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by Highlander is semi-retired from AB on August 18th, 2007

Highlander is semi-retired from AB

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A customer sued a dry cleaner for $54 million over a missing pair of pants. What other stupid lawsuits have you heard of?

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  • by Anonymous on August 18th, 2007

    Anonymous

    I agree that the $54 million pant lawsuit is ridicules, but many lawsuits are misconstrued in the media to make them sound ridicules.

    For example, remember the infamous person got burned by McDonald's coffee case? That is played up as the poster child for frivolous lawsuits, yet was far from frivoulous. Here is why:

    McDonald's was cited over 3000 times for having their coffee too hot. Each citation only had a $19 fine. McDonald's sells nearly $80,000 worth of coffee each day, and has found that sales are higher if the make their coffee too hot so that it is not cold by the time people get it to work. So it is not like McDonald's was not on warning that their coffee was too hot and could burn.

    Oh, and the victim is permenantly scarred. She had months of rehabilitation. And in the end she did not even get enough money to cover all of her expenses.

    The reality is that businesses choose their practices by a cost benefit analysis (which is completely logical). For example, a car manufacturer may decide not to put in a safety device that costs $10 per car because it would be cheaper just to pay the victims. The average person thinks this is cruel, and that you cannot put a price on a persons life. The reality is that we do it everyday.

    If you are one of the people who thinks a business should not use a cost benefit analysis, I urge you to imagine the alternative. Certainly every manufacturer could sell cars built like tanks with every safety feature known to man. The problem is that that would prevent people from having the choice of buying lower priced cars.

    My point is simply that you should the facts of a lawsuit before you decide whether or not it is frivolous. There are certainly a lot of frivolouos lawsuits, but there are also a lot of meritorious lawsuits that get blamed for being frivoulous.

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    • Interesting; thank you.

      Highlander is semi-retired from AB

      by Highlander is semi-retired from AB on August 19th, 2007

    • Ok, I just want to clarify some things.
      Here are the facts:
      Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old resident of Albuquerque,
      New Mexico, visited a drive-through window of a McDonald’s restaurant with her grandson Chris. Her grandson, the driver of the vehicle, placed the order for breakfast. When breakfast came at the drive-through window, Chris handed a hot cup of coffee to Stella.
      Because there were no cup holders in the vehicle, Chris pulled over so that Stella could put cream and sugar in her coffee. Stella took the lid off the coffee cup she held in her lap, and the hot coffee spilled all over her, and she suffered third-degree burns on her legs, thighs, groin, and buttocks. Stella was driven to the emergency room and was hospitalized for seven days. She required
      medical treatment and later returned to the hospital to have skin grafts. She suffered permanent scars from the incident.

      Stella asked McDonald’s to pay her medical costs of several thousand dollars.

      Stella did get more than enough money to cover her expenses.
      She was awarded $200,000 compensatory damages (reduced $40,000 for her own negligence). She won $2.7 million in punitive damages. The trial court judge reduced the amount of punitive damages to $480,000, which is three times the amount of compensatory damages.

      There needs to be a common sense law. You can't sue successful companies because you did something stupid.
      It's called responsibility.
      The lady made a bad mistake. The end.

      Now how is McDonald's responsible for that?

      listenthinkreply

      by listenthinkreply on May 12th, 2011

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