WestCon Tribune

JUNE 2004 NEWS

LOONY LAWSUITS

Addicted to Cable - A West Bend, Wisconsin man threatened to sue a cable company for $5,000 or three computers and a lifetime supply of free internet service as part of a settlement for his alleged TV addiction, his wife's 50-pound weight gain and his children's laziness. The man said he plans to sue because his cable connection remained active four years after he tried to get it cancelled. The result was that his family received free cable from August 1999 to December 23, 2003. "I believe the reason I smoke and drink every day and my wife is overweight is because we watched TV every day for the last four years", the man stated in a written complaint against the company and in a police report. "The reason I am suing is they didn't let me make a decision as to what was best for myself and my family. They have been keeping cable coming into my home for four years after I asked them to turn it off. His name was removed from billing at the time of his request but not from the cable service. He claims he called several times to get the service disconnected because he felt he had become addicted.

Don't Snicker - A woman filed a lawsuit against the transit system in Juneau, Alaska, because a driver's attempt to enforce the no-eating rule on a bus caused her at least $50,000 worth of emotional distress. She was trying to eat a Snickers Bar.

A Bad Potato - An inmate in a jail near San Diego, while awaiting trial for raping an underage girl, filed a lawsuit against the facility because of the mental stress and anguish of finding a fly in his mashed potatoes.

Pickled Justice - A West Virginia convenience store worker won $2,699,000 in punitive damages after injuring her back opening a pickle jar. She also received $130,066 in compensation and $170,000 for emotional distress. A state supreme court justice dissented, calling the award "outrageous". The court, however, upheld most of the punitive damages: $2.2 million.

Can We Sue God?  A federal judge has once again rejected a lawsuit filed by a Pennsylvania man who claims his life was ruined by a corporation after it fired him more than thirty years ago. The same man also sued God for taking "no corrective action" against his enemies, and he demands God compensate him by returning his youth and granting him guitar-playing skills.

Costs Rising for Frivolous Lawsuits

An 18-year-old teen from Mission Viejo, California, made more than one million dollars off the stock market but had to return all of his profits because the feds ruled he earned them via fraudulent means. The teen was an avid baseball player, too, but because of the charges, he could no longer play for his high school team. Naturally, the ball player sued the high school, arguing that it had deprived him of a potential pro career. (With no team to play for, obviously, no pro scouts would be watching him.) As for the award sought? $50 million, or the amount the teen projected he would  have made if he would  have been discovered by scouts and would have made a major-league club.

No matter how many "woulds", if there's a will, there's a way to sue someone. And those on the side of tort reform are saying enough is enough: the unchecked ability to sue, combined with jury membersŐ willingness to provide absurdly enormous awards, is running rampant - and sanity must be restored. The suits represent an abuse of the original intent of the system, they argue - an abuse that the average American pays in soaring insurance premiums and pass along costs to consumers.

"Juries don't realize there's no such thing as something for nothing," says Randy Cassingham, Colorado researcher who has found cases such as those summarized above and has posted them online at Stellaawards.com. "The same juries that award millions for a ridiculous case curse their insurance companies for their rising premiums. They did it to themselves."

Financial Costs: With his "Stella" awards - named for Stella Liebeck, who in 1992 spilled McDonald's coffee on her lap, sued the company and was awarded $2.9 million from a jury- Randy Cassingham is rasing awareness. The New York Manhattan Institute for Policy Research reports that 19 percent of tort costs in 2001 went to plaintiffs' attorneys, adding up to $40 billion in revenues, or double the revenues of Coca-Cola during the same period. Class-action lawsuit lawyers are earning as much as $30,000 per hour, the institute reports, About 72% of doctors view patients as potential adversaries in malpractice litigation, and a large percentage limit their practices for fear of being sued, according to a survey from the Napa, CA Doctor's Company, the nations's top physician-owned medical malpractice carrier.

Torts represent 2.23% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, and the cost of torts rose to $809 per American in 2002 vs. $12 per American in 1950, according to Towers Perrin, a Stamford, Conn. global professional services firm. Corporate insurance liability premiums went up 33 % in 2003, the firm claims.

Maureen Martin, senior fellow on legal affairs for the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank, cites a suit against Penthouse magazine as one of the more absurd in recent memory. The magazine claimed to run topless photos of tennis star Anna Kournikova, but as it turned out, the photos were of another woman. A lawyer sued Penthouse on behalf of magazine-buying males who paid solely for the photos of Kournikova.ociates, Inc.

IDEAS? If you would like to give a presentation to Westcon, or have ideas or topics you would like discussed, please notify Fred Field, Program Director at (415) 485–5882. All suggestions are welcome!

MEETINGS, MENU, PAST ISSUES, REVIEW