.
flying into los angeles the other night, i happened to be waiting outside the rear lavatory at just the precise moment that we hit the only patch of turbulence in an otherwise calm flight—my timing tends to be good that way—resulting in my getting pitched against the bulkhead and ending up with a nice, colorful lump in the middle of my forehead.
all day today, it’s been nothing but “oh my god, what happened?”, with the follow-up question almost always being some variation of, “so what’s the airline gonna give you to make up for it?"
i guess i tend to be of the “shit happens” school of thought when it comes to stuff like this—it never occurred to me to even mention the incident to the airline, much less try to extort money or tickets outta them. this apparently makes me, by current american standards, a sucker.
a co-worker told me her mother's the same way--seems she was having dinner at a restaurant a year or so ago and inadvertently swallowed a bay leaf that was in her soup; it got stuck in her throat and she had to be taken to the emergency room to have it removed.
the restaurant tracked her down and not only paid her medical bills, but insisted that she accept a settlement check of $3,000 as their apology to her. when she refused, saying it was her own damn fault and she shoulda been paying more attention, they hounded her for a year until she finally accepted their check.
i haven't been able to get that story outta my mind all day. think about it--some woman does something stupid, and the business in which she happens to do it falls all over itself thrusting thousands of dollars at her and counting themselves lucky for having gotten off so easy.
these stories, i think, speak volumes about the litigious mentality that’s so pervasive in america today—shit, in fact, doesn’t just happen; it’s gotta be somebody’s fault, and somebody’s gotta pay. it really got me to thinking about how much the fear of even frivolous litigation must drive up the cost of everything in ways we don’t even know.
the funny thing is, i was arguing with an attorney friend just the other day—a good liberal—about tort reform; he, naturally, insisted with a straight face that malpractice lawsuits and defensive medicine were negligible factors in the high cost of healthcare in america.
i wish I’d had the bay leaf story to throw at him.
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2 comments:
The insurance industry loves you and people like you.
You have bought the tort reform line that the insurance industry has been pushing, hook, line, and sinker.
You are the person who poisons the jury pool so that meritorious cases never get a dime....worried about insurance costs and demanding people "take responsibility" for their actions while ignoring the duty of care and negligence of businesses and employers.
Insurance costs have risen significantly even as tort payouts have lowered dramatically.
But, yeah, it makes a good story. You can point to that bay leaf and say people need to take responsibility for their lives.
I know you will never read it, but the I commend to you "Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis" by Michael McCann and William Haltom. (University of Chicago Press, 2004).
If you would care to read it, you would find that your entire blog posting is factually false on just about every point.
This is one of the things that is so infuriating, you spout off about your view of the world without any empirical or factual support beyond your own limited observations.
How many frivolous cases do you know of? How many times have you been sued?
And, more to the point, how many times have you actually seen meritorious cases defensed because of people like you?
I can tell you not a lot of frivolous cases are taken on contingency because the lawyer does not get paid then. I can also tell you that I have seen plenty meritorious cases where the insurance company low balls a settlement offer because of people like you in the jury pool.
noblesavage:
i have all sorts of problems with your comment, not the least of which is your assertion--especially considering all you know about me--that merely because i question the state of litigiosness in america, i should automatically be lumped in with all the reactionary idiots out there who are unable or unwilling to distinguish a tort case which has merit from one which does not.
secondly, there's nothing "factually false" in my blogpost; on the contrary, i recounted two stories which actually happened--in the first, i got hurt due to the fault of no one, and virtually everyone to whom i told the story told me i was an idiot because i didn't threaten a lawsuit in order to try to get something outta the airline; and
in the second, a woman got hurt due to her own negligence, and the business establishment in which said injury occurred fell all over itself pushing money at her in obvious hopes of avoiding a more costly lawsuit which their (and/or their lawyers') previous experience had obviously taught them was more likely than not to occur.
what's factually false there, noblesavage?
now, if you wanna quibble with my extrapolation of these two incidents (in addition to the infamous $3 million cup of hot coffee and countless other legal atrocities with which i and every other person who watches the news is acquainted) into a theory that we've become way too sue-happy in america, that's another subject altogether, and one i will tackle in part 2 of this comment.
[sorry, i ran outta steam--it's late and i'm tired.]
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