chrisp@oliven.UUCP (04/27/84)
Keith Bauer's comments on the Mark Donohue and San Diego Porsche 930 liability trials implies the need for some education on the state of the torts business. First, I am in complete agreement with Keith that both trial results are totally assinine. In the Donohue case, the trial judge seems to be a major problem as he basically took away a good third of the defense on various thin excuses. (Would you believe that after 25 years as a first rank driver, Mario Andretti is not a qualified expert on the behavior of race tires?!) It seems very probable that the decesion will be voided by a higher court based simply on the massive series of decision errors by the judge. In the case with the 930, the errors seem to have been made by the defense counsel: he tried to cover up the loss of an interoffice memo on the 930's handling and got caught substituting a doctored copy of another memo. I suspect that the case cannot be retrieved. Essentially, Keith has just discovered what has been going on in liability law for the last 30 years. The prime question in any liability case in 'who has the deepest pockets' (the most money). This is known as the deep pockets doctrine. So counsel always goes after the individual (or company) that they think they can get the most money out of without regard to other factors. The next most important question is whose lawyers are how good. A trial is really a contest between the legal teams (rather like a football game). Third, you should note that juries are carefully selected to eliminate people who think. Lawyers prefer juries who react emotionally and don't use their heads. The facts of a situation come after all of the above. There was a case in Santa Cruz a few years ago in which a twerp dove off a 30 foot trestle into 4 feet of water and (surprise!) broke his fool neck. He WON his suit against Southern Pacific for 'maintaining an attractive nuisance'. Fortunately the decision was thrown out when the sole witness told SP that he had obtained a small honorarium for his appearance on the stand. (A sane result for the wrong reason.) And that is why we all have the questionable pleasure of compensating blatent idiots for the fruits of their irresponsibility! You should note that nearly all of the truely rich lawyers are liability lawyers. This is because virtually all liability suits are payed on a 'contingency' basis: 40% of the award goes to the lawyer. It doesn't pay to have turkeys enjoy the fruits of their stupidity! The only way that I can see to correct this mess is to get your state to legally ban contingency fees. And good luck! The fight to do this is would be long, hard and expensive because most state legislators are lawyers and it would close the main chance that lawyers have to get rich. (An interesting alternative would be a counter suit against plaintif's counsel on the grounds that the gamble of the contingency fee is in conflict with counsel's status as an 'officer of the court'. That would require an idealistic and good attorney as well as a lot of time and money.) No flames from this quarter, Keith. You are totally right! Chris Prael (retired driver)
ix21@sdccs6.UUCP (David Whiteman) (04/29/84)
I wanted to put my 2 cents into this subject before someone yells that this discussion should be moved to net.legal. From a newspaper article I read suggesting that they are too many lawyers and too much litigation which pushes up auto insurance premiums. This is a true incident. A man with a suspended license, no insurance, and a brake line he knew to be in need of immediate repair, was speeding home from a party when he illegally passed another vehicle. When a police car began giving chase, the driver sped up. (He would later testify that his accelerator pedal stuck.) Careening along at eighty miles per hour, without brakes, he approached a set of flashing red lights and saw an oncoming train. With police lights flashing behind him and railroad-crossing lights flashing in front, he closed his eyes. The train sent his car hurtling through the air. A man was in a phone booth nearby. The car went flying into the phone booth, shattering the man's leg. which would later be amputated. The driver suffered a cut on his forehead. Far from losin HIS legs, he used them to run from the scene of the accident. He turned himself in an hour later. He was uninsured and owned no appreciable assets. Guess who was held liable. The speeding driver? The policeman or the police department? The train company? No the telephone company was ordered by the jury to pay damages ($216,761). A dangerous place, the jury felt, to locate a phone booth. I really wish I could place a -) in my article, but this is a true story.
pector@ihuxw.UUCP (Scott W. Pector) (04/30/84)
<> David Whiteman's train-phone booth story is also told in "The Invisible Bankers" by Andrew Tobias (published in 1981). This book discusses the insurance industry and its problems. Also, it addresses the topic of liability in some detail. Quite a clever book. Scott Pector
dwv@ihuxu.UUCP (D. W. Vollman) (04/30/84)
If you want to talk about assinine decisions, look a this one which is absolutely true. A student pilot was doing some solo work when his plane ran out of fuel and crashed. The widow sued and won because nobody told the pilot that the plane would not fly without fuel! Pretty good! I do know a Lawyer who does defense work for some claims like this and he said the following things will cause you almost automaticlly to lose your case. 1. Plaintiff is a widow. 2. Plaintiff is in a wheelchair. 3. The estate of the Plaintiff has left children. He says in these cases, the jury is going to award no matter how stupid the act was. Maybe we need bench trials for these kinds of suits. Then I won't have to worry about being sued because I was hit by a drunk who said I had no business being on the road. Dave Vollman AT&T Bell Laboratories ..!ihnp4!ihuxu!dwv
rs55611@ihuxk.UUCP (Robert E. Schleicher) (05/02/84)
Another true liability suit horror story: I read in the news some years ago of a mother whose son was killed when he rode down a hill on his skateboard, ran onto a busy street, and was struck by cross traffic. She sued the skateboard manufacturer, on the grounds that the skateboard was an unsafe product because it had no warning labels on it stating that the skateboard had no xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (oops) brakes.