The sad thing is that the guy is a JUDGE!

Last evening on AB someone cut themselves on broken glass from two jars of pasta sauce. They received 7 stitches in their hand and wanted to sue everyone. Just accept it for what it was, an unfortunate mishap.

John Edwards made his millions suing doctors who didn't do enough C-sections to prevent cerebral palsy. As a result of his extortion, the C-section rate went way up. The cerebral palsy rate stayed the same. Edwards hasn't returned his millions, of course, because he's got a dollar sign where his conscience belongs.

I work for a rental company. We rent cars on a no pet no smoking policy. We make our customers sign a contract understanding the agreement. All of our cars have a stain repellent applied to the interior because of the fact that many types of ppl rent the same car and it helps with detailing. A customer smoked in our car and caught it on fire. We are being sued for having the stain repellent as a fire accelerent. The interior wouldn't have caught fire as fast if it wasn't applied.

Earlier this week, a guy sued McDonalds for giving him a quarter pounder with cheese, instead of without cheese. He says he's allergic to cheese. 1)He ordered through the drive-thru, and the speaker tends to garble. 2)He didn't say "quarter pounder" he said "quarter pounder without cheese," which is dumb when there is one with cheese. 3)He didn't check his food. Come on! If you're allergic to something, you darned well check before you take a bite. He said that he took the food home, put in a movie in a darkened room, and unwrapped and ate the burger. He couldn't "see" the cheese. McDonalds apologized for the mistake, and offered to pay for his ER visit. But NO, that wasn't good enough! He wants $10 million for "pain and suffering." And, his mother and friend who were in the car with him want money too, for their emotional stress, and having to take him to the hospital. This just boggles the mind. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY???

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.