A Real Case for Tort Reform
Conservatives love to find horror stories about people who get a windfall because of a corporation’s criminal negligence, but I doubt they’ll speak up much about this frivolous lawsuit :
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which promotes itself as a seller of clean music, deceived customers by stocking compact discs by the rock group Evanescence that contain the f-word, a lawsuit claims.
. . .
The complaint, filed Thursday in Washington County Circuit Court, seeks an order requiring Wal-Mart to either censor or remove the music from its Maryland stores. It also seeks damages of up to $74,500 for each of the thousands of people who bought the music at Wal-Marts in Maryland.“I don’t want any other families to get this, expecting it to be clean. It needs to be removed from the shelves to prevent other children from hearing it,” said plaintiff Trevin Skeens of Brownsville.
Skeens said he and his wife, Melanie, let their daughter buy the music for her 13th birthday and were shocked when they played it in their car while driving home.
Because their 13-year-old heard the word “fuck”, this guy thinks Wal-Mart owes him seventy-five thousand dollars. Perhaps he needs the money to build a dungeon to keep their daughter in seclusion so they never again have to worry about bad words corrupting her precious little mind.
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The GOP wouldn’t pick this story as an example of tort reform it hit them in the face–it goes against the White Housse’s stance on personal responsibility. Instead of parenting their daugher, the Skeens allowed Wal-Mart to do it for them.
Not to mention the fact that, however much I despise Wal-Mart (as well as other large chains that bully their competition) I honestly believe that wihtout their pushing for the WWII monument, and their fundraiser for it, it wouldn’t have been built for fifty more years. Lousy location, however.
Comment by Ian — December 11, 2004 @ 6:49 am
As a conservative, let me say this about this story:
THESE LAWSUITS ARE STUPID. There is no reason for a parent to reasonably expect that Wal-Mart would do its job for them. Wal-Mart can’t even keep prices on their merchandise, much less parent a child.
I WILL say that this is an example of the need for personal responsibility. It is the job of this parent to screen his child’s music for objectionable material. I know that’s an outmoded way of thinking, but if those types of words really bother you MAKE SURE THEY AREN’T IN THE MUSIC BEFORE YOU LET YOUR 13-YEAR-OLD LISTEN TO IT!
In the meantime, go buy the Beatles Capitol Volume 1 box. Oh! And George Harrison’s catalog is being re-released. These are songs that are usually ABOUT the “f-word”, even if they don’t SAY the “f-word”. ;-)
-keef
Comment by keith — December 11, 2004 @ 6:56 am
Um, Keith: that’s not an outmoded way of thinking, it’s the position of most all liberals (with the exception of the unfortunate Tipper Gore types).
The whole reason this case is ironic is that conservatives hear something like “a woman burned herself on coffee and was awarded umpteen million dollars” and extrapolate: a) that’s actually what happened and b) that that’s what ALL “frivolous lawsuits” are. Neither could be further from the truth, and conservatives expose their hypocrisy with cases like this, where their zeal to tell people how to live overcomes their stated positions.
Conservativess like you, who believe in personal responsibility, should understand that there is a huge difference between yourselves and the supposed conservatives currently occupies the White House.
Comment by jwer — December 12, 2004 @ 7:18 am
I wonder, what were the motives behind WalMart’s funding of the WW2 veterans’ memorial? Definitely NOT altruistic, I’d be willing to bet …
Comment by Suzy Grindrod — December 12, 2004 @ 9:07 am
Jwer-
Hehe. I know. Taking responsibility for your own kids seems to be a dying philosophy, though.
I must have missed something in that story, because that was exactly how I remember it happening. Maybe you can fill me in. My thought, however, is that coffee should be hot, and that if you spill it on your lap its gonna hurt…alot. Maybe even do some serious damage. That’s no one’s fault, except the person who did the spilling. Now, if she had bought some coffee and it was cold, then she might have had a case… ;-)
As I recall, and I’m certainly not speaking as an expert on the subject, but a group of WWII (the big one) Vets out of Arkansas lobbied to get Wal-Mart to “spearhead” the effort. There is some good PR to be had in such an effort, so yes, there was a business reason, as well.
I’m no fan of Wal-Mart, but I also don’t think its impossible that a company of that size could do something because they think its a good thing to do. There are, afterall, good people who work in the company…even at high levels. I used to work for a very large company. And although the overall spirit of the organization was poor, some of the tops (like the CEO, for instance) were always very kind to me. He even sent me a personal note when my daughter was born (he knew about the difficult time we had getting her here.)
On the other hand, some companies are pricks…
-Keith
Comment by keith — December 13, 2004 @ 7:37 am
And speaking of personal responsibility, have you noticed there are more than a few conservative Christians who don’t want to take the responsibility of teaching their kids religion? They want the schools to do it for them. They don’t want to teach their kids about sexuality but then blame “the culture” when they turn up pregnant or infected. It would be better if they just admit they are inept and need help from the secular/liberal community/village.
Comment by Becky — December 13, 2004 @ 9:44 am
Don’t need your kind of help, thank you very little.
I certainly don’t want the schools teaching religion. Religious doctrine has no place in public school. If you want your kids to be lead in prayer in school, put them in a private school. (I do support vouchers, by the way, so that less-fortunate families who would like their kids to have a religious and/or “art-magnate”-type education can do so.)
I don’t want schools teaching my daughter about birth control and that there is any such thing as “safe” sex (there isn’t). Teach the reproductive system, teach about what contraceptives are, how they work, their effectiveness rates for pregnancy and disease, and leave it at that.
I think I’m pretty consistent here. Let’s teach facts (even as a Christian, I don’t think Biblical doctrine can be called fact in any empirical sort of way) and leave the judgement calls up to the families, mmmkay?
-Keeeef
Comment by keith — December 13, 2004 @ 10:14 am
Keith,
What happened was, an 81-year-old woman named Stella Liebeck bought a cup of coffee at McDonald’s. She spilled the coffee while trying to remove the lid to add cream and sugar. She was holding it between her knees. Her grandson was driving.
If the coffee had been below the legal limit in temperature, this would’ve hurt and made a mess. As it was, it was well above the legal limit, almost boiling (180 degrees F), and caused 3rd degree scalds on her inner thighs (6% of her body).
She asked McDonald’s for $20K to cover medical bills, and they refused, so she sued. The jury was so horrified by the case that they awarded a huge settlement ($2.9M), which was knocked down on appeal to $600K.
Here’s a more complete account, including the # of claims that had been filed against McDonald’s previously:
http://www.atla.org/ConsumerMediaResources/Tier3/press_room/FACTS/frivolous/McdonaldsCoffeecase.aspx
Also, I didn’t say the bit about Walmart’s motives in pushing for the WWII memorial; I have no doubt that they were pure PR. Also, while some large companies may be comparatively benign, Walmart is demonstrably evil and is almost single-handedly destroying the American economy.
Comment by jwer — December 13, 2004 @ 1:29 pm
Okay…thanks for the story. I still fail to see why McDonald’s was at fault here. The coffee was too hot. Okay. SHE spilled it. Sorry. Maybe I’m a cold-hearted bastard, but this still sounds like the poster-child for frivalous lawsuits to me.
ps…I wasn’t aware that there was a “legal limit” for coffee temperatures. Perhaps McDonald’s was negligent for not sticking a thermometer in every cup?
Comment by Keith — December 14, 2004 @ 4:53 pm
Actually, their negligence lied in not paying attention to the thermometer that was already on the coffee pot, even after they were warned about the possibility of injuring their customers.
It’s one thing to burn yourself with coffee from Starbucks or something, but it’s another to get burnt so badly that it requires skin grafts and causes permanent scarring. Even after knowing the risks, they still continued to sell a product that was (at the time of serving) unfit for human consumption. The corporation’s indifference and negligence was what led to the massive punitive damages (which were later drastically reduced).
I know it’s easy to think that people are overreacting because it was a little old lady, or that this is her fault because common sense tells us that coffee is hot, but McDonald’s really were the bad guys here. They kept their coffee much, much hotter than their competitors and relied on the same flimsy cups and lids that everyone else does. With recklessness like that, that old lady’s injury was inevitable.
Comment by greg — December 14, 2004 @ 5:27 pm
Also, the two key points are:
1) hot coffee takes up more room than cold coffee, the hotter it is, the less room it takes up. This only matters when you’re selling a million cups a day.
2) McDonald’s had had MANY, MANY complaints, this was merely the first time someone asked for money. And they could’ve gotten off with no negative PR for $20K, which was all she asked for. They deserve what they get.
I’m sorry, this is a textbook example of a huge corporation considering the cost of doing business, absent morals. It’s exactly the same sort of thing as GE continuously appealing the Hudson cleanup because they didn’t want to post the huge one-time charge until they absolutely had to. Except that this time, the corporation picked wrong.
Comment by jwer — December 14, 2004 @ 7:07 pm
The Wall Street Journal did a long and balanced piece on the hot coffee suit. It changed my mind on it. Moving on: “I think I am consistent here…I don’t want schools teaching my daughter about birth control…Teach about what contraceptives are,how they work, their effectiveness rates.” Those seem like inconsistent statements to me but I think Keith does have the right idea. Your desires for factual information is in keeping with organizations like Planned Parenthood.Unfortunately, as studies have shown, many of the abstinence only curricula due not teach facts but instead focus on misconceptions and moralizing. Good sexuality education respects the teenagers ability to assimilate information about their own bodies, disease, contraception, etc. At some point we have to let go of our teenagers and smart parents send them out into the world with the good information instead of a guilt trip.This shouldn’t be liberal vs.conservative concept.
Comment by Becky — December 15, 2004 @ 3:17 pm