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Re: The McDonald's incident



Regarding the "R word" debate - reminds me a lot of
the "W word" debate a few years back. Welfare, that
is. Our elected reps have enthusiastically reduced the
number of individuals on welfare. How about
corporations feeding at the public till via tax
breaks, etc which have been pretty convincingly
demonstrated to have no net effect on new jobs. To me,
the R argument has been similarly weighted against the
individual and in favor of the corporation. I would
suggest that those who have the most to gain by the
use or sale of a product have the greatest R. There is
long-accepted doctrine called "foreseeable misuse"
that courts have held for decades applies to the
producers of goods. McD's clearly (IMHO) dropped the
ball in this case. Sounds to me like some of the
contributors would like to see kind of an industrial
Darwinism at work. If you're dumb enough to buy a
Pinto with no gas tank shield, you deserve to be
incinerated if someone rear-ends you.
--- "Bernard G. Cleyet & Nancy Ann Seese"
<georgeann@REDSHIFT.COM> wrote:
Interleaved:

Hugh Haskell wrote:

Stuart Leinoff wrote:

If she was jostled by someone, then, perhaps that
person bears some
-------------------- cut

take-out customers that the coffee was cool by the
time they reached the office to drink it.

Who said she stored the cup between her legs?

Reminds me of the Mark Twain test.

That is a very unusual
thing for a woman to do, because they wear skirts
at least part of
the time, which makes such things rather
difficult, so the seldom get
into hat habit, that men have. And why would she
have had to have
done that in order to burn herself in the groin. I
have spilled
coffee on that part of my anatomy (fortunately,
not with her results)
when my cup was up by my chest. It's not where the
coffee starts
from, it's where it ends up. If the slip or jostle
or hit that causes
the spill launches the coffee on the right
trajectory, it will end up
in your lap.


Even if McD was deemed to be at fault, to what
degree are they
liable? I would
-------------------------- cut

So please don't throw out the baby with the bath
water. We may have
to tweak the system a bit to keep attorney's fees
from getting
outrageous--I have heard rumors of attorney's fees
of 50-60% of the

may be, if so I'm sure the plaintiffs signed such a
contract.

My experience: I signed for a standard (then) 1/3
fee. Half way through the case my attorney stopped
keeping expense records because they'd exceed any
hope of recovery. He ended up collecting
about $7k on an attempt to recover my ~ $57K loss.
The $14K I got was nice. I certainly don't begrudge
attorney contingency fees.

An interesting read. "A Civil Action." The Woburn
toxic legacy -- The lead attorney for a time during
the years he spent attempting to recover
compensation for the victims of grace's water
pollution
had to sleep in his office because his home was
repossessed!



settlement, and I think that is wrong. But even if
the contingency
fee system gives rise to some frivolous suits, and
I'm sure it does,
it is too valuable to get rid of, because it is
the only way people
of modest means or less have access to the courts.
And they are the
ones who need it more than anyone else.

Hear hear!



Hugh

--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want
to, Windows because they
have to..

******************************************************


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