Cessna sued for skydiving accident.

Jose wrote:
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
I think you have summerized it up nicely. It seems our capitalist legal
system has some serious built in flaws and if these flaws are used for
unethical purposes, the result can easily become what we are seeing today.

I honestly have no idea what the fix might be. What absolutely
freightens me to death is that there might not be a fix, and even if
there were, human nature will be too much a factor to allow it's
implementation.

In the meantime, I watch the stock market go up and down with my money
with some kind of unexplainable hope in my heart, and do the very best I
can in life to avoid any and all contact with the legal system :-))

--
Dudley Henriques

I honestly have no idea what the fix might be. What absolutely freightens me to death is that there might not be a fix, and even if there were, human nature will be too much a factor to allow it's implementation.

I think that it =is= the case that there is no fix... at least no fix
that doesn't break something else we hold dear. It is all about
balance, and different people's ideas as to where it should balance.

In the meantime, I watch the stock market go up and down with my money with some kind of unexplainable hope in my heart, and do the very best I can in life to avoid any and all contact with the legal system :-))

I tried to make money in the stock market. Now I make money in the
basement. Alas, that makes it harder to avoid contact with the legal
system.

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:
I honestly have no idea what the fix might be. What absolutely
freightens me to death is that there might not be a fix, and even if
there were, human nature will be too much a factor to allow it's
implementation.

I think that it =is= the case that there is no fix... at least no fix
that doesn't break something else we hold dear. It is all about
balance, and different people's ideas as to where it should balance.

I fear this is correct.

In the meantime, I watch the stock market go up and down with my money
with some kind of unexplainable hope in my heart, and do the very best
I can in life to avoid any and all contact with the legal system :-))

I tried to make money in the stock market. Now I make money in the
basement. Alas, that makes it harder to avoid contact with the legal
system.

It's getting harder and harder to open and maintain an honest business
in the United States. Between the ungodly taxes and the cost of
litigation protection it's becoming more and more a global business
environment.
Everywhere I look I see decline and chaos. Cheery picture I know, but I
keep trying to visualize the old bottle as being half full anyway.

What the hell....I can't change anything. A friend of ours owns a paint
store. On the shelf he has a can of paint that says on the back of the
label;
"Don't take internally". The guy this is written for nullifies my vote
!!! :-)))))))))))))))


Jose


--
Dudley Henriques

On Dec 4, 10:23 am, "Maxwell" wrote:

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.

Think about the type of people who are not excused from jury duty.
Depending on the judge juriors can be excused because they have a lot
going on at work, because they have a business meeting etc. The self-
employed are almost always excused. Especially in a long trial you end
up with welfare moms, state employees, and retirees. Hardly our
peers.

-Robert

On Tue, 4 Dec 2007 14:35:48 +0000 (UTC), 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 all the information on flight into known icing and the related
procedures and required equipment, as documented in the POH and TCDS,
which do not contain language to the effect that "Must use this
equipment to run away as soon as any ice shows up", is wrong?

We're not talking about a SR22 with weeping wing here (I don't think
any of them are known-ice certified, but some do have inadvertant
encounter escape systems, and language to the effect of "Must use this
equipment to run away as soon as any ice shows up.")

On 2007-12-04, Neil Gould wrote:

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,...

Regardless of priority, the presumption that U.S. education is underfunded is a
persistent myth as is the belief that funding levels and results (educated
students) are causally related. http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa126.html

In article ,
"Robert M. Gary" wrote:

On Dec 4, 10:23 am, "Maxwell" wrote:

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.

Think about the type of people who are not excused from jury duty.
Depending on the judge juriors can be excused because they have a lot
going on at work, because they have a business meeting etc. The self-
employed are almost always excused. Especially in a long trial you end
up with welfare moms, state employees, and retirees. Hardly our
peers.

hmmm, not many people get excused from jury duty in taxachusetts.
I sure didn't get excused.

--
Bob Noel
(goodness, please trim replies!!!)

Bob Noel wrote:
In article ,
"Robert M. Gary" wrote:

On Dec 4, 10:23 am, "Maxwell" wrote:

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.

Think about the type of people who are not excused from jury duty.
Depending on the judge juriors can be excused because they have a lot
going on at work, because they have a business meeting etc. The self-
employed are almost always excused. Especially in a long trial you end
up with welfare moms, state employees, and retirees. Hardly our
peers.

hmmm, not many people get excused from jury duty in taxachusetts.
I sure didn't get excused.

Around here hardly anyone ever gets excused from showing up for jury
duty.

Getting past the questioning and actually getting seated on a jury
is a different story.

--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

On Dec 4, 4:03 pm, Peter Clark
wrote:
On Tue, 4 Dec 2007 14:35:48 +0000 (UTC), 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 all the information on flight into known icing and the related
procedures and required equipment, as documented in the POH and TCDS,
which do not contain language to the effect that "Must use this
equipment to run away as soon as any ice shows up", is wrong?

We're not talking about a SR22 with weeping wing here (I don't think
any of them are known-ice certified, but some do have inadvertant
encounter escape systems, and language to the effect of "Must use this
equipment to run away as soon as any ice shows up.")

If the Caravan is certified for known ice, then it's
certified. Transport Canada's document alerts the pilot to the changes
required by the AD (which is, in turn, requested by Cessna and
mandated by the FAA). The placard warns the pilot to get clear of ice,
and it's probably a CYA thing to protect Cessna. Many airplanes will
accumulate ice fast enough to get into trouble pretty quick, de/anti-
ice or not, and should get clear ASAP usually by climbing or
descending to get out of cloud, or to get into cloud that's either
above freezing or below the supercooled point (around -20°C). It's not
an inadvertent escape system; such systems are not "certified for
known ice" systems. If bozos keep killing themselves in the Caravan,
Cessna will likely get the known-ice certification suspended or will
get the FAA to require further training to legally fly it. There's
also various levels of icing risk, and the pilot needs to avoid the
worst of it.

Maybe we should consult the Caravan pilots themselves,
since they're the ones who do this all the time. See:

http://www.caravanpilots.com/phpBB3/....php?f=1&t=460

Their opinion seems to be, almost universally, that
pilots are poorly trained and don't know how to handle ice and when to
get out of it. Very similar to my opinion that carburetor ice and its
management is very poorly understood; otherwise, why would so many
perfectly good airplanes, with functioning carb heat systems, quit
with their carbs all clogged up and fall from the sky, every one of
them happening when carb ice risk was elevated (temp/dewpoint spread
too small)? How many pilots *really* check out the atmosphere to see
what it's up to before they dive into it? Ignorance will kill you
dead.
Recently, not far from here, a commercial student, no less, had
his carb ice up and he let it happen, and he ended up inverted in a
creek, in fairly remote mountains, in early winter. One of our guys
heard him going down and found him and directed a helicopter to him
before the hypothermia got him.

Dan

On Dec 2, 6:32 pm, "Maxwell" wrote:
"Tom Conner" wrote in message

...







"Ron Wanttaja" wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 2 Dec 2007 13:05:16 -0800 (PST), Jay Honeck
wrote:

I've heard you say this before, Jose, but never understood it. In
your opinion, what merit was there in a woman winning a lawsuit
against McDonalds because she burned herself on hot coffee?

Did you see the extent of the burns? There is hot and there is EFFING
HOT!

Apparently they had the temperature cranked way above scalding
levels.

Um, well, okay -- but isn't coffee *supposed* to be "effing hot"?

Mickey D's coffee caused third-degree burns. The argument was that was
*too*
effing hot.

I would be interested in knowing how much insulation the cup provided. If
it was paper then it couldn't have been to hot. If it was made of Shuttle
re-entry tiles then it probably was to hot.

Regardless of her initial award, does anyone know how much she actually
collected after appeal issues and such. I heard it was much less, but don't
recall the numbers. Maybe $200k.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

It was settled for $600,000.