"F. George McDuffee" wrote:

snip
Frivolous tort lawsuits, like the McDonald's hot coffee fiasco, don't
fly in the UK.

We get a few. I can't bring one as frivolous as the hot coffee affair to
mind, though.
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By itself it appears this was a frivolous suit. However taken in
total as the latest in a series of accidents involving [too] hot
coffee, the verdict was justified, i.e. you are only allowed to
injure only so many people with your "safe" product before it
costs you. You also need to remember the number of people who
were injured by coffee sold in the cup and implicitly "ready to
drink," which was in fact scalding. This may have lead to
traffic accidents when the driver took a big swig.

Wasn't said coffee heated to the temperature required by the local
health dept.?


Most of what are sold to the gullible people as frivolous suits
are in fact only the later ones in a of a series of incidents
that clearly demonstrate to the "reasonable prudent person" that
a hazards exists with their "safe" product/service in
normal/casual usage. This is compounded when obvious and low/no
cost remedies exist, i.e. turn down the f***ing temperature on
the coffee pot.

Turn down the temperature and get fined on your next health dept.
inspection?


Other examples abound such as the successful suit brought against
the phone company when a person was injured in one of their phone
booths when a truck ran over it. If this was the first time this
had occurred at that particular location, I would be the first to
say "tough darts fella," however there had been a series of
accidents at that location with the phone booths repeatedly
destroyed. By repeatedly replacing the phone booth, the phone
company knowingly placed an "attractive nuisance" in a known
hazardous location that was likely to cause people to be there.
To the best of my knowledge it was never determined why that
particular phone booth was replaced so many times at that
location other than corporate inertia.

Dunno, sounds like the municipality was at fault for not placing
adequate guard rails at a problematic location.


If corporations were more responsive/sensitative they wouldn't
need to be smacked in the chops to correct their products.

Another example is the brake interlock that is now included on
many cars with automatic transmissions. For what ever reason,
the physical locations of the brake and throttle pedals were
situated so that some people had difficulty in telling which one
their foot was on. [Most likely this was the reduction in the
height difference.] A series of accidents, with several tragic
deaths resulted. It was not until the car companies were
repeatedly sued and lost that the problem was addressed.

Gee, you'd think the sound of the redlining engine might have clued the
idiot drivers in to the fact that they had their foot on the wrong pedal
before they put the transmission in gear. If you can't tell which pedal
your foot is on, you do not belong in the drivers seat.


The problematique appears to arise because we are looking at and
evaluating one-time occurrences v. repeated incidents. The Prime
Minster's observation "We do not hang hose thieves so that they
may not steal horses, we hang horse thieves so that other men may
not steal horses" applies here.

Ok, hang the unqualified / irresponsible drivers so that others insure
they get proper training and pay proper attention. With your quote, it
would more correctly be hang the horses so that they can't be stolen.

Pete C.