Are lawyers slowly ruining this country?

Question

I was reading the article on the guy with TB... now 8 people are suing him for 1.3M dollars. and they didnt even catch TB. they just rode on a plane and saw some easy money. It seems to me like people sue for anything and everything. why do you think health care is so outrageous. doctors dont even make much money anymore because most goes to malpractice insurance. for f**k sake, that lady that spilled coffee on herself... ON HERSELF mind you... sued mcDonalds... and won. wtf?

remember, they may not have known, but is it worth 1.3 MILLION... when they didnt even get it? Its like suing someone with AIDS just for using the same toilet. Its ignorant.

SHE SPILLED THE COFFEE... need i say more? bad process of grafting or not, why is McDonalds resposible for her spilling the coffee?

to Catspaw: Who spilled the coffee? And who's fault is it that it was spilled? And why is mcDonalds resposible? Convince me.

I hope you guys realize that these are not meant as personal attacks, just trying to get some people to think...

Susan - so by this basis, I could drive around at 2am and write down license plates and sue people for being on the same road as me? that is also negligent. 1 in 5 cars has a drunk driver at this time of night.

tricia - good article, thx. but let me ask you, were you aware before this suit that hot coffee can burn you? most people know that hot is bad from age 2.

Susan - agreed that it is not quite the same, but it is nonetheless negligent. and why not sue for those who transfer the flu to me on an airplane? should sick people not be allowed to fly? would that be a closer analogy?

good input from everyone... star this if you think it was at least thought provoking...

Answer 1

No, stupid laws are ruining this country.

Lawyers just take advantage of the laws as they are written. That's the lawyers job -- to use the existing laws to the best advantage of their clients.

Fix the laws, and you solve the problems.

Answer 2

Um, judges are already allowed to assign court costs and defendant's expenses for frivolous lawsuits. And they do.

As far as the McDonald's woman, for some reason everyone forgets that the amount she actually won was drastically reduced on appeal.

For the TB people, I think they should be able to sue for intentionally and recklessly being exposed to such a horrible disease. Whether they should win or not is something else--I'm not aware of the facts surrounding the case.

As for doctors . . . if you were aware of some of the horrible malpractice that they get away with/aren't convicted of, you might not be so sympathetic. If they as a profession think it's best to pool their risk through malpractice insurance, they're taking the risk that their individual colleagues aren't being as responsible as they are and will drive up rates for everyone. Don't forget lawyers carry malpractice insurance, too. Apparently they're just better at kicking out bad apples.

Answer 3

Maybe you should look into the facts of the coffee case. I personally wouldn't take any sum of money to have the skin burned off of my genitals, then undergo skin grafts. Especially when McDonald's already knew that could happen and decided not to cool the brew down to a non-lethal temp. And how did they know? Because she wasn't the first one! FYI - before she sued, she offered to settle for 50k. It was a jury that thought it was worth more.

As far as malpractice goes, people are pretty quick to assume that doctors never make mistakes - which is exactly what the doctor's lobby wants you to think. How much money is it worth when they mistakenly take out your one good lung, instead of the bad one? How much money is it worth to go in for a knee operation and bleed out, suffering brain damage that puts you at the level of a 2 year old?

Answer 4

Suing for being exposed to TB without even knowing it and being able to get off the plane and suing because you dump hot coffee all over yourself are kind of different.

Yes they did not get TB, but they were put at risk by another's actions not through their own negligence. Spilling coffee that you know is going to be at least fairly hot on yourself is your own fault, or at least it should be.

You can't get AIDS from a toilet seat but you can get TB from being in an airplane for several hours with someone who has TB.

Driving late at night and suing everyone who passes you is again, hardly the same thing as sitting in an enclosed environment from which you can not leave with someone who has TB. Also there is no way to know if those 5 cars you pass have drunk drivers, no drunk drivers or a mix of both. In the TB case they know they guy has TB. If the passengers were trying to sue him because he COULD have had TB, that is completely different. If I could sue for driving on the same road with people late as night I might as well try and sue you! But see, that would be silly. :)

Answer 5

I don't necessarily believe that it's the lawyers that are causing this. Rather it is a general fault within today's culture whereby people do not want to accept responsibility for their faults. They want to blame others for their problems. Regarding the woman suing McDonald's the reason she won was that McDonald's did not have a warning printed that the coffee was hot. McDonald's keeps their coffee at 180 degrees Fahrenheit. The woman did have culpability for spilling the coffee, but argued she would have been more careful had she known that the coffee was hot enough to cause second degree burns to her groin. People in this country need to accept responsibility for the actions they cause and not be so quick to blame others.

Answer 6

Yes. Did you know that over 30% of medical costs go to lawsuits or malpractice insurance? When judges are allowed to make people pay court costs and the defenses expenses for frivolous law suits this will all go away.

Answer 7

Nope. It isn't the lawyers. It's the people in general. Lawyers merely work for the people who hire them.

Answer 8

This is from the Center for Justice and Democracy's website. You can count on the fact that where a jury awards millions in punitive damages, the jury has been grossed out by the actions of the defendant.

Stella Liebeck, 79 years old, was sitting in the passenger seat of her grandson’s car having purchased a cup of McDonald’s coffee. After the car stopped, she tried to hold the cup securely between her knees while removing the lid. However, the cup tipped over, pouring scalding hot coffee onto her. She received third-degree burns over 16 percent of her body, necessitating hospitalization for eight days, whirlpool treatment for debridement of her wounds, skin grafting, scarring, and disability for more than two years. Morgan, The Recorder, September 30, 1994. Despite these extensive injuries, she offered to settle with McDonald’s for $20,000. However, McDonald’s refused to settle. The jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages -- reduced to $160,000 because the jury found her 20 percent at fault -- and $2.7 million in punitive damages for McDonald’s callous conduct. (To put this in perspective, McDonald's revenue from coffee sales alone is in excess of $1.3 million a day.) The trial judge reduced the punitive damages to $480,000. Subsequently, the parties entered a post-verdict settlement. According to Stella Liebeck’s attorney, S. Reed Morgan, the jury heard the following evidence in the case:

By corporate specifications, McDonald's sells its coffee at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit;


Coffee at that temperature, if spilled, causes third-degree burns (the skin is burned away down to the muscle/fatty-tissue layer) in two to seven seconds;


Third-degree burns do not heal without skin grafting, debridement and whirlpool treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars and result in permanent disfigurement, extreme pain and disability of the victim for many months, and in some cases, years;


The chairman of the department of mechanical engineering and bio-mechanical engineering at the University of Texas testified that this risk of harm is unacceptable, as did a widely recognized expert on burns, the editor in chief of the leading scholarly publication in the specialty, the Journal of Burn Care and Rehabilitation;


McDonald's admitted that it has known about the risk of serious burns from its scalding hot coffee for more than 10 years -- the risk was brought to its attention through numerous other claims and suits, to no avail;


From 1982 to 1992, McDonald's coffee burned more than 700 people, many receiving severe burns to the genital area, perineum, inner thighs, and buttocks;


Not only men and women, but also children and infants, have been burned by McDonald's scalding hot coffee, in some instances due to inadvertent spillage by McDonald's employees;


At least one woman had coffee dropped in her lap through the service window, causing third-degree burns to her inner thighs and other sensitive areas, which resulted in disability for years;


Witnesses for McDonald's admitted in court that consumers are unaware of the extent of the risk of serious burns from spilled coffee served at McDonald's required temperature;


McDonald's admitted that it did not warn customers of the nature and extent of this risk and could offer no explanation as to why it did not;


McDonald's witnesses testified that it did not intend to turn down the heat -- As one witness put it: “No, there is no current plan to change the procedure that we're using in that regard right now;”

Answer 9

yes Lawyers are slowly ruining this country with laws which take away rights.