On Monday, July 2, 2012 12:24:49 PM UTC-4, Evan wrote:
On Jul 1, 9:56*am, wrote:
All you gotta do is claim that the safety equipment shouldn't have been so easily defeated, and you and your lawyer get $$$.

Wrong...

If you remove the safety devices on a piece of equipment and
then someone is hurt or worse by said machine you have
willfully engaged in "criminal negligence"... If someone is
permanently injured or maimed by your "machine" that would
be considered an act of Mayhem, a serious criminal offense
which is a felony only a few steps down from murder...
The manufacturer of the machinery was required to put the
safety devices on the machinery in order to offer the product
for sale as they were required by the regulatory authority,
there is no mandate imaginary or otherwise which requires
such safety devices to be difficult or impossible to bypass or
disable... The manufacturer would only be liable in the
way you describe if the safety devices failed and allowed
an injury to occur without any actions/repairs/modifications
made by the end user... Once you open it up and change
anything it is you the one who made the modifications that
holds all liability for whatever occurs after that point because
you willfully made those changes by means of overt acts of
removing or disabling components that were formerly
active pieces of the machine...

You'd think that, but all it takes is a good lawyer with a nice smile and a compelling argument to the contrary, and cha-ching!

What you say makes perfect sense, and that is the way it SHOULD be. However, there are examples of people being rewarded for acting stupid all over the news.

The most famous case, being the woman who spilled the McDonalds coffee on her crotch. If that's not a case of intentionally defeating safety devices and injuring yourself through your own stupidity, I don't know what is. Put a wicked-hot cup of coffee between your legs and clench... What do you think the outcome will be?

I forget his name now, but there's a local (former) politician who was "inspecting" a house under construction (actually TRESPASSING without the owner's knowledge or permission), fell off the ladder, and hurt himself. The owners thought the injury was punishment enough so they didn't press charges. He waited until the day the statute of limitations ran out and filed a lawsuit against them for his injury. He was well on his way to a healthy infusion of cash when the news got ahold of the story, and proceeding with the suit would've meant total political suicide.