Cessna sued for skydiving accident.

Matt W. Barrow wrote:
Jose wrote:
It should also be noted that one of the purposes of the tort system is to
act as a brake against corporations taking unfair advantage of their size
by making our lives more risky to the benefit of their bottom line. To
that end, it is quite reasonable to take the corporation's attitude into
account when deciding on a verdict.

His grasp of the tort system is about on par with his other knowledge.

And this guy's a teacher?





The statement is true but not complete, as are all such statements made
to push a position.

There's nothing wrong with the concept that proposes protection for the
"average citizen" from a corporation's bottom line, but the statement is
deceiving if not completed as it actually exists in today's legal system.
What's missing from the statement, and unfortunately deliberately so in
many cases, is that if the system is used as it was MEANT to be used,
the citizen has to SEEK OUT the lawyer for protection instead of the
other way around.
When lawyers seek clients to initiate litigation against large
corporations, the formula changes, or at least has a tremendous ability
to change, into a corrupt attempt to initiate lawsuits against
corporations for a profit motive instead of a protection motive.

The kicker in all this are the lawyers. The problem is that if the
citizen is dishonest, it is supposed to be incumbent on the lawyer to
act as a shield between an honest corporation and the dishonest citizen.
A HUGE percentage of the lawyers unfortunately for the country, have
chosen NOT to act as this ethical buffer and instead BENEFIT from the
dishonest citizen seeking litigation against corporations. The result of
this has been a large enough swing from honesty and ethics among lawyers
to influence the balance of the legal system away from ethics and into a
large amount of dishonesty and unethical practice by lawyers that has
literally turned the system into a business for profit.

Add to this the dishonest lawyers THEMSELVES initiating action against
corporations based completely on their personal dishonest and unethical
practice and you have the present legal system of the United States.

There are of course lawyers out here who are honest and ethical. You can
spot them in 5 seconds. They are poor by the standard of living used to
present the average income of lawyers in the United States. I actually
can't think of 1 single lawyer (and I know many) known to me personally
who is honest and ethical as I would define these terms, who I would
consider in the top income level of the legal profession.

--
Dudley Henriques

What's missing from the statement, and unfortunately deliberately so in many cases, is that if the system is used as it was MEANT to be used, the citizen has to SEEK OUT the lawyer for protection instead of the other way around.

It used to be that way... at least it used to be that lawyers (and
doctors and drug companies) were prohibited from advertising. (Whether
by law or by their professional organizations I don't know). The
concept of freedom of speech (that it is up to the listener to decide
the merits, rather than up to some other agency to decide what the
listener may or may not hear) was part of the stated rationale.

When lawyers seek clients to initiate litigation against large corporations, the formula changes, or at least has a tremendous ability to change, into a corrupt attempt to initiate lawsuits against corporations for a profit motive instead of a protection motive.

And here is where the judges enter the picture. It comes down to a
judgment in court. Why don't the meritless cases lose? =That's= where
the responsibility lies.

Jose
--
You can choose whom to befriend, but you cannot choose whom to love.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jose wrote:
What's missing from the statement, and unfortunately deliberately so
in many cases, is that if the system is used as it was MEANT to be
used, the citizen has to SEEK OUT the lawyer for protection instead of
the other way around.

It used to be that way... at least it used to be that lawyers (and
doctors and drug companies) were prohibited from advertising. (Whether
by law or by their professional organizations I don't know). The
concept of freedom of speech (that it is up to the listener to decide
the merits, rather than up to some other agency to decide what the
listener may or may not hear) was part of the stated rationale.

I remember as a young man coming up through the educational ladder when
lawyers were respected members of the community. Lawyers were sought
after for opinion and their opinion was considered by almost everyone 9I
knew anyway) as delivered through a foundation of honesty and integrity.
Lawyers were in fact some of the most respected members of the community.
All gone now. Typical of the lawyers in my present community are an
entire segment, and I literally mean an entire large office building,
almost entirely filled with attorneys specializing in drop and fall,
auto accidents, and the vast majority and the most financially rewarded,
an entire cadre of attorneys specializing in medical malpractice.
There are literally almost as many lawyers in the malpractice business
where I live as there are doctors. The reason for this is that the
doctors are leaving the state in ever increasing numbers.
One of our best friends is a neuro surgeon. You don't even want to guess
what he has to pay for his malpractice insurance.
This isn't anywhere at all representing what SHOULD be the level of
litigation protection against normal malpractice. It's indicative of the
HUGE and highly lucrative BUSINESS that the practice of malpractice law
has become.
And this is only the TIP of this iceberg :-))

When lawyers seek clients to initiate litigation against large
corporations, the formula changes, or at least has a tremendous
ability to change, into a corrupt attempt to initiate lawsuits against
corporations for a profit motive instead of a protection motive.

And here is where the judges enter the picture. It comes down to a
judgment in court. Why don't the meritless cases lose? =That's= where
the responsibility lies.

Jose

I agree that the judges are indeed included in the equation that defines
unethical law practice....but then again, judges are lawyers :-))

Jose, it's not any one thing that's wrong with the legal system. It's
the entire thing that's wrong. You can look in any direction and find a
constantly degrading curve of ethics and greed. It's the OVERALL result
of this that defines the legal system as we see it here today in the
United States.


--
Dudley Henriques

I should also add in fairness that there is indeed an aspect of blame
for the poor condition of the legal system that can be laid directly at
the feet of a greedy public, but no matter how you cut this down, it is
the lawyers, NOT the public, who have been entrusted with keeping the
system honest and ethical.
The bottom line is that the blame must lie with the legal profession and
not the greedy public troth from which the profession feeds.




Jose wrote:
What's missing from the statement, and unfortunately deliberately so
in many cases, is that if the system is used as it was MEANT to be
used, the citizen has to SEEK OUT the lawyer for protection instead of
the other way around.

It used to be that way... at least it used to be that lawyers (and
doctors and drug companies) were prohibited from advertising. (Whether
by law or by their professional organizations I don't know). The
concept of freedom of speech (that it is up to the listener to decide
the merits, rather than up to some other agency to decide what the
listener may or may not hear) was part of the stated rationale.

When lawyers seek clients to initiate litigation against large
corporations, the formula changes, or at least has a tremendous
ability to change, into a corrupt attempt to initiate lawsuits against
corporations for a profit motive instead of a protection motive.

And here is where the judges enter the picture. It comes down to a
judgment in court. Why don't the meritless cases lose? =That's= where
the responsibility lies.

Jose


--
Dudley Henriques

Recently, Gig 601XL Builder wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net posted:

The education problems all boil down to a combination of some bad
teachers, some bad administrators, some bad parents, and state and
federal lawmakers and courts stepping in to make a bad situation
worse.

We need to get rid of silly federal and state mandates for student
testing that require teachers teach to a test and little else. We
need a system of getting rid of bad teachers and rewarding good ones.
We need a process that allows us to get kids that cause problems out
of the schools but only after teachers are given the right and
responsibility to deal with those on the bubble in the classroom. And
we need to make parents responsible for how their children act when
they are in school.

It seems to me that all the conversation about education in this thread
misses a few key points.

In the US, primary education is not a national priority, nor a state-level
priority, and in many if not most communities, not a local priority. On a
national level, we struggle with issues such as standardization and
"leaving no children behind", but put no substantial financial support
into either area. States largely fund education through property taxes (a
practice that was deemed unconstitutional here in Ohio more than once, yet
there is no change on the horizon), which largely works against
standardization and ensuring equal educational opportunities. On a local
level, school systems are sometimes unbalanced in terms of the ratio of
administrators to teachers.

What I find curious is that the teachers in this thread aren't speaking of
the teacher/student ratio. Given the significant increase in necessary
knowledge beyond what was needed when I was in K-12 almost 50 years ago,
and that class sizes are now about 3 times what they were then, I don't
know why it isn't apparent that this has to at least contribute to the
issues under discussion.

The way I see it, there need be no other reasons for the results that
we're getting other than the priorities and structure that we're working
with.

Neil

On Dec 4, 7:35 am, Dylan Smith wrote:
On 2007-12-02, wrote:

On Dec 2, 2:30 pm, "Blueskies" wrote:

The airplane is NOT approved for flight into *known* icing conditions. So when a pilot finds himself in those conditions
in one of these planes, Cessna is to blame if he/she screws up and crashes...

So, why do so many of them have boots and hot props and all
the rest? It would seem to add a lot of expensive weight if flight
through known ice is forbidden.

It's there to give you more time to escape icing conditions, not so you
can simply fly in known icing conditions.

So then: Why does the FAA or Transport Canada call it
certification for flight into known ice? An aircraft is either
certified for flight into know ice (like all modern airliners and many
smaller airplanes and some helicopters) or it's not. There's no
certification basis for flight into "possible ice." On this continent,
ice is present much of the year in a wide range of altitudes and there
is simply no escape from it other than staying on the ground. An
aircraft that is not certified for flight into known ice is, in Canada
at least, prohibited from filing IFR if ice is "forecast or reported."

Dan

Dan

Robert M. Gary wrote:
On Dec 3, 3:30 pm, Dudley Henriques wrote:


Unless I'm reading this incorrectly, what you are saying here is that
the outcome of this trial can be directly laid at the feet of an
ill-advised reply by a single individual and a jury's interpretation of
this reply.


That was the lesson of this case. Regardless of how silly you think
someone's demands are you should always appear to have some sympathy.


So the ACTUAL verdict wasn't based on any reasonable conception of
justice at all but rather the jury's reaction to the MacDonald's reply?


Juries can do what they want. I think the combo of seeing the pictures
of the woman's deformity bothered the jury and then to see how callus
McD's was in responding to her made the jury mad. The verdict came
from anger in my opinion.


Interesting!! So the lawyer's success in litigating this case was not in
proving to the jury that this woman had suffered legitimate severe
damage that had truly hurt her and on THAT basis asking the jury to find
against MacDonald's, but rather it would seem the lawyers used her
damage simply as a tool to force the jury to compare the coldness of the
MacDonald's replies, thus building a case against MacDonalds in the
minds of the jury based on the attitude of the company rather than the
damage to the woman.
Interesting!
You just gotta love the "justice system" :-))


Again you are dealing with juries. Going to trial means you can't
predict the results. That is one reason so many companies are moving
to binding arbitration; because they get frustrated at the inconstancy
of jury trials.

Its a jury of our peers and they can be idiots. Look at OJ or many
aviation related cases to see that.

-Robert

It is not a jury of our peers. It is a selected jury. And, the side that
does the best selection will probably win the case. Sometimes I think we
should have professional juries; ones trained and have some smarts.

--

Regards, Ross
C-172F 180HP
KSWI

I remember as a young man coming up through the educational ladder when lawyers were respected members of the community. Lawyers were sought after for opinion and their opinion was considered by almost everyone 9I knew anyway) as delivered through a foundation of honesty and integrity.

Would that it were true for politicians.

Seems to me that this is a natural consequence of a capitalistic system;
although it might be "honorable" to forgo money in exchange for
integrity in business, it is an inherently unstable situation. Nobody
wants to be the poor schmo that gets stepped all over while everyone
else gets the goodies.

These instabilities are evident in other contexts too - how many
monopolies do you know of that voluntarily keep their prices and profits
low, for the greater good?

Jose, it's not any one thing that's wrong with the legal system.

True enough. It comes down to human nature. But the system is supposed
to be a defense against human nature. Alas, it is run by... er... humans.

It's the entire thing that's wrong.

Got a proposed fix? (No, I'm not interested in becoming benevolent
dictator

Jose
--
You can choose whom to befriend, but you cannot choose whom to love.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

We need to get rid of silly federal and state mandates for student testing
that require teachers teach to a test and little else.

I agree with everything else in your post, but this.

IMHO, No Child Left Behind -- flawed though it may be -- is the first
step in the right direction toward improving our schools. For the
first time in my lifetime teachers are being held to a real,
measurable standard -- which is the first necessary step to addressing
any systemic problems that may exist.

WRT to Jim's concerns, BTW, it's also the best way to disprove that
systemic problems DON'T exist.

There are many things I'd change in NCLB -- but discarding it entirely
would be a mistake.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Ross" wrote in message
...

It is not a jury of our peers. It is a selected jury. And, the side that
does the best selection will probably win the case. Sometimes I think we
should have professional juries; ones trained and have some smarts.


I've pondered that a few times myself Ross, and I think I would have to
agree. I think judges do a good job with their experience, but they too
often tend to get too anal with the letter of the law and loose a bit of
their ability to judge. Seems a trained panel could do a better job of
looking at cases from different angles, and reaching the most reasonable
conclusion. The way we select juries today can often be a real turkey shoot.