Posted on 01/11/2009 4:41:40 AM PST by Kaslin
WASHINGTON -- Called to a Florida school that could not cope, police led the disorderly student away in handcuffs, all 40 pounds of her 5-year-old self. In a Solomonic compromise, schools in Broward County, Fla., banned running at recess. Long Beach, N.J., removed signs warning swimmers about riptides, although the oblivious tides continued. The warning label on a five-inch fishing lure with a three-pronged hook says, "Harmful if swallowed"; the label on a letter opener says, "Safety goggle recommended."
No official at the Florida school would put a restraining arm around the misbehaving child lest he or she be sued, as a young member of Teach for America was, for $20 million (the school settled for $90,000), because the teacher put a hand on the back of a turbulent seventh-grader to direct him to leave the classroom. Another teacher's career was ruined by accusations arising from her having positioned a child's fingers on a flute. A 2004 survey reported that 78 percent of middle and high school teachers have been subjected to legal threats from students bristling with rights. Students, sensing the anxiety that seizes schools when law intrudes into incidental relations, challenge teachers' authority.
Someone hurt while running at recess might sue the school district for inadequate supervision of the runner, as Broward Country knows: It settled 189 playground lawsuits in five years. In Indiana, a boy did what boys do: He went down a slide head first -- and broke his femur. The school district was sued for inadequate supervision. Because of fears of such liabilities, all over America playgrounds have been stripped of the equipment that made them fun. So now in front of televisions and computer terminals sit millions of obese children, casualties of what attorney and author Philip Howard calls "a bubble wrap approach to child rearing" produced by the "cult of safety." Long Beach removed the warning signs because it is safer to say nothing: Reckless swimmers injured by the tides might sue, claiming that the signs were not sufficiently large or shrill or numerous, or something. Only a public outcry got the signs restored.
Defensive, and ludicrous, warning labels multiply because aggressiveness proliferates. Lawsuits express the theory that anyone should be able to sue to assert that someone is culpable for even an idiotic action by the plaintiff, such as swallowing a fishing lure.
A predictable byproduct of this theory is brazen cynicism, encouraged by what Howard calls trial lawyers "congregating at the intersection of human tragedy and human greed." So:
A volunteer for a Catholic charity in Milwaukee ran a red light and seriously injured another person. Because the volunteer did not have deep pockets, the injured person sued the archdiocese -- successfully, for $17 million.
The thread connecting such lunacies is a fear permeating American life. It is, alas, a sensible fear arising from America's increasingly perverse legal culture that is the subject of what surely will be 2009's most needed book on public affairs -- Howard's "Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law."
A nation in which the proportion of lawyers in the work force almost doubled between 1970 and 2000 has become ludicrously dense with laws. Now legal self-consciousness is stifling the exercise of judgment. Today's entitlement culture inculcates the idea that everyone is entitled to a life without danger, disappointment or aggravation. Any disagreement or annoyance can be aggressively "framed in the language of legal deprivation."
Law is essential to, but can stifle, freedom. Today, Howard writes, "Americans increasingly go through the day looking over their shoulders instead of where they want to go." The land of the free and the home of the brave has become "a legal minefield" through which we timidly tiptoe lest we trigger a legal claim. What should be routine daily choices and interactions are fraught with legal risk.
Time was, rights were defensive. They were to prevent government from doing things to you. Today, rights increasingly are offensive weapons wielded to inflict demands on other people, using state power for private aggrandizement. The multiplication of rights, each lacking limiting principles, multiplies nonnegotiable conflicts conducted with the inherent extremism of rights rhetoric, on the assumption, Howard says, "that society will somehow achieve equilibrium if it placates whomever is complaining."
But in such a society, dazed by what Howard calls "rule stupor" and victimized by litigious "victims," the incentives are for intensified complaining. Read Howard's book, and weep for the death of common sense.
What a mess.
Bill Engval comes to mind.(here’s your sign).
Works for me.
Not completely accurate.
The volunteer was transporting a statue for the Church at the time and thus was an employee, even if unpaid.
The injured man did not sue the Church, he sued the driver. The driver sued the Church claiming that he should be covered by its insurance.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/29316159.html
Making the Church liable for actions of people performing duties for it is not unreasonable, although the amount of the judgment may be. The stories I've seen also don't comment on whether the driver's background or history indicates that the Church may not have shown due diligence in retaining him for this task, which is something every business in America is required to do to reduce liability.
Something that is often left out of these "legal outrage" stories is that insurers, even Medicare, often sue to get repaid if there is a successful suit. So the amount must be more than medical costs plus cost of the suit if the plaintiff is to receive anything at all.
How long before school systems are sued by parents of the fat kids for not providing or encouraging exercise during recess of P.E.?
Is P.E. even offered in schools any more?
This townhall column summarizes my points from our previous discussion concerning why we must be careful about curbing free action.
I say all schools make “murder ballâ€, “dodge ballâ€, a mandatory action at least once a week while at recess. It would teach children valuable lessons on how to dodge, duck, and dive. Beside it would also get them thinking a bot about what it is like once you are in the real world and some other group of people have it is for you. This would eliminate the “touchy feely†world of liberalism that has destroyed our schools.
No wonder good people don’t want to become teachers. I remember being offered the opportunity to go into the “Troops to Teachers” program upon retiring from the Air Force in 2004. My response: Teach American kids? Hell no! Don’t need the aggravation from the kids, their parents, the school districts and the NEA. Plus, my political ideology would’ve been grossly out of step with Teacher Nation anyway.
Seriesly, I think that this "bubble-wrap" approach to raising children is a huge cause of the problem in our society. When I was a little kid, I learned that one didn't play in the middle of the street, mess around with the stove, stick metal objects into electrical outlets, etc... Some of those lessons I learned from being told. Others I had to find out for myself. The key is that I learned them. And some of those lessons WERE painful. But I never made the same mistake again.
In my neighborhood, there are groups of little kids who hang out in the middle of the street, and they give you a dirty look when you try to drive by. I keep thinking that when I was little, had I been stupid enough to do that, I would have either been hit by a car, or my mother, or the parent of a friend would have given me a memorable tongue lashing or worse. Today, nothing like that happens. So the dumbest in society survive. And guaranteed that they will find another really dumb person with whom to breed, reinforcing the "dumb gene."
I think that we need a couple of weeks of amnesty every year, where if you run over a bunch of little kids who're out walking in the middle of the road, you get a pass. And no lawyers are allowed to file personal injury lawsuits during those weeks. Basically, it would be a few weeks to "cull the herd" of the really dumbest in society.
And the result of not only allowing the dumb ones to survive, but to profit and thrive? Well, that's how a majority of voters wind up voting leftist!
Mark
This article is spot on.
I handle claims and lawsuits for a large insurance carrier. I have been doing such work for 25 years. I can tell you that the author is not exaggerating; in fact, he held back: The problem, is worse than he has presented.
The left and trial lawyers (but I repeat myself) have created this monstrosity for two reasons: To gain and keep power and to enrich themselves, thus making themselves the ultimate rulers in America, a government run by the oligarchical elite.
That is precisely why the trial lawyers are so vehemently opposed to any type of tort reform. Well, how’s this for tort reform: If the insurance insdustry stopped writing liability coverage there would be no money for the lawyers to collect for their lawsuits, and thus some 80% of the country’s lawyers would be out of a job and forced to collect aluminum cans for their livelihood. Now, that’s an idea whose time has come!
It drives his mom crazy, but I let my 2 yr old do all kinds of risky crazy things in the hope that he falls or slips and bumps his head. He can’t seriously hurt himself if he falls off of the couch backwards, but he can learn a lesson about consequences and risky behavior if he bumps his head. Same thing if I let him tease the dog until he gets snapped at. Then he’ll stop and he’ll know why it was a bad idea in the first place. This is the kind of stuff he’s not going to learn in school like I did, I’m afraid. I mean, I slipped on a wet spot in the grocery store a couple of years ago and broke my wrist and was in a cast for 4 weeks. It didn’t cross my mind once to go back and try and get something out of the store. EVERYONE thought I was crazy and if the insurance company had found out exactly how it happened they probably would have sued the store themselves. That makes no sense to me. Accidents happen. Accidents are a part of life. Why can’t we just accept that?
Lawyers, the court system, and wimpy parents have ruined modern America.
A mess indeed, however, I don’t blame the school district at all. The lawyers and parents are to blame IMHO.
Defendants will cross-claim or file third-party actions in order to recover the judgments they had to pay or to pass liability on to other parties. That is standard practice. An insurance carrier can only bring such actions if its is a party to the litigation (rare, and usually only in direct action states) or by bringing a separate action for subrogation. Both seek to make the ultimate liable party responsible for the damages.
But sick or bad??? Apparently, these so called "adults in charge" don't remember their youth....and their adulthood.
I broke my leg TWICE AS AN ADULT...RUNNING!!! I go to board meetings. You want to see "strange" behavior...just watch the board members wiggle and twitch, tap pencils, etc, etc...
I think these Don Hendley lyrics from Get Over It are a good lesson plan:
You say you haven’t been the same since you had your little crash
But you might feel better if I gave you some cash
The more I think about it, Old Billy was right
Let’s kill all the lawyers, kill ‘em tonight
This drives me insane only it's not the kids - it's THEIR PARENTS with strollers and we have sidewalks connecting everything. We used to play tennis in the middle of the street, but when a car came, you got out of the way.
This article demonstrates what greed can do to a culture. Remember, massive cash awards at trials are decided by JURIES of your "peers".
This drives me insane only it's not the kids - it's THEIR PARENTS with strollers and we have sidewalks connecting everything. We used to play tennis in the middle of the street, but when a car came, you got out of the way.
This article demonstrates what greed can do to a culture. Remember, massive cash awards at trials are decided by JURIES of your "peers".
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