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No. Or, as Elvira Kurt says: No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Remember, ideas that come from outside the YSM are stupid, bad, idiotic, wrong, communist, socialist, pinko, and shitty.

Only ideas that come from inside the YSM are worth pursuing. In fact, ideas that come from inside the YSM are blessed by God and Jesus and them.

DS

"Daniel J. Stern" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@alumni.engin.umich.edu...

Someone will always graduate last. Even if the class was of only 1 person... Here is another thought. If people from 4th rate med schools are being hired regardless of their poor education wouldn't that make you think that maybe there aren't enough doctors out there and its this major deficit and lack of qualified doc's that might help cause all this malpractice. Or would you prefer that there are only a handful of really good doctors and you have to wait (well lets see, my mother can wait 2-3 months to see her doctor for something but usually just a week at most.) so have to wait like 3-12 months to see a doctor? At least then you couldn't sue the doctor. Perhaps we should work at encouraging people to enter this field and so we can find competent doctors to fulfill our drive for perfect health, not just any guy that passes med school and passes the licensing exam. Sueing a doctor for doing something wrong, that is truly malpractice, fine. Sue him, get if fixed if you can, get some money, perhaps if you can no longer work because of it, make the doctor pay for it. Fine. But whne it is something that is chance, or a rare possibility. Its not something to sue, and especially no win over. Think of the poor doctor delivering his first baby. There is a lot of shit going on. What if he messes up one little thing. he could get sued for millions. You wouldn't want that stress, I wouldn't want it. People need to learn that there is this level of respect that should be had for someone that is taking on such a great task. Seriously. It is a skill, and there are a lot of things that doctor has to think about. I think it is amazing that a doctor can even perform some of the surgeries they perform now a days. I am impressed at their skill. If I had to have one of those wild open body, with my parts everywhere and this doc using some miniscule laser to get in some deep little tube somewhere to cut this and repair that. and he left a screwdriver in me, hey, as long as he pays for them to find it, and take it out and maybe a little extra cash, sure. I can't really argue about it, compared to what the man just did. Cause otherwsie I would probably be dead, or really sick and not enjoy much of life anyways. So I have an additional scar now. Oh well, I am alive, and feel better, and he still did a much greater thing than his mistake. He made me better, and restored my life. Mistakes happen. I guess my point is. There are honest mistakes, and there are those of just pure negligance. Someone that doesn't know what they are doing and thus misdiagnoses something or is poking around with no idea what they are doing. They deserve to get sued, and lose their license. But an honest mistake should only have to repair that mistake and maybe offer a little compassion reward. As I read in the stories of lawsuits this isn't how it is. It is, lets get blood money from anyone that makes the slightest error in anything. Its a evil greed driven style that puts a very stinky color on everything this country was ever created for. Sometimes we should just be happy for the life we have, not because we don't have the life we want. Sometimes that might just be our own fault.

And in response to a post a little ways up. Someone stated that if doctors did their job right, insurance rates would go down. Yeah right... are you silly? I had a perfect driving record, and did my car insurance rate go down... Hell no, I was young.. I am a bad driver. It didn't matter what my driving record was, it mattered what my age and sex were. I am sure it is similar to doctors. A doctor may be a perfect guy, but still if he is young, and wants to perform duties that have historically lead to high payouts, I bet he is paying his ass in insurance rates. Lets not get this idea that insurance is a fair system here. I know some people can be dillusional, but lets not get crazy here.

Perhaps it's because they don't want tenants who are aware of their rights? My Uncle has been a slumlord for decades, he's very careful to only rent to stupid people. Keeps the repair costs low and the income high.

I'll give you a real idea for tort reform.

Reform 1:

Loser pays winner up to the extent he spent money on the suit. For example, if I spend $20k sueing Chrysler and they spend a million defending themselves and I lose, I owe Chrysler $20k because that is what I spent.

Reform 2:

Winners of punitive damages share them with a trust fund used to reimburse people who are injured by someone who has no money. For example, 2 guys rob you. They go to jail and you would like to sue them to get your money back. Create a trust fund from a percentage of punitive damages awards. So when McDonalds serves too hot coffee again and has to pay $20million in punitive awards, put, say $5 million in a trust fund for victims and the winner in the McDOnald's case only gets $15 million..

incompetent

Your post shows the ridiculousness of the typical tort reform logic. All it takes is one guy like you on the jury and the award will not be outrageous. Just 1 guy. Whenever you hear about some outrageous award, including the McDonald's case, you can be sure that there was a darn good reason for it. Juries just don't go nuts and hand out money.

malpractice,

Seriously.. what could possibly of been a good reason for the McDonald's coffee case? Coffee is hot, you ordered it, and wer stupid enough to pour it on yourself. The only thing McDonald's should have been required to give was perhaps some napkins. It's not rocket science that coffee is hot. I read the court readings... nothing exceptional there. Many juries go nuts and hand out money, because people who agree that the awards are too high are rather few and far between in the first place and thus are not very likely to be on a jury. I am sorry that I don't agree with you that plaintiffs should always be awarded multi million dollar prizes. I realize some get lowered, and such, but the fact that it is suggested in the first place, and then have to be appealed which costs the taxpayers more money. If you are going to refuse that there is a sue happy pandemic here in the U.S. then I am sorry but you must be wearing a shinny pair of blinders.

outrageous.

What do you expect from an ignorant top poster?

I like reform #2. Ontario speeding tickets have a portion devoted to "victims compensation fund" The problem with that fund is administration "costs" and how fund dispersion is implemented. Reform #1 would just result in the litigants fuding numbers ala Enron.

That may be true for some, but people who know the law or simply think they know the law and want to make life miserable for a decent amnd reasonable landlord can indeed make life miserable. As one example, it used to be that landlords routinely used to allow occasional late rent with a credible reason, as long as it didn't become a habit. Today a landlord is opening him/herself up to a lawsuit if they give grace to one person and not to another, even though the former had an arguably valid reason for being late, and the latter was a parasite. Result? A landlord has to turn into an asshole and not listen to any reason/excuse, no matter how justified, and charge late fees, send letters threatening to evict if not paid by such and such a date, etc., even though he trusts the particular tenant to make good on the late rent, in order to pre-emptively preserve his/her rights to evict in the one-in-a hundred chance that the back-rent never gets paid and to protect him/herself from a lawsuit (discrimination or otherwise).

It's also why a landlord is at risk unless he has a 10 to 20 page lease to cover all the contingencies, and even then, in certain landlord-hostile legal systems (Detroit, parts of New Jersey, parts of New York, much of California), even a perfectly reasonable and legal lease will not hold up in court of law.

Those are just examples of the legal environment - and why I just got rid of my rental property a few months ago (and I am in a place that has a reasonable and fair legal system). I reiterate: An asshole lawyer or pre-law or law student can make life miserable for a decent and fair landlord.

Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")

Maybe you were intentionally being silly, but your fallacy there is in thinking that in a reformed tort system anyone should be awarded $10k, much less $20 million, for being served coffee that was "too hot".

Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")

Maybe you are being silly. Either that or you missed my serious ideas for tort reform. And if you knew the true facts of the McDonald's case you would know that it was judged by a very conservative Nixon appointee and he thought McDonald's deserved what they got.

You forgot to include Massachusetts in your list of states which make if difficult for landlords.... unless things have changed

If you did a google search you would know what was special about the McDonald's case. The judge was a very conservative Nixon appointee and he could have overruled the jury but he thought McDonald's got exactly what they deserved. They had purposely designed a means to serve ultra hot coffee so people would still have hot coffee after eating their hamburger. They did not want people to get on line again to get their coffee re-warmed. They had received thousands of complaints of burns from their coffee and ignored them. In fact the injured woman had needed several surgeries to repair her injury and had written several letters to McDOnald's asking for out of pocket reimbursement for medical expenses. Only when her letters were ignored did she sue. Indeed McDonald's got what they deserved. And the result is cooler coffee at McDonald's.

$25 million? Hey - why not $1 billion. Or why not $10 billion. How absurd.

I have complained to hotels that their bath water was way too hot if turned all the way to "Hot" - that someone could get scalded (and possibly sue). $25 million for that? No way. At that rate, I should get maybe $20k for bringing it to their attention.

Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")

Good, McDonald's no longer has hot coffee... what a relief. Why does the judge matter at all? I don't see how that has any bearing on it being a stupid pay out. Obviously the judge thought they deserved it, he approved it. I think that goes without saying. Ultra hot coffee? How hot is that? As far as I have been told fresh brewed coffee is supposed to be between

185º and 200ºF... and seeing as coffee is mostly water, this doesn't leave much room for "ultra hot" coffee... about 12º. So now McDonald's probably has to keep their coffee about 145ºF so it is made poorly and tastes like shit. Nothing like a fresh cup of bean acid during that morning drive to work. It should be common knowledge that you make coffee by heating water to near boiling, and we all learned long ago that a pan of boiling water can scald us severely. Why is it that this lady suddenly is a victim because a cup of fresh coffee is hot? It's suppose to be hot.

And he was wrong. The person who put hot coffee between her legs got what she deserved. We shouldn't reward stupidity with cash. It sets a very bad precedent. Look at all of the stupid cases now with respect to Oreos, eating at McDonalds, etc. This only ties up an already burdened court system and means that real issues may have to wait too long to be heard. And it increases the costs for us all. Stupidity should have consequences, and they should be NEGATIVE consequences.

Matt

And we now all get to drink lukewarm coffee because somebody was too stupid to handle hot coffee, which was clearly marked on the cup. If people didn't want hot coffee, they didn't have to buy their coffee at McDonalds.

Matt

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I must disagree. Transferring money from one person or group to another person or group does *not* spur the economy. True wealth can only be created by the sweat of one's brow, both personally and nation-wide. Paper shuffles do not do anything of benefit to the economy as a whole.

Sure it can. Transferring money to a person who will invest it in something that increases our GDP is adding to the economy. Someone who just hoards their money under a mattress does nothing to increase wealth. So moving money from a place where it isn't working to a place where it can work, definitely benefits the economy as a whole.

Matt