Yes, you've provided a great example of airhead thinking in your example. Comparing nitroglycerine to hot coffee is pretty dumb.
My recollection is that McDonald's coffee cups have had warnings for many years about the contents being hot. And you have to assume some reasonable intelligence on the part of the public. Almost any consumer product is dangerous if used improperly. Things like ladders shouldn't need 25 warning labels for crying out loud. Then again, with people like you, maybe these warnings are needed, however, you can never had enough warnings for people who think like you.
Coffee properly prepared will be hot enough to cause third degree burns. A knife properly sharpened will cut to the bone. A plum not chewed will lodge in your throat and choke you.
What was that old John Wayne move line ... something like, "Life is tough, but it's tougher if you are stupid." You must have a very tough life.
Here's a great case. A guy gets tested for HIV and it comes back positive. Gets it verified and it comes back negatives but no one notices. He is treated for HIV for 8 years and the guy is thinking he could die any day, especially when he catches a cold. Finally the doctor notices the negative HIV results and has him checked again. Negative again. Big OOPS.
Almost forgot the one last year at Duke Hospital. They give a teenager a heart transplant but no one bothered to check the blood type. She was dead in a few days.
These things just should not happen. It is called quality control and in general, US hospitals don't get it.
Besides They figured it out in the end right? Give the parents $20K for their daughters life (ought to cover a nice funeral anyways) brush it under the rug and carry on. If parasitic lawyers get involved a doctor could get disciplined and protocols might have to change. Best that folks don't sue.
Remember the client's motto: My Lawyer is a Great guy, Everyone else's Lawyers are pond scum.
Lawyers may be a lot of things but one thing they are not is stupid. Want to know why lawyers seek out stupid people? They are a Lawyers tools of the trade.
I'll give you an example of why lawyers spend so much to find clients. My brother in-law is a criminal defense lawyer, his partner did a referral to another lawyer then forgot about the referral, 2 years later out of the blue he gets a cheque for $150,000 (bird dog fee)
If you were the lawyer would you care what the case was? Or would you just want to get as many stupid clients (class action potentials) as possible?
Not too different. Have you bought a tool lately? The manual probably has more pages on safety than on operation. At least they're giving you a warning.
McDonalds could have gone that way with all kinds of warnings, cautions, etc, but instead they just decided to sell coffee at a low enough temperature that it will not injure. Clever, huh?
It's ok to hand someone a sharp object if they know it's sharp.
It's ok to hand someone a dangerously hot object if they know it's dangerously hot.
It's NOT OK to hand someone an object which they have no reason to suspect is dangerous when it really is. Coffee should be able to be drunk immediately when it's handed to you. IF YOU HAVE TO WAIT FOR IT TO COOL, YOU SHOULD BE TOLD. McD's didn't and that's why they lost.
A slimeball covering his ass, incase the other didn't forget about the referral.
They have the referred client sign a release and that comes off of the top like an expense, and the client gets bled another way, if it is in fact a justifiable law suit.
Why did the lady put the cup of coffee betwixt her legs?
I know even coffee that isn't near the boiling point might hurt my family jewels, so would this lady be so to be polite: "Misguided" and put the coffee between her legs, near her snatch?
Refinish King
PS I think McDonalds saw it as a nuisance suit and disposed of it as quickly as possible?
You will never get the human factor (i.e., the ability to make errors) out of a system no matter how good it is. You chose the wrong hospital (Duke) to pick on for criticism. They saved my daughter's life with exceptional care with a childhood cancer that she wasn't supposed to survive. We traveled 110 miles for her diagnosis and treatments when there were other institutions a lot closer to us that, according to some, were just as qualified.
You should have read the inexcusable horror stories on the internet support group for the same very rare disease (200 cases a year diagnosed in the U.S.) that my daughter had, posted by parents in Canada and England about their kids because of the metered care. And guess where super-rich foreign dignitaries brought their kids to be treated for very life-threatening diseases (hint - it wasn't Canada or England).
Not excusing an awful mistake that someone at Duke may have made - I'm sure they paid dearly for it, as obviously did the teenager and her family in a very different way, but there are unfortunate mistakes everywhere and in every system. I am no apologist for our system either
- it certainly has serious problems. But there are a lot worse. We need to fix it rather than make it worse.
Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")
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