Cessna sued for skydiving accident.

Christopher Brian Colohan wrote:
Dudley Henriques writes:
To me, it's obvious that the ultimate blame lies with the lawyers.

Another take: in Canada, this problem of frivolous lawsuits does not
exist to anywhere near the degree that it exists in the US.

Why? In Canada if you want to file a lawsuit, you have to hire a
lawyer. And pay them. They must be paid the same amount, whether
they win or they lose. (I think you can sue for legal fees -- but if
you lose that lawsuit, you now have to pay your lawyer for that too.)
If you can't afford a lawyer, and you have been wronged, you can apply
for legal aid -- and the most worthy of those applicants will get a
free lawyer.

The net result: plaintiffs won't sue unless they stand a good chance
of winning. Lawyers don't go sniffing for business on longshot cases.
Insurance rates are much lower. The courts are less busy. The
downside of this system: if you are poor and are wronged, it is
somewhat harder to get compensated. But for some reason it all seems
to work out just fine...

So perhaps the problem in the US is neither the plaintiffs or the
lawyers, but the system itself -- it rewards bad behaviour, and as
long as it does this then the unethical plaintiffs and lawyers will
continue to be attracted to these rewards.

Chris

Brian;

I always have had a soft spot for our Canadian friends. You folks are
just good people up there. It was my honor to be invited to fly with
your Snowbirds as their guest and the time I spent with the team was
some of the best time I've spent in professional aviation.

Your post here has logic and I agree with what you have said. The system
is indeed bad down here and in need of drastic reform. It is truly
unfortunate that those we would entrust to reform it are those most
affected by any reforms.
I honestly believe that these much needed reforms will never see the
light of day, and it truly saddens me as an American to have had this
opinion forced upon me by those I would much rather have respected as
I've made my way through life.


--
Dudley Henriques

"Viperdoc" wrote

She was only a few hours out from her accident, and was still in the
operating room, yet somehow one of the local personal injury lawyers had
gotten the brochure into her chart!

Talk about aggressive marketing!

I hope you did the proper thing, with non medical material found in a chart.

Even that will not do any good, but make you feel better. He will be back,
in person.

Oh, and I hope that patient walks again with no pain or other side
effects... or you could be the next target, whether you did anything wrong,
or not.

But you already know that, and pay the insurance to protect yourself against
the lawyers.

All of this does bring up a good question, that you may or may not be able
to answer-depending on the billing structure or how your practice is set up.

What is the percentage cost of the malpractice insurance you carry versus
the physician's charges, and perhaps you would know how much the total
hospital malpractice insurance costs versus all of the hospital's charges?

I would be fascinated to know, and I think many others here would surprised
to know the figures, too.
--
Jim in NC

On Sun, 2 Dec 2007 17:08:16 -0800 (PST),
wrote:

On Dec 2, 4:37 pm, Peter Clark
wrote:

The Cessna Model 208 and 208B Pilot's Operating Handbook (POH) and
FAA-approved Airplane Flight Manual (AFM)Supplement S1 "Known Icing
Euipment" begs to differ.

Does it? I haven't seen one, but another paragraph in the
Transport Canada document hints that flight (of suitably equipped
airplanes) into known ice is still legal:

"2) Exercise caution when dispatching into, or operating in forecast
or known icing conditions along an intended route. Use all available
resources (weather forecast, Air Traffic Services, PIREPS, etc.) to
ascertain the presence of icing conditions. Reports of icing
conditions should be considered to be prohibitive where those
conditions meet or exceed the definition of moderate or greater icing
conditions for the Cessna Caravan C208 airplanes as defined in
applicable ADs, AFMs and AMOCs."

I was replying to someone who said the Caravan is NOT certified for
flight into known icing. Obviously when properly equipped and in
compliance with the various ADs it is.

As for Para 2 above, that's pretty boilerplate. None of the turboprop
aircraft I'm aware of are certified for flight into known continuous
severe icing or freezing rain, which is basically what that paragraph
says. It doesn't remove the known ice certification, just limits the
upper limit of the icing it can be flown in.

wrote:
Its possible that public schools could be eliminated entirely if the
number of people who cannot afford private schools is not large. Low
income families could then be given coupons paid for by taxpayer money
that can be redeemed for education in private schools. All this
assumes that if public schools are eliminated gradually, private
schools will spring up to fill a market need and the total costs are
going to be the same in the long run but with a better quality of
education. Taxes would also need to be adjusted to reflect the fact
that the government is no longer funding public schools.


Bingo! That is exactly how it should work. People should have
choice in how their money is spent but the NEA (and politicians)
is dead set against all of that. They are all for choice in reproduction
but when it comes to public education they want institutionalized
mediocrity and continues status quo (job security I guess).

"F. Baum" wrote in
:

On Dec 2, 8:50 pm, "Matt W. Barrow"
wrote:
"B A R R Y" wrote in
messagenews:qdk6l35sjc8gpa98jtbh0t7u5v1puc7o4h@4ax .com...

On Sun, 2 Dec 2007 17:29:31 -0700, "Matt W. Barrow"
wrote:

Many times an "F" is deserved.

I totally agree.

As many times the teacher would have also
gotten an "F". When they gave math teachers the same math tests,
the average
grade was 60%, with 70% being a failing grade. It's nearly the
rule, rather
than the exception.

I'd like to read that. Where did you see it?

State of Arizona (run up to AMES tests) where my Bro-in-laws kids
tests were held off for four years until the teachers could pass them
or re-write the tests.

Remember, teaching
programs and educational requirements vary greatly from state to
state.

And just how much difference is there from the "best" states, to the
worst?



Would it make schools less likely to
spread Global Warming bull****?

I'm with ya' there.

And that's just one example of many, such as "diversity", racism,
sexism, etc., not to mention revisionist history, modern math,
"progressive" politics as the only answer.

Ask your wife what she knows about Thomas Mann, the "father of
American public schools" and what he wanted to accomplish, or John
Dewey.

It's been said that schools are not doing a bad job..they're doing
exactly what they were set up to do over 160 years ago and locked in
during the early 1900's. Unfortunately, teaching kids to reason,
engage in critical thinking, use inductive and deductive reasoning is
NOT the agenda.

==
Sitting on my desk I found a cite concerning Horace Mann, the Common
School, and development from the Prussian school in an extensive
chapter from a textbook used in undergraduate education classes at my
university. The title of the text is "School & Society: Educational
Practice as

Social Expression", (1993) McGraw-Hill, Publishers, ISBN:
0-07-557043-2

Selected quotes from pages 53-70"

p. 55: "Among the wide variety of educational topics addressed by
Mann during his tenure as Secretary [of the Massachusetts State
Board], perhaps the most significant were school buildings, moral
values, the example of Prussian education,discipline, teachers, and
the economic value of education"

p. 59 "He was first introduced to Prussian schools by [popular]
reports of their successes. The Prussian system had been organized in
the 1820s along a model recommended by Johann Frichte, the German
philosopher, during the Napoleonic occupation of Prussia. Fichte's
proposals were designed to develop Prussian nationalism and a nation
strong enough to unite the German states for world leadership. By the
mid-1830s the Prussian experiment had excited educators in western
Europe and the United States.

p. 60 "The system was class-based and consisted of two separate tiers
of schooling. The tier for the aristocratic class. . .was
academically oriented.. . .The tier for the common people. . .was
compulsory. Its goal was to develop patriotic citizens. . .In
addition to loyalty and obedience to authority, it provided basic
literacy and numeracy. Most of the graduates went directly into the
work force.

Loyalty and obedience, not initiative or critical thinking, were the
goals for training the common people. As Fichte had written on
education, "If you want to influence him at all, you must do more
than merely talk to him. You must fashion him, and fashion him in
such a way that he cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will".

...The Prussian *volkschule* (the common tier) evoked Mann's most
enthusiastic response. . .he was not completely oblivious to the
dangers inherent in using institutions designed for an authoritarian
society as models for a democracy, but he quickly dismissed these
dangers as inconsequential."

p. 65: "The Secretary's [Mann] arguments were persuasive because of
the different messages they carried to various segments of his
constituency. To the workingman, the message was: send your children
to school so they may become rich. Employers were advised that the
common schools would provide them with workers who were not only more
productive, , but also docile, easily managed, and unlikely to resort
to strikes or violence."

p. 67..."While Mann was emphasizing the intellectual results of
common schooling, his industrial supporters were emphasizing the
enculturation of a value system amenable to industrialized factory
life"

p. 70...Mann, however, unlike Jefferson, was not driven by fear of
tyranny, but by fear of social disorder and moral decay. . . .While
Mann believed he was advocating education for religious and
republican virtue, some of his contemporaries argued that he was
instead instituting a system of social control"

=====================

You may check this book out for yourself to guarantee that I have not
selectively quoted out of context.

This is just Thomas Mann. Here's Dewey:

"The mere absorbing of facts and truths is so exclusively individual
an affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness.
There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere
learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat." --John
Dewey

Read some educational history, it's just simply a well-known fact
about the origins of our present educational system and it's
predominant principles!

MxMatt, I am facinated how you can deduece that the current state of
education in this country rests ENTIRELY on some guy who held office
167 years ago.



Yeah, everyone knows it was Clinton and the Chinese.


And to think he predicted what to teach our kids about
global warming ! Priceless. This is right up there with your theory
that Hillary Clinton is gonna corner the market on Avgas and jack up
the price.


The bitch!

Actually, th eglobsal warming debate goes back a startlingly long way.
Couple of hundred years, in fact.

One of the problems the the "deniers", if you will excuse the term,
have, is that they are often looking at experiments done small scale in
isolation a very long time ago.


Bertie

"Morgans" wrote in
:

So what is your beef, then?


With people who forget that education is a partnership bewteen a
school and the parent.


And that is the fault of the schools how?

According to Matt B. it is because the parents that don't get
involved are
products of the public schools, and the teachers are mostly stupid,
because they are products of the public schools.

I don't buy it. There are always exceptions, though.

Matt is constant, that is one fact. His story never changes away from
a very narrow stance.

Hey I'm trolling him here! Find your own corner!

Two more posts and I'd have had him calling me Mussolini.


Bertie

Morgans wrote:
"kontiki" wrote in message
...
Morgans wrote:

What does economic education have to do with leaning about a hopelessly
screwed up justice system have to do with the price of beans in China?
If you have to ask that question then you are one of the victims.

Educate me, then.

The question is what relevance economic education has to a broken justice
system.

I really find it fascinating that you don't see any connection or
think that they are linked.

A few years back my name came up for jury duty. I showed up at
the courthouse in the morning as ordered. Eventually I was placed
in a group that would be culled out for a trial involving a
lawsuit against a contractor. The group of us sat there and
answered questions from both attorneys regarding what we did
for a living, what our level of education was and a few others.

I can tell you that anyone involved at any level in any engineering
field was curt from the jury (I was one of those). After that
anyone in construction or who owned a business was cut. What was
left were a a couple of school teachers and house wives.

It was clear that the attorneys wanted no independent thinkers
in that jury. They wanted a group of people with little ability
to understand what the hell they were talking about so they
could appeal to the emotions of jury and not have deal with
any education or judgments based upon direct experience.

I've said enough about all of this. As I stated if you don't
see how all of this is connected today, in 2007 then there really
is no hope.

Morgans wrote:


Perhaps you could suggest a curriculum to achieve these goals better than
what is being done today.

In fact I could if I wanted to take the time. In fact, alternatives
have already been proposed and being used as we speak in private
schools around the country. But they certainly aren't ones where
government has role to play, other than as subject matter for learning.

Straighten us out. Please tell us what we are not doing right. You will
get plenty of people listening, I'm sure. If you can not do this, then you
are just another person with all of the problems and no solutions, which
does nobody any good.


Lets have real school choice nationwide. Let parents have the money
they are paying in taxes so they can send their kids to private
schools if they want. That's step number one. Get rid of teacher's
lobbies like the NEA... if they are all so dedicated to education why
do they need to be spending so much money lobbying congress?
Wouldn't that money be better spent in the actual education process?
Or how about just higher salaries for the good teachers?

It is easy to criticize, but hard to fix.

Not really hard at all.

Oh, and by the way; you are quick to jump me for making personal attacks.
My words pale compared to Mat B's. No criticism for him?

I was only pointing that out in response to how quick you were to
focus on a typo in my post... as if a single typing mistake (I
am no typist, I admit) negates any validity to my posts.

Morgans wrote:
So what is your beef, then?

With people who forget that education is a partnership bewteen a
school and the parent.

And that is the fault of the schools how?

According to Matt B. it is because the parents that don't get involved are
products of the public schools, and the teachers are mostly stupid, because
they are products of the public schools.

It is true. Another factor is that so many families today have
both parents working... just to make ends meet and to pay taxes
to support the government programs that are created or expanded
every year (to wit: no idiot left behind [as if better education
can be legislated into reality]). I still can't honestly
come up with something the government does well.... besides
spend other people's money.

I don't buy it. There are always exceptions, though.

Matt is constant, that is one fact. His story never changes away from a
very narrow stance.

Perhaps his story is based on principle. Principles don't
don't change with polls or political expedient.

F. Baum wrote:

I have volunteered at my kids schools for years . I was impressed by
how hard most of these people work ( and for a fraction of the $$$
most of us make.

Have you looked at how much money is spent for administration
in public schools? Its massive... and very top heavy. In many
school systems there are more "administrative" employees than
there are teachers. Big fancy buildings and salaries for these
folks not to mention the millions spent to lobby congress.

I have seen them cussed out by students and parents,
some of whom never spend any time personally fostering thier kids
education. Instead of pointing uot the systems faults (And your silly
views of what caused them, why dont you roll up your sleeves and
volunteer.
FB


Why don't some of these highly paid administrators get off their
a$$es and get to work. And besides... the parents of today are
failed products of the wonderful public school systems. What
can you expect from them.