Because there is money to be made.

And it's the U.S.

 

 

 

Part of the problem goes back to basic civics, that you have to have an educated populace for democracy to work. Since we don't, juries can get some very strange combinations of folks. The other is just the vast differential between the poor and the wealthy. Many of the award settlements are just juries feeling like Robin Hood, taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. What's a couple million to McDonald's?

 

 

 

Not to put words in his mouth (so if this is totally opposite of your point please point that out), but the problem as I see it is with the people in the system as opposed to the system itself. Some people just want to screw corporations, some people seems to have sympathy towards others' stupidity, and some people are just igronant and/or stupid. 

 

IMO, the right to sue is a good one, and being able to sue over any little thing is alright, its just we need the proper people in place is ensure stupid claims (such as the one above about the lady spilling the water on the ground) don't make it past filing the claim.

Even if  physically possible the amount of energy required for McDonalds to heat water to a temperature within an order of magnitude of the sun would have run them broke. 

 

I should have been a lawyer. Most juries sadly get fooled by pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo. All they see is two nerds arguing about things they don't understand, and the only standard they can use to learn about subjects over their heads are "expert witnesses.' You can pay an expert witness to say the sky is purple (well it is some days, pretty).....part of the problem with medical suits...the juries have no knowledge of what's actually being argued.

 

 

He hit the nail on the head.  End of discussion.  All of the legit lawsuits that were actually worthy are not sexy, and can't be used by Fox News to rile up their base.  

 

The alternative is to take away all rights from the consumer and allow big business to wrong people and  environment with zero consequence.  Yeah, that'd be great.

 

What we need is just a bit more discretion for the judge to toss suits that he knows are frivelous.  

Our courts look nothing like this. Lawyers are given too much freedom by judges because they are their peers. Because of that latitude, the major of lawsuits are not legit anymore. People know a cash cow when they see one, so they pile on.

 

Reasonable legislated regulation of industry by informed representatives is just as viable option for keeping the big guy from abusing the poor. Of course we know that our legislatures are just as political (or corrupt) as the courtrooms.

 

It's variable from place to place, but I'm from Illinois so my faith in the system is pretty poor.

You don't even have to add anything to the water to enable its temperature to be raised to over 100°C, nor do you need to pressurise it - you can do it in a standard cup in a standard microwave oven - it is called superheating and it is very dangerous because the superheated liquid is extremely volatile - simply adding sugar or any rough-surface into the liquid will cause it to violently boil spraying superheated water and water vapour out of the cup.

 

The boiling point of any liquid is the temperature at which the liquid turns to a gas - in boiling water the gas released is steam and the water temperature will be at 100°C when the gas separates from the liquid. The release of energy in the steam bubbles is equal to the heat energy going into the water, therefore once bubbles form in the water its temperature cannot be raised above the boiling point. The bubbles form at what is called nucleation points - imperfections in the surface of the container that trap small pockets of air which "seeds" the formation of steam bubbles.

 

However, in superheated water there are no bubbles so the heat energy going into the water has no release and the water temperature rises to over 100°C. This is because the water in a microwave is heated from the centre of the volume of water so the temperature of the container can be below the boiling point, preventing the formation of bubbles.

 

Superheating can occur in easier in liquid that has been temperature cycled without disturbing the container, since this degases the liquid, reducing the liquid's ability to form bubbles as it approaches the boiling point.

 

 

 

If people outside of the US could do it as easily as we do, they'd be doing it too.  After three years in law school, my general impression is if the law protects stupid people, then stupid people will use it to protect themselves from their own stupidity.  Sorry to say, but eventually this will spread to Europe at the very least.   My favorite is the three or four fat teenagers who sued McDonald's for making them fat.  Although the woman who tripped over her own child in a furniture store and then successfully sued the furniture store is a close second.

 

THIS.  There's way too many lawyers out there, and every one of them wants to earn a living.  So they create work for themselves.  How?  Hel-LO frivolous lawsuits!

 

 

:P

For you maybe, (not that you'll appear particularly receptive to other peoples answers), people sue for compensation for loss caused by the negligence of others. That negligence is often driven by greed so it is only fair that those greedy people are made to pay for causing the accident.

 

If someone runs into the back of your car you expect that person's insurance company to pay for the damage repair, and you certainly don't expect to have to pay for the repair of the other car (you have already decided balme in this case - it was not a knock-for-knock blameless accident - a rear-end shunt is always the fault of the person who shunted you.). If you receive a physical injury in that accident you will get NHS treatment so why claim for compensation for that? Because of loss of earnings, because "out-of-pocket" expenses caused by having restricted movement or no transport, maybe from now on you have to have specially adapted equipment to enable you to go about your daily life - this costs you money that you would not have to spend if the accident never happened - and because perhaps the quality of your life is now restricted through no fault of your own. (How can you put a price on quality of life? There is no magic formula and no figure will ever be right, but I can tell you it isn't "nothing").

 

So don't give me "accidents happen" because there is no such thing as a blame-free accident - all man-made accidents are caused by the carelessness, negligence or down-right stupidity of someone, and by that, most accidents are preventable (all are preventable in hindsight).- if you can prove that the person responsible did not take proper precautions to ensure your safety then you have a right to compensation for their neglect... the Prosecution services may even do that for you where criminal neglect is involved.

 

Modern employment law is structured so the company owners, management and directors are responsible for the safety of their workforce - this is not so we can sue the nuts off them when we have an accident, it is to ensure that they comply with safety procedures to protect themselves from being sued. They in turn place that responsibility back onto the employee - all employees are responsible for their own safety and that of their co-workers. This means that you have the right to refuse to do something you deem as unsafe. We have a Manual Handling safety demonstration every year - if I then put my back put lifting a PC monitor that is now my fault and I cannot sue the company (in fact they could fire me for breaking safety codes and rendering myself unfit for work).

 

 

Point of order please. This would be described as vengeance and taking the law into your own hands (so to speak)

Obviously you've never had to leave your car parked in a hospital carpark for 48 hours while you undergo an emergency operation. You even have to pay to watch television during your stay. These are some of the valid out of pocket expenses that you are entitled to claim for - since you would not have had to pay them if the accident didn't happen.

 

Statutory Sick Pay is £75.40 a week and is only payable for the first 28 weeks.

 

As we have been discussing in another thread - the USA does not have a national health system. That accounts for a third of the population of your "modern countries".

 

People do not make claims for telephone-number amounts - they are simply not allowed to - they can only claim for compensation for expenses and nothing more - these are called Compensatory Damages. The woman in the McDonald's case originally claimed for $20K - that is not an unreasonable amount of money (health care, loss of earnings etc.) - McD's refused to pay and lost the case. They had to pay out eight times that to cover the expense of forcing the claimant to pursue the case. Making that claim, or accepting the payout, has nothing to do with greed.

 

The courts can also award Exemplary Damages (or Punitive Damages in the USA) in cases where the defendant's conduct was calculated to make a profit for himself - these are the silly numbers you read about in the red-tops and the value of them is not the "fault" of the person making the claim - they are based upon the "greed" of the person who was responsible for the accident and take into account the amount of money they earned as a result of their irresponsible action. The purpose of this is to stop them from doing it again. In the McD case that was $2.7 million - or 2 days sales of coffee and it was imposed as a punishment on the company for their action - she never claimed for that amount, it was awarded by the court.

 

The system is geared towards big-business and against unreasonable and excessive claims. The cases where the little-guy wins big bucks are very rare, but when they do it makes the headlines - being awarded £3K for a minor accident isn't going to sell newspapers or cause indignant outrage in the minds of Sun and Daily Record readers

 

 

 

 

Perhaps I shouldn't comment across threads but I was obviously being unsuccessfully sarcastic about taking a life for a life.