Before anyone warms up the BBQ, this is not meant to be a slam against lawyers. We have become a nation which refuses to take responsibility for the simplest things in life like driving around with a Styrofoam cup of hot coffee between the legs to putting a loaded gun to the head and pulling the trigger then saying "it wasn't fault! It was McDonalds fault". Or the actor for a short lived TV series who jokingly put a .44 Mag revolver to his head loaded with blanks and pulled the trigger before anyone could stop him It never occurred to that particular "Darwin Award Recipient" there's something like 20,000 pounds pressure at the muzzle which resulted in turning his brain into Jell-o. It wasn't his fault, "it was Smith & Wesson s fault!" If McD's had only told me it was a stupid thing to drive with a hot cup of coffee between ones legs or S&W had clearly put a warning on the revolver along the lines of, "WARNING! SHOOTING BLANKS WITH THE MUZZLE POINTED AT YOUR HEAD COULD KILL YOU!" perhaps he would not have done it. But I don't think so! When buglers can sue a homeowner for "injuries sustained in a burglary", it is because (a) trial lawyers have found a new cash cow and (b) jurors are too stupid to realize the problem lies with the person who did the act rather than the business/individual/whatever the suit was brought against. For some vultures out there, the loss of a "loved" one is well offset by the money gained through litigation and sometimes insurance. Here's a couple of examples:
A abdominal surgeon friend of mine was forced out of private practice by the annual doubling of his malpractice insurance. Why did it go up every year by a factor of two? He had ONE frivolous law suit. He went to work for Ford-Philco as the company doctor. In college I worked as a reserve police officer. My partner was a good cop but a man who had to manage his temper. We were dispatched to a fatal accident where a 14 year old boy was one of the victims. At the hospital, Larry, my partner, and I went to the "parents", a word used in its loosest connotation possible, to get some needed information for our report. The father" said, "I told you we should have gotten the $10,000 policy!" to wit the "mother" replied, "how did I know the little bastard would die?!" Larry who stood 6' 3", weighed about 225 pounds and was all of 10% body fat, picked the so-called father up by the collar and had it not been for my intervention, he would have pasted his stamp right there on the spot. As a nation, generally speaking, people have become lazy and feel someone else owes them in one way or another. If you're parting out or selling outright an airplane, you'll run the risk of someone or their survivors down the road wanting to sue you because an idiot augured in trying to see if he or she could really recover from an inverted flat spin. When I was a cop, there was only one law I really wanted to see put on the books and that was Stupid in Public". As long as people are going to be "stupid in public" there will be lawyers on the side to take their money and jurors who loose sight of the fact we are all responsible for our own actions. As an aside, think about it: These people vote! Again, this is not an indictment of all lawyers as lawyers are needed. It is an indictment against greed and avarice. -------Original Message------- From: KR builders and pilots List-Post: krnet@list.krnet.org Date: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 3:20:50 AM To: kr...@mylist.net Subject: Re: KR>kr sale/liability RE: Even if you totally cover yourself with the buyer, they could crash into a house and wipe out a family at the dinner table and that could prompt a lawsuit from someone that was not a party to the sale. You paint a picture of a very sick society. It is truly amazing that this society continues to exist and sometimes I really wonder, how it does. N64KR Daniel R. Heath - Columbia, SC da...@kr-builder.org See you in Red Oak - 2003 See our KR at http://KR-Builder.org - Click on the pic See our EAA Chapter 242 at http://EAA242.org _______________________________________________ see KRnet list details at http://www.krnet.org/instructions.html .