A Montana jury has found the maker of Louisville Slugger baseball bats failed to adequately warn about the dangers the product can pose, awarding a family $850,000 for the 2003 death of their son in a baseball game.
…Brandon Patch’s family argued that aluminum baseball bats are dangerous because they cause the ball to travel at a greater speed.
They argued their 18-year-old son did not have enough time to react to the ball being struck before it hit him in the head while he was pitching in an American Legion baseball game in Helena in 2003.
Pitching is dangerous, as I can attest after more than my share of close calls in my now finished career. This is not news to anyone, and no silly little warning label that no one will ever read is going to make this more obvious than it already is. Anyone who has ever taken their life in their hands and stepped on the mound knows this already. It’s a statistically small but very real risk that comes with the game, of that same type that comes with any sport.
The death of a young player is tragic, but so are silly lawsuits that seek to assuage grief by falsely assigning blame.
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A ridiculous lawsuit ends justly, for once:
Earlier this year, we wrote about a woman named Beverly Stayart, who had sued Yahoo over what she found when she did a search on her name. Her complaint was that some of the links advertised porn sites and possibly contained malware, and that this was a violation of her trademark and privacy rights. After the posting, we received a number of comments on that post, and more recently, received a legal letter from the woman’s lawyer, demanding that we remove many of the comments or get sued. With the help of Paul Alan Levy at Public Citizen, we replied to the letter, refusing to remove the comments, and detailing our reasons why. To date, we have not been sued over this, but you may want to take our reporting on the subject with whatever caveats, given these facts.
Earlier this week, the court dismissed the lawsuit against Yahoo and denied Stayart’s request to refile. The court had trouble with the idea that this was a trademark claim, noting that just because she does not like how her name is shown, it does not create a trademark violation. There are two major problems: (1) she doesn’t appear to be using her name in commerce in this particular field and (2) there is little to no likelihood of confusion. From the ruling:
Now if only we can make her pay for her frivolous harassment of Yahoo, techdirt and who knows who else.
Here’s some sue bait: Beverly Stayart is a boob.
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A 16-year-old boy in Maryland committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with his step-fathers gun. The father demanded that the step-father take responsibility, and has launched a crusade – culminating in a $50,000 jury award – to prove that he is at fault. Underlying his efforts is a clear anti-gun subtext.
Does it really make sense to place responsibility for a teenager’s suicide (we’re talking about a deliberate act here, not an accident) on the availability of a gun? Logic suggests not. An individual determined to commit suicide will use whatever means is available. Guns are easiest and are not surprisingly used in a majority of suicides, but plenty of people find other methods.
If the step-father did not have a gun, surely he has knives that could have been used. The absense of the gun in question would not have made suicide impossible, or even unreasonably more difficult. It is therefore illogical to conclude that the step-father, simply by having an accessible gun, is responsible for the child’s act. We must not allow the need to assign blame for one tragic act compound the situation with an even more tragic assault on personal liberty.
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Some of you probably thought I was crazy when, in a recent post about two Best Buy employees fired for stopping an armed shoplifter, I speculated that “if the criminal had suffered serious injury, a lawsuit would have been quickly forthcoming.”
This story (via Overlawyered) illustrates why you should not doubt me.
Zeilinski is serving an 8-22 year sentence for the robbery that happened in November of 2007. According to police and court records, Zeilinski came in wearing a mask and carrying a knife that he put to the throats of several employees, threatening to kill them before stealing cigarettes and cash. As he was leaving–reportedly still making threats–one of the young clerks grabbed a gun and shot him in the arm and back. Zeilinski’s lawyer says his client is asking in excess of $125,000 for pain and suffering and emotional distress.
It doesn’t matter that he’ll likely get nothing (we hope), as the store will still have to waste time and money defending against this frivolous suit. If there were any sanity in the world, the lawyer who filed it would be disbarred.
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Woman who slipped at dolphin show sues zoo
A Chicago woman on Tuesday filed suit against Brookfield Zoo claiming she was injured after she slipped and fell on a wet walkway at a dolphin show at the zoo in August 2008. The plaintiff, Allecyn Edwards, is seeking more than $50,000 in damages for her injuries.
According to the lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court on Aug. 18, Edwards visited the zoo on Aug. 20, 2008, and attended one of the dolphin shows. While walking in the bleacher section of the exhibit area, Edwards fell and sustained injuries not specified in the lawsuit.
…
In this latest lawsuit, Edwards alleges that the zoo was negligent in “recklessly and willfully” training its dolphins to splash water at spectators and onto the walkways, not warning spectators to beware of the slippery floor and not providing slip-proof mats or strips for spectator safety.
How embarrassing it must be to admit that you need someone to inform you to be careful on a slippery floor.
A commenter at Overlawyered asks if there is still liability if they didn’t do it on porpoise. I hate myself for chuckling.
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The moron is also suing his wife:
A family demands $10 million from Honda, claiming a side window shattered and injured them when a tornado picked up their Honda Odyssey, which “remained airborne for a few seconds before plummeting to the ground and landing on all four wheels. Upon impact, the driver’s side passenger window shattered and glass flew into the car.”
Two girls suffered eye injuries from the glass and three other family members suffered face, chest and head lacerations, the family says in Prince George’s County Court. One girl lost her left eye and another one needed eye surgery.
The father says he warned his wife – a defendant – not to go to the “back to school night” because there was a tornado warning, but she “was upset at the program for not properly caring for her child and decided it was necessary to drive her children to the program. … A few minutes after her departure, defendant Achumba felt a shove from the rear of the Odyssey, and it was lifted into the air.”
The Achumba family says the tempered glass Honda uses in side windows to reduce costs is not strong enough. They say Honda should use laminated glass, as it does for windshields.
Frivolous lawsuits are out of control. We desperately need a loser pays system, though even that won’t solve the mess itself, as many of these frivolous lawsuits are rewarded by idiotic juries.
Hat-tip: Overlawyered
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Stephen Gardner of the Center for Science in the Public Interest hysterically declares, “Denny’s: Public Health Enemy # 1”
The Center for Science in the Public Interest filed suit today in the Superior Court of New Jersey in Middlesex County, seeking to compel Denny’s to disclose on menus the amount of sodium in each of its meals and to place a notice on its menus warning about high sodium levels. CSPI is working with the New Jersey firms of Galex Wolf, LLC and Williams Cuker Berezofsky.
The great majority of Denny’s meals is dangerously high in sodium, putting its customers at greater risk of high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke.
…
The plaintiff, Nick DeBenedetto, is a 48-year-old resident of Tinton Falls, NJ, who has eaten for many years at Denny’s restaurants in East Brunswick and Brick, NJ. Nick takes a prescription medication to control his high blood pressure and at home does not cook with salt or use the salt shaker. Some of his favorite Denny’s items, such as Moons Over My Hammy or the Super Bird turkey sandwich, contain far more than 1,500 mg of sodium—even without soup, salad, fried onion rings, or other side dishes.
“I was astonished—I mean, literally floored—to find that these simple sandwiches have more salt than someone in my condition should have in a whole day,” Nick says. “It’s as if Denny’s is stacking the deck against people like me. I never would have selected those items had I known.”
Here’s an idea. If a customer wants to know something and it isn’t stated on the menu, they can ask. If they don’t get an answer, then don’t eat the food. If you choose to eat it anyway, then you’re saying that knowing that piece of information just isn’t all that important to you as a customer. If CSPI has a problem with people eating food without knowing every single ingredient in its exact proportions, they should encourage people to demand such information as a condition for their purchases, not force it through frivolous lawsuit and nanny-state regulations.
Another problem with these nannies, despite their fundamental distaste for freedom, is that they can’t get their stories straight. Salt has gone from good to bad to good to bad so many times it will make your head spin. As such, I’d take hysterical proclamations about its dangers with, well, a grain of salt.
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Frivolous lawsuit now dead for good:
CommentsThe Supreme Court announced Monday it will not give further consideration to a lawsuit brought by a fired CIA agent and her husband against high ranking Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney.
The decision is a victory for Cheney and his former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. They and nine unnamed co-defendants were sued by Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband Joseph after her CIA cover was leaked to reporters.
…The couple sued seeking unspecified financial damages but their lawsuit was dismissed by a federal trial court judge. That decision that was upheld last year by an appellate court. Monday’s ruling by the Supreme Court, made as usual without comment, leaves the lower court rulings in place.
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This is ridiculous:
Convicted last year of intoxication manslaughter for the death of her boyfriend, the 21-year-old daughter of a state district judge is suing the truck driver she ran into during a drunken driving crash.
Elizabeth Shelton, the daughter of juvenile judge Pat Shelton, is accusing truck driver Lance Bennett of negligence in the Oct. 23, 2007, wreck that killed her boyfriend Matthew McNiece.
Shelton had a blood alcohol concentration more than three times the legal limit, two tests showed. She was sentenced to eight years’ probation and had to serve four months in jail.
Shelton, her family and the family of the boyfriend who was killed are suing for $20,000 for the destruction of the Lexus SUV she was driving and an undetermined amount for mental anguish, pain and suffering.
Bennett was driving the box truck that Shelton rear-ended on the Southwest Freeway near Kirby around 2 a.m.
Bennett’s attorney, John Havins, said the lawsuit, filed in October, was the last chance to make a claim before the statute of limitations ran out.
He noted that Shelton named 16 defendants, including insurance companies and banks. “They’re just throwing everything against the wall to see if anything sticks,” Havins said.
Throwing everything against the wall is a common legal tactic for money-grubbing ambulance chasers. The problem is that our system does absolutely nothing to discourage this behavior. The people who are penalized are the victims of frivolous lawsuits who must pay their legal fees regardless of the outcome. The obvious answer would be to adopt a loser-pays system, where the loser in a suit pays the legal fees of the other party. It’s bad enough that this horrible excuse for a human being only spent 4 months in jail for killing her boyfriend, but now the legal system will condone hero victimizing all over again the people her reckless behavior negatively affected? This is unacceptable.
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…of frivolous lawsuits:
A man says he was so consumed by the spirit of God that he fell and hit his head while at a Knoxville church.
Now he wants Lakewind Church to pay $2.5 million for medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering he says he’s endured from his injuries.
Hallelujah!
Hat tip: Crush Liberalism
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science and work in public policy, but please don't hold that against me.
