caltrops.com/pointy.php?action=viewPost&pid=16325">does</A>. And of course this is the crux of what he believes to be the problem: anyone can bring a lawsuit, regardless of merit, against anyone else for any amount of money and for any reason. Judges are morons who allow the cases to proceed, and juries are too easily swayed by the tales of scalded laps or gunned-down little kids, etc. I don't know what the current standard is for a case to pass muster with a judge, and in fact I'm not 100% sure it's in the judge's hand to decide whether a civil lawsuit can proceed. Either way, I have the feeling most judges, moronic or not, are inclined to allow any lawsuit that doesn't contain the word "Martians" in the text to at least be heard by a jury. Juries of course tend to be sympathetic to the victim. You can usually tell who the victim is, because they're the one who is sucking on a respirator, or busy being paralyzed from the waist down due to a stray bullet, or couldn't make it to court that day because the policy at the cemetary is no corpses can leave of their own accord during the day or non-full-moon night. Another way to read this is that juries are expressing their frustrations at their inability to overcome powerful corporate and PAC lobbyists in Washington. It's one thing to say in the abstract you support the 2nd Amendment, it's quite another to see (<i>what some would suggest are</i>) the results of the flooding of America with handguns until, as was recently <A HREF = "http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030709/ap_on_re_us/un_small_arms_4">reported</A>, there is nearly one gun for every citizen. Are all jurors and judges idiots, are all corporate lawyers incompetent, or is there a more fundamental reason for these sort of settlements? Anyway, L_K seems to have a hard-on for the small airline industry. As CEO of INC, Inc., I've eschewed the use of a private plane in favor of sitting in a cubicle all day, so this issue has remained below my radar (get it? Because they're planes and they... use... fuck off). But there are real-world consequences to the current lottery system of lawsuits. Ask BDR how many obstetricians are left in Nevada. Or Virginia. There are cases of doctors in high-risk practices (like delivering babies) who are fleeing states that have not enacted caps on lawsuit awards. Without the caps, the insurance rates skyrocket. In order to pay their premiums, the doctors are forced to double their caseload, leading to, you guessed it, a greater chance of error. It's hard to argue that an expectant mother should "assume some personal responsibility" for the fact her baby was not born as healthy as it could have been, but on the other hand will suing the doctor out of business for something he couldn't really do anything about help the next mother at all? When it comes to these cases, L_K's position is a little more socialist than I think he'd be comfortable with, as placing a cap on physician lawsuits implies that we're forgoing an immediate payoff for a medical problem in favor of the community's need for competent and not over-worked healthcare professionals.[/quote]