More tort outrages

[alphamale]

cited by Deroy Murdock in NR:

Snohomish County, Washington police caught Mincho Donchev breaking into mountain cabins while armed with knives and handguns. When this Bulgarian escaped murderer resisted arrest, a police dog mauled his foot, costing him two toes. He sued and scored $412,500 in February 2000.

An Oakland, California bank robber was unaware the bag of cash he stole contained a time-delayed tear-gas canister that went off, scorched him and sped his arrest. He sued the bank and the cops for $2 million for burning him.

Neither a fence nor a lock could keep Ed O'Rourke from breaking into a Tampa Electric substation in 1996. He drunkenly climbed aboard a transformer that greeted him with 13,000 volts. In March 2000, he sued the power company, plus six bars he says got him hammered.

[viscousmemories]

Hey look, I can cut-n-paste too!

http://www.freethought-forum.com/for...ead.php?t=5185

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

This horseshit "lawsuit crisis" story repeats itself at fairly regular intervals here in the U.S. Private insurance companies make money by investing the policy premium payments they collect. When investments are good, insurers cut premiums to attract more customers and thereby bring in more investment capital. The higher investment income goes, the more reckless the insurers' premium cutting and underwriting practices get. Eventually, the whole mess comes crashing down. Investment income does a full gainer into the toilet and insurers, thanks to their dubious pricing and underwriting practices, are left to operate on a very thin margin.

At that point, the insurance industry and its ever-obedient lap dogs -- chambers of commerce, Republican legislators and the insurer-funded American Tort Reform Association -- start screaming about a "litigation crisis" that's causing an "insurance crisis" and threatening the very fabric of American life. The solution, so these professional liars tell us, is a singularly odious form of corporate welfare known as tort reform. Arbitrarily cap recoveries,* eliminate joint and several liability, etc. and everything will be fine.

We've heard a lot of this nonsense with regard to medical negligence cases in recent years. When the last investment income crash occurred, insurers started losing money hand over fist. Doctors got fucked in a big way when insurers imposed astronomical increases in malpractice insurance premiums to cover their own losses. Desperate for relief (and often constitutionally incapable of admitting fallibility), many a physician jumped on the tort reform bandwagon.

Trouble is, thirty years of tort reform history prove rather conclusively that tort reform legislation never translates into lower premiums. Indeed, the statistics show that premiums rise faster and farther in tort reform states than in non-reform states. Tort reform helps insurers by lowering payouts on injury claims, but those savings don't get passed on to consumers. Heaven forbid that State Farm's CEO be forced to skinny by on $3 million a year instead of his customary $10 million.

So, then, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about "lawsuit crises" are directly related to the insurance industry's business cycle. There have been three major tort reform waves, all of which coincided perfectly with dramatic downturns in investment income. That's no coincidence. And as Fencesitter's article shows, the data on which such wailing is based are utterly bogus.

*Tort reformers call these caps on damages, which is a rather egregious misnomer. The amount of damages a person can suffer on account of a tortfeasor's negligence is limitless. Thus, you can only cap recoveries, not damages.

[D. Scarlatti]

What's a mote tort? Is that when you have a log stuck in your own eye?

[Leesifer]

Isn't it a kind of dessert?

[ms_ann_thrope]

Is it when a MEMS nanotech device runs amok and causes injury (or is itself injured)?

[D. Scarlatti]

Given a suitably avaricious jackal, a torte can be a tort.

Incidentally, that servers of alcohol may be liable for the actions of consumers of alcohol is a fairly ancient concept. It's not something Alan Dershowitz just dreamed up last week.

[viscousmemories]

On a lark I tried to find more info about the Oakland bank robber anecdote in the OP and all I could find was the same blurb on various conservative blog and tort reform advocacy sites. In fact 4/5 of the people who posted that blurb credited it to the obviously biased ATRA (American Tort Reform Association), but oddly even ATRA is no longer carrying that story. This is the citation I found at several sites: (Source: ATRA: Candelario v. City of Oakland, No. 628960-3 Cal. App. Dep't Super. Ct. 1987), but I couldn't find anything at Findlaw or anywhere else.

[D. Scarlatti]

Sadly, alphamale hasn't provided any of the dispositions to any of the cases. I could sue alphamale for the tort of intentional infliction of mental distress (in fact I could make it a class action). Of course that means nothing, since something like 97% of civil actions that come across attorneys' desks are settled, in a variety of ways, prior to trial.

What alphamale is doing is extrapolating a handful of questionably reported complaints culled from ill-informed weblogs to make global assertions that are, for all intents and purposes, completely baseless, not to mention downright stupid.

If deliberate ignorance was an individual tort - and it is an element of certain torts - there's no doubt a reasonable jury could find alphamale guilty based on a preponderance of the evidence.

[alphamale]

Originally Posted by D. Scarlatti

Sadly, alphamale hasn't provided any of the dispositions to any of the cases. I could sue alphamale for the tort of intentional infliction of mental distress (in fact I could make it a class action). Of course that means nothing, since something like 97% of civil actions that come across attorneys' desks are settled, in a variety of ways, prior to trial.

What alphamale is doing is extrapolating a handful of questionably reported complaints culled from ill-informed weblogs to make global assertions that are, for all intents and purposes, completely baseless, not to mention downright stupid.

If deliberate ignorance was an individual tort - and it is an element of certain torts - there's no doubt a reasonable jury could find alphamale guilty based on a preponderance of the evidence.

Yeah, and you guys response to my items is mostly "Duh, that was from the Anti-Tort Association! Duh!" Don't argue if your gonna lose!

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by D. Scarlatti

completely baseless, not to mention downright stupid

alfalfaboy should make that his custom user title

[D. Scarlatti]

Originally Posted by alphamale

... you guys response to my items is mostly ...

Except for those of us with even a glancing familiarity with some of these cases and the principles of law they represent. But you're apparently incapable of engaging either factual or substantive questions and comments anyway, which is why "us guys response to your items is mostly" that you're a comical ignoramus.

[alphamale]

Originally Posted by D. Scarlatti

Except for those of us with even a glancing familiarity with some of these cases and the principles of law they represent. But you're apparently incapable of engaging either factual or substantive questions and comments anyway, which is why "us guys response to your items is mostly" that you're a comical ignoramus.

You've been soundly defeated, the game's over, and you refuse to go home. Now you're standing around like some loser who's got his ass kicked, stunned, hallucinating that you've won.

[godfry n. glad]

Whoops... Now he's gone delusional.

[Sock Puppet]

Originally Posted by godfry n. glad

Whoops... Now he's gone delusional.

Gone delusional? The vehemence of his declarations of victory is directly proportional to how badly he's just had his ass handed to him.

[rigorist]

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

Gone delusional? The vehemence of his declarations of victory is directly proportional to how badly he's just had his ass handed to him.

Is that the same ass he keeps his head, D. Scarlatti's boot, and a bunch of facts in?

I wonder if he's got space for a boogie in that butt?

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

On a lark I tried to find more info about the Oakland bank robber anecdote in the OP and all I could find was the same blurb on various conservative blog and tort reform advocacy sites.

That figures. Wingnut bloggers and tort reformers hear something through the grapevine, embellish the everluvin' hell out of it and post it as gospel truth. The funny part is that after awhile they create their own self-sustaining circle of bullshit by citing each other as sources for the same anecdote.

Where have we seen that tactic before? Oh yeah -- the field of creation "science"/intelligent design.

If the three cases referenced in the OP went down exactly as Murdock says they did, the outcomes likely would have been something like:

1) Dismissed via summary judgment. Grounds: qualified immunity and primary assumption of risk.

2) Same.

3) The case against the power company would be dismissed via summary judgment. Grounds: the power company did not breach any duty to the plaintiff. As to an undiscovered trespasser, the landowner's sole duty is to refrain from willfully or wantonly causing injury. No evidence of willful or wanton misconduct here.

The case against the bar owners meets the same fate. Dram shop claims are available only to persons the drunk injures, not to the drunk himself.

[D. Scarlatti]

Originally Posted by alphamale

[eta: apologies to beyelzu]