People cut off fingertips (and more) in garbage disposals.
Not a very relevant example, as you can't do that during normal use (read: not being a dumbass and shoving your hand down the disposal). It is very likely that you will, at some point in your life, accidently spill coffee on yourself, or someone will spill it on you. Would be nice not to have to worry about your skin melting off, wouldn't it? And besides, a garbage disposal is supposed to chop stuff off. Coffee isn't supposed to scald your skin off, its supposed to keep you awake at your boring job.
If a doctor is found incompetent you revoke their license, or restrict what they can practice.
Easier said than done. And frequently said doctor can just set up shop in another state. To really make this effective, bad doctors need to be banned from practicing medicine anywhere in the country.
Suing just turns the whole thing into a money game.
By not suing you raise costs for both patients and insurance companies. Because if a doctor or hostpital are never forced to pay for negligence, they'll just continue hurting other patients, making both consumers and insurance companies pay for unneeded treatment.
Are you English or retarded? Just because he said he'd make the site for free, he's forced to maintain it for the rest of his life at no charge?
If he'd asked to be compensated for future work, they probably would have agreed.
One of the articles said he tried to do exactly that, and it sounds like they just blew him off.
Look, this site was running on his own servers, maintained on his own time and money, and he was working without a contract. He was prefectly free to shut off the server and demand a hundred billion dollars to turn it back on, and the county was perfectly free to tell him to go to hell. If the county had a problem with this, they should have taken him to civil court. They didn't. Instead, they engaged in actual extortion, actual blackmail, and actually terrorized the guy by throwing him in jail and threatening him with 20 years in prison.
Is the guy perfectly innocent in the whole fiasco? Probably not. But to say that they are both equally guilty is like saying Moe's Tavern is on equal footing with Mr. Burn's Nuclear Plant. Just no sense of proportion.
My own (extended) family members insist on taking antibiotics just until they feel better, and then saving the remainder for "next time." Time and again, I've explained that if they don't completely erradicate the bacteria, these antibiotics won't be very effective the next time. They just dismiss what I say as coming from a young "know it all."
Wow. No offense, but your (extended) family members are frikkin idiots. Why not ask them to ask a doctor about it, if they don't believe you? Any self-respecting doctor should read them the riot act.
Well, I think it's rather obvious: negligence and imcompetence will just continue if left unpunished. So not only do legitimate lawsuites force hostpitals to provide better care, it also saves consumers AND insurance companies money over the long run. How, when the hospital has to cough up a cool $2 million?
Well, how much more did this guy have to spend because of the staff infection? How much more did his insurance company have to spend? How much more will other patients and the insurance company have to spend if more people incur further injuries and illnesses because the doctors or hospital were never forced to clean up their act? And, it would save doctors money too, on their malpractice insurance, if bad doctors were forced to give up their licences.
I think the greatest con job of all time has been the idea that lawsuites by consumers are frivilous and need to be greatly reduced, for the benefit of the customer. All so-called "tort reform" does is take liability and responsiblity away from companies, where it belongs, and pushes it back onto the backs of the consumer.
700 in 10 years. Thays 70 per year. Spread over how many THOUSAND locations??
Don't you know anything about marketing? Like how every responce represents about a thousand people, because most don't bother to write in? Besides, not all of those complaints were from customers: health inspectors complained as well. McDonalds blew them off too.
A spokesman for the National Coffee Association says McDonald's coffee conforms to industry temperature standards.
Perhapse you should have done some more Googling. McDonalds routinely kept their coffee 40 degrees hotter than other restaurants.
Coffee...Hot? DUUUUUUUHHH, I don't know.
Its quite possible to have coffee hot enough to enjoy without having it so hot as to cause third degree burns. Why are people who like near boiling coffee able to drink it without burning themselves? Because they sip it. If they were to chug it all at once, they could say goodbye to the lining on their esophaguses. But if it comes down to these people getting their 190 degree coffee, or me being safe from having my skin melted off, they can take their coffee and shove it up their asses.
she may have contributed to her injuries by holding the cup between her legs and not removing her clothing immediately
And how fast can you take off your pants while being seated in a car? Especially if you are buckeled in?...the jury found Liebeck 20 percent at fault in the spill....
Well duh, because she was the one who actually spilled it. But McDonalds were the ones who were selling a dangerous product, so they were found to be 80% at fault.
should be per se proof that it was serving its coffee at a temperature that consumers desired, rather than "too hot."
No, they kept it that hot to save money, not because customers demanded it.
Look, why the hell should any food product thats meant to be immediatly served and consumed run the risk of causing you serious injury?
Is it Ford's fault if you crash your pickup into a parked car at 5 mph? Hell no. Is it their fault if the gas tank explodes? Hell yes. Spilling food or drink on yourself, or someone spilling it on you, is an often enough occurence that you shouldn't have to worry about being burned to the bone because of it.
She didn't sue because she dumped coffee on herself. And she didn't sue because the spilled coffee burned her to the bone. She sued because McDonalds was aware of the problem, and blew her off along with hundereds of other complaints from customers and health inspectors.
Which is more important: you getting hot coffee, or other people not getting 3rd degree burns? If you're going to be that self-centered, just make your own damn coffee.
You shouldn't have to worry about getting 3rd degree burns when you go out to a restaurant, anymore than you should worry about your gas tank exploding if you get into an accident at 5 mph.
She. Was. Burned. To. The. Bone. $300,000 in surgery and skin grafts. Why don't you go boil a pot of water on your stove, then dump it on yourself. Then come back here and tell us it isn't serious.
I've frequently had to debunk the McDonalds coffee legend myself. Funny how its a good example of why we need lawyers and big awards, rather than an example of a frivilous lawsuit.
And what do you want to bet, that he only took 3 pills and quit when he started feeling better. So any bacteria that *were* in his system are now more resistant to antibiotics.
Thanks for the well reasoned defense of the income tax. A lot of people seem to forget that lower income workers pay more on payroll taxes than income taxes.
Ban the problem doctors, as only a few are the source of most of the legitimate claims, from practicing medicine anywhere in the United States. Or at least severly restict what they can do. The article mentioned one bad doctor: he was addicted to painkillers, sewed up a surgical sponge inside a patient, operated on the wrong hip and amputated the wrong leg. But I wonder if the insurance industry doesn't keep these guys around, because it gives then an excuse to raise the rates on all doctors.
It depends on whether or not he followed procedure, and wether or not he knew better. For example, you might have heard about this case, where a girl died after a transplant because the doctor forgot to check to see that the organs were of the right blood type. Yes he's a nice guy, yes he's been a great doctor, but this was still an inexcusable mistake that cost a young girl her life.
Its the job of the lawyers, the expert witnesses, the judge, and the jury to determine wether the act was a simple mistake or oversight, or if it was a case of gross incompetence or negligence. If, for some reason, the judge and the defense attorneys are asleep at the wheel and the case really is without merit, it will be shot down on appeal.
I think the greatest public relations con job has been the one put out by doctors and insurance companies that a) frivilous lawsuits are rampant and b) limiting them will help consumers.
Can't read a doctor's writing, delivery of the wrong medicine to the floor, patient rolls out of bed, patient given medicine too soon or too late, patient is given food when he/she is not suppose to eat, wrong dose of a medicine is given(baby aspirin instead of a whole aspirin)...
But are you sure that those are the sort of "errors" that the study was counting? If you aren't, your debunking ran out of gas at the start of your post.
Take the profit motive out of litigation. If someone TRUELY wrongs you, you deserve compentation for their mistake. This means paying the bill for the continued medical care to correct/deal with the issue.
Lawyers don't need %30+ of a award. Insane amounts (often used to "punish") are wrong.
What, the only punishment that hostpitals and doctors get from screwing you over is being made to provide care for their screwup? How about some compensation for wrecking your life? Example: the doctor in the article who was addicted to painkillers, sewed up a sponge inside a patient, operated on the wrong hip and amputated the wrong leg. Now, if you went in for an operation and the cut off the wrong freaking leg, would you be happy with an "oh, so sorry...here's a peg leg and cane to cope with your loss"? Hell no! The people permenantly removed the wrong fucking leg from your body, and they owe you more compensation than just treatment for their mistake!
a loser pays system will only result in legitimate claims being brought to court.
The hell they will. All it will insure is that only people who can afford to lose lots of money will be able to risk filing a lawsuit. The courts would become a luxury for the rich.
Those who have doubts that they will lose can instead buy insurance.
And just how much would it cost you to get a million dollars worth of insurance? A large company could easily run up that much in legal bills in short order, if they wanted to. 5 lawyers at $1,000 an hour could rack that much up in 5 weeks, and companies can stall suits for months at a time. So once again, the courts would become a luxury for the rich.
But then, I wouldn't expect anything coming from anyone named 'Ann Coulter' to make any sense.
Slashdot Mirror
People cut off fingertips (and more) in garbage disposals.
Not a very relevant example, as you can't do that during normal use (read: not being a dumbass and shoving your hand down the disposal). It is very likely that you will, at some point in your life, accidently spill coffee on yourself, or someone will spill it on you. Would be nice not to have to worry about your skin melting off, wouldn't it? And besides, a garbage disposal is supposed to chop stuff off. Coffee isn't supposed to scald your skin off, its supposed to keep you awake at your boring job.
Well if you really wanted to quibble, all taxes that don't have indirect benefits could be considered user fees. :) Property, sales, etc etc....
If a doctor is found incompetent you revoke their license, or restrict what they can practice.
Easier said than done. And frequently said doctor can just set up shop in another state. To really make this effective, bad doctors need to be banned from practicing medicine anywhere in the country.
Suing just turns the whole thing into a money game.
By not suing you raise costs for both patients and insurance companies. Because if a doctor or hostpital are never forced to pay for negligence, they'll just continue hurting other patients, making both consumers and insurance companies pay for unneeded treatment.
Are you English or retarded? Just because he said he'd make the site for free, he's forced to maintain it for the rest of his life at no charge?
If he'd asked to be compensated for future work, they probably would have agreed.
One of the articles said he tried to do exactly that, and it sounds like they just blew him off.
Look, this site was running on his own servers, maintained on his own time and money, and he was working without a contract. He was prefectly free to shut off the server and demand a hundred billion dollars to turn it back on, and the county was perfectly free to tell him to go to hell. If the county had a problem with this, they should have taken him to civil court. They didn't. Instead, they engaged in actual extortion, actual blackmail, and actually terrorized the guy by throwing him in jail and threatening him with 20 years in prison.
Is the guy perfectly innocent in the whole fiasco? Probably not. But to say that they are both equally guilty is like saying Moe's Tavern is on equal footing with Mr. Burn's Nuclear Plant. Just no sense of proportion.
brutal discrimination based on an immutable characteristic (race, gender
So why don't we have a Violence Against Men Act, since men have always made up the majoraty of victums of violence?
My own (extended) family members insist on taking antibiotics just until they feel better, and then saving the remainder for "next time." Time and again, I've explained that if they don't completely erradicate the bacteria, these antibiotics won't be very effective the next time. They just dismiss what I say as coming from a young "know it all."
Wow. No offense, but your (extended) family members are frikkin idiots. Why not ask them to ask a doctor about it, if they don't believe you? Any self-respecting doctor should read them the riot act.
Lot of good that lawsuit did
Well, I think it's rather obvious: negligence and imcompetence will just continue if left unpunished. So not only do legitimate lawsuites force hostpitals to provide better care, it also saves consumers AND insurance companies money over the long run. How, when the hospital has to cough up a cool $2 million?
Well, how much more did this guy have to spend because of the staff infection? How much more did his insurance company have to spend? How much more will other patients and the insurance company have to spend if more people incur further injuries and illnesses because the doctors or hospital were never forced to clean up their act? And, it would save doctors money too, on their malpractice insurance, if bad doctors were forced to give up their licences.
I think the greatest con job of all time has been the idea that lawsuites by consumers are frivilous and need to be greatly reduced, for the benefit of the customer. All so-called "tort reform" does is take liability and responsiblity away from companies, where it belongs, and pushes it back onto the backs of the consumer.
700 in 10 years. Thays 70 per year. Spread over how many THOUSAND locations??
...the jury found Liebeck 20 percent at fault in the spill....
Don't you know anything about marketing? Like how every responce represents about a thousand people, because most don't bother to write in? Besides, not all of those complaints were from customers: health inspectors complained as well. McDonalds blew them off too.
A spokesman for the National Coffee Association says McDonald's coffee conforms to industry temperature standards.
Perhapse you should have done some more Googling. McDonalds routinely kept their coffee 40 degrees hotter than other restaurants.
Coffee...Hot? DUUUUUUUHHH, I don't know.
Its quite possible to have coffee hot enough to enjoy without having it so hot as to cause third degree burns. Why are people who like near boiling coffee able to drink it without burning themselves? Because they sip it. If they were to chug it all at once, they could say goodbye to the lining on their esophaguses. But if it comes down to these people getting their 190 degree coffee, or me being safe from having my skin melted off, they can take their coffee and shove it up their asses.
she may have contributed to her injuries by holding the cup between her legs and not removing her clothing immediately
And how fast can you take off your pants while being seated in a car? Especially if you are buckeled in?
Well duh, because she was the one who actually spilled it. But McDonalds were the ones who were selling a dangerous product, so they were found to be 80% at fault.
should be per se proof that it was serving its coffee at a temperature that consumers desired, rather than "too hot."
No, they kept it that hot to save money, not because customers demanded it.
Look, why the hell should any food product thats meant to be immediatly served and consumed run the risk of causing you serious injury?
Is it Ford's fault if you crash your pickup into a parked car at 5 mph? Hell no. Is it their fault if the gas tank explodes? Hell yes. Spilling food or drink on yourself, or someone spilling it on you, is an often enough occurence that you shouldn't have to worry about being burned to the bone because of it.
moron.
She didn't sue because she dumped coffee on herself. And she didn't sue because the spilled coffee burned her to the bone. She sued because McDonalds was aware of the problem, and blew her off along with hundereds of other complaints from customers and health inspectors.
Which is more important: you getting hot coffee, or other people not getting 3rd degree burns? If you're going to be that self-centered, just make your own damn coffee.
You shouldn't have to worry about getting 3rd degree burns when you go out to a restaurant, anymore than you should worry about your gas tank exploding if you get into an accident at 5 mph.
She. Was. Burned. To. The. Bone. $300,000 in surgery and skin grafts. Why don't you go boil a pot of water on your stove, then dump it on yourself. Then come back here and tell us it isn't serious.
I've frequently had to debunk the McDonalds coffee legend myself. Funny how its a good example of why we need lawyers and big awards, rather than an example of a frivilous lawsuit.
And what do you want to bet, that he only took 3 pills and quit when he started feeling better. So any bacteria that *were* in his system are now more resistant to antibiotics.
Thanks for the well reasoned defense of the income tax. A lot of people seem to forget that lower income workers pay more on payroll taxes than income taxes.
It depends. Was it a simple mistake or oversight, or something inexcusable like transplanting organs with the wrong blood type?
Ban the problem doctors, as only a few are the source of most of the legitimate claims, from practicing medicine anywhere in the United States. Or at least severly restict what they can do. The article mentioned one bad doctor: he was addicted to painkillers, sewed up a surgical sponge inside a patient, operated on the wrong hip and amputated the wrong leg. But I wonder if the insurance industry doesn't keep these guys around, because it gives then an excuse to raise the rates on all doctors.
It depends on whether or not he followed procedure, and wether or not he knew better. For example, you might have heard about this case, where a girl died after a transplant because the doctor forgot to check to see that the organs were of the right blood type. Yes he's a nice guy, yes he's been a great doctor, but this was still an inexcusable mistake that cost a young girl her life.
Its the job of the lawyers, the expert witnesses, the judge, and the jury to determine wether the act was a simple mistake or oversight, or if it was a case of gross incompetence or negligence. If, for some reason, the judge and the defense attorneys are asleep at the wheel and the case really is without merit, it will be shot down on appeal.
I think the greatest public relations con job has been the one put out by doctors and insurance companies that a) frivilous lawsuits are rampant and b) limiting them will help consumers.
What a stupid idea. Nothing like pissing off a large group of people who a) tend to have more money b) know their rights and c) know the legal system.
Besides, what good is denying service to a patent or accounting lawyer going to do for you?
Can't read a doctor's writing, delivery of the wrong medicine to the floor, patient rolls out of bed, patient given medicine too soon or too late, patient is given food when he/she is not suppose to eat, wrong dose of a medicine is given(baby aspirin instead of a whole aspirin)...
But are you sure that those are the sort of "errors" that the study was counting? If you aren't, your debunking ran out of gas at the start of your post.
Take the profit motive out of litigation. If someone TRUELY wrongs you, you deserve compentation for their mistake. This means paying the bill for the continued medical care to correct/deal with the issue.
Lawyers don't need %30+ of a award. Insane amounts (often used to "punish") are wrong.
What, the only punishment that hostpitals and doctors get from screwing you over is being made to provide care for their screwup? How about some compensation for wrecking your life? Example: the doctor in the article who was addicted to painkillers, sewed up a sponge inside a patient, operated on the wrong hip and amputated the wrong leg. Now, if you went in for an operation and the cut off the wrong freaking leg, would you be happy with an "oh, so sorry...here's a peg leg and cane to cope with your loss"? Hell no! The people permenantly removed the wrong fucking leg from your body, and they owe you more compensation than just treatment for their mistake!
a loser pays system will only result in legitimate claims being brought to court.
The hell they will. All it will insure is that only people who can afford to lose lots of money will be able to risk filing a lawsuit. The courts would become a luxury for the rich.
Those who have doubts that they will lose can instead buy insurance.
And just how much would it cost you to get a million dollars worth of insurance? A large company could easily run up that much in legal bills in short order, if they wanted to. 5 lawyers at $1,000 an hour could rack that much up in 5 weeks, and companies can stall suits for months at a time. So once again, the courts would become a luxury for the rich.
But then, I wouldn't expect anything coming from anyone named 'Ann Coulter' to make any sense.
Your statement only applies if you have buttloads of money. As most people do not have buttloads of money, your point is mostly irrelevant.