Hi Dudley and SR,

It's a sad state of affairs really, and I have no idea what the
solution is or even if there ever will be a solution. The quest for
the fast buck is just too tempting for both the lawyers AND the
public. The two together are a formula for disaster.

The fact that people (the public AND the lawyers) will jump at any
money the think they might be able to grasp might be sad but it is a
fact of society. Few people turn their back at a gold nugget lying
before their feet.

The real problem is the legal system itself, which WILL on occasion
grant hundreds of thousands of Dollars to someone stupid enough to
place a cup of hot coffee between their legs. If cases like that were
regularly and relyably dismissed (and, yes, maybe a cost to be paid for
filing it), lawyers would stop filing them, or at least defendands
would not need to worry about them. Obviously a company, as was
recently cited, considers it a real possibility, that a jury might
judge it to pay a huge amount of money for building a vacuum pump that
did NOT fail, just because the plane carrying it crashed! So real a
possibility, that the company preferred to accept a settlement (and
leave aviation business alone in the future). How insane is that?

THAT needs to be changed. As SR pointed out, one trick to change that
would be to elimiate jurys and leave it to professionals. Jurys tend to
favor with the "little man" against the big, bad corporation, no matter
how ridiculous the claim.

regards,
Friedrich

--
for personal email please remove "entfernen" from my adress