The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

This pisses me off,as one of my pet peeves,stupid people,doing something stupid...and blame someone else....If she was watching where she was going,she wouldn't have fallen into the fountain....So now,the knee jerk reaction,lawmakers are  gonna to protect us from our selves,the'll make a law that malls have to put rails around fountains.So malls will just remove them,to avoid this happening at their malls....

Video and Story..
http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/fountain-lady-nobody-went-to-my-aid-23909987 (http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/fountain-lady-nobody-went-to-my-aid-23909987)

the Youtube video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWtDpGM36J8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWtDpGM36J8)

Sue for what?  The magical moving fountain that jumped in front of her?

billions of people have walked past that fountain without falling in.  Pay attention.

These stories make news, but are ultimately nothing.   Notice the words "may" and "sue", both of which are meaningless.  You can sue anybody for anything.  It doesn't mean that you'll win the case or that it won't get thrown out, but it's your legal right to try.

For her to get paid for this, the mall will have to have been negligent in some way.  Maybe there's more to the story, like that there isn't a reasonable barrier to a hazard in the walking area, for example.

I would think the only issue may be that the security video was posted online.   I don't know if that's really a problem (publishing without her permission), but I think it would be a stretch.

I agree with Lil B on this.  This is a frivolous law suit.

If a law stating that the loser pays all court costs for all parties in civil suits, these frivolous lawsuits would stop.

Damn I'm late...She says in the interview she's suing because no one helped her,but in the Long version of the video where it shows her falling in from two different angles...One of the security guards asks in the video"When did this happen?" the male security guard replies..."About 4:30 today" The original person asks "Where did she go?" the male responds I don't know she just walked away"..When I get back I'll look for the longer Clip...Gotta run...

If someone had helped her and she hit her funny bone while getting out, she would sue the person who helped her. I want this woman's email address. lol

In the longer clip, a janitor does walk over to her, presumably to ask if she was ok.  She won't get over her burden of proof there.

And in terms of releasing the video, you have no right to privacy in a public place... she won't win that either.

Or the lawyers for the mall determine it might be best just to settle which happens quite a bit.

We do reside in a nation where someone successfully sued because they ordered a hot coffee, received a hot coffee and then, somehow, didn't understand spilling said hot coffee in their lap might produce a burn on their skin.

I have a friend who was broadsided in a four way intersection by someone who ran a red light.  The person was given a citation for running a red light and their insurance company took liability for the accident.  The red light runner sued my friend for pain and suffering from the accident...and actually WON the first go round.  A second judge had to step in and throw it out. 

Nothing surprises me anymore.  This woman may have stumbled across a winning lottery ticket.  Isn't that what everyone is looking for, their personal winning lottery ticket?

For every instance that happens that someone else could be blamed for there are 10,000 slime ball lawyers ready to toss together a law suit for it. A massive overhaul of our civil litigation system is needed.

I'm assuming this is a reference to the "hot McDonalds coffee" lawsuit. In that case, I would recommend you find a different example. The common media representation of the case is utterly flawed.

The lady in question bought hot coffee and spilled the contents in her lap while trying to remove the lid. That doesn't sound like much of a reason to sue, does it? Or for a jury to award a large sum, right?

The case is A LOT more complicated than that. The coffee in question was INSANELY hot, completely impossible to drink or even sip from. Despite hundreds and hundreds of similar cases, the restaurant refused to change its serving temperate (unlike that of every other major chain). At the temperature it was served, the coffee would cause 3rd degree burns in just a few seconds of contact.

As for the injuries sustained... how about 3rd degree burns to 6% of the body, including inner thighs, groin and genital area. OUCH! The lady also attempted to settle for $20,000 to help pay for the 8-day hospital stay and numerous skin grafts, but was flatly rejected.
 
The restaurant KNEW that the coffee, as it was served, would seriously injure anyone consuming it. Customers regularly complained. Practically no other restaurants served coffee at this temperature. The manager didn't give a rats ass. The argument was that take-out coffee wasn't meant to be consumed immediately, but rather taken home and consumed there.

In this particular case, the problem was that the restaurant knew it was a problem, didn't care, didn't want to change anything, and had no intention of warning anyone in any way. A jury (and several subsequent judges) didn't take too kindly to that level of arrogance.

Plenty of sites around the net have extensive information on the case. Here's one of the more official ones:

http://www.caoc.com/CA/index.cfm?event=showPage&pg=facts

^^^^ That's pretty interesting. That's why it's so hard to interpret what is fed to us. It too easy to leave things out for dramitic effect and thus, change the story completly.

Watching the video of this case I can only assume there was a sign that said "Walking and texting is perfectly safe!!". Outside of that I can't see where the mall is at fault on any level.

Apparently after a little more digging,the lady who fell into the fountain....is well a criminal,not exactly a goody two shoes..After appearance on GMA,she was in court for identity theft ..... Identity theft, Hit and run,retail Theft...
http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/fountain-lady-fumbles-with-the-law-23922546 (http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/fountain-lady-fumbles-with-the-law-23922546)

At the very end of the video they mention, she's not going to sue,and the security guard has been fired...

Good point.

This link is exhibit A for this thread http://www.thedolphinsmakemecry.com/forums/index.php/topic,17999.0.html

What happened was unfortunate for her, but we all know if the coffee had been cold, she would have been right back in the McDonalds bitching about it being cold. ;)

Excellent post, fyo, and you're exactly right.

The McDonalds Coffee case is misrepresented a lot.  If you look at all the details, they were negligible and knew that their coffee was boiling, but refused to take action.  Accidents happen, but if you don't take reasonable action to prevent those accidents, then you're liable.

However, it's not a good headline, so people only run with the ridiculous version.

And every restaurant you go too will tell you no matter how hot they make the coffee people will complain it is not hot enough.
Not only that but she was a passenger. So with two free hands, she was not able to remove the lid off of a cup without spilling the cup on yourself.
Getting 3rd degree burns sucks, as I know from personal experience, but we need to have some sort of personal responsibility in this country.
You cannot get medium rare meat or sunny side up eggs in certain restaurants because people have sued because they ordered it and got sick.
Suck it up and except the fact that just about everything has risks. She is lucky I was not on her jury because she would not have gotten that much money.

If you note the link, the jury awarded her an obscene amount (well over $2 million). A judge subsequently reduced it and then a further 20% was taken off the top with the judge considering her 20% responsible. If you look around, you can find full court records (they're public) and some of the quotes by the judges are pretty staggering.

The problem with serving boiling water in a styrofoam cup is that you can't tell what the temperature is. You have no way of knowing that a few seconds of exposure is going to result in skin-graft-needing 3rd degree burns. I would strongly argue that a "reasonable person" would have absolutely NO reason to assume such an injury was a risk or that the coffee just bought was in no way suitable to consume in any way, shape, or form. I would not have assumed it and I consider myself fairly reasonable.

This isn't like a tripping over a lose tile on a sidewalk or whatever. There was a long history of complaints and (small) out-of-court settlements. And when the defense at trial says they're going to do absolutely nothing to prevent further such injuries, then you're just begging a jury to award a huge amount of money.

You're right, and that's what sucks about the court of public opinion.  The mall would rather pay her ten or twenty grand to get her to shut up and go away rather than prove her lawsuit is frivolous at the trial and face the negative publicity that would come with it.

I've said over and over whenever that conversation came up that if I had been on the jury, we would still be deliberating to this day, or a mis trial would have been declared. If I were there, I would have just kept saying "The bitch ordered COFFEE and would have bitched if it were cold!"

Just once, I'd like to see the company in one of these lawsuits actually go through with it to make an example of the plaintiff. This bitch wasn't even hurt. She just got wet, and was exposed as the idiot that she is.

^^^ I would be happy,with them just repeating over,and over...

"Personal Responsibility"

Have some, get some...hmmm mmm good.... :D

(sorry weird mood...)

Don't the coffee lids have a space you can punch out to drink through?  Why was she trying to remove the lid from a hot cup of coffee in a moving car?  If she wanted to put cream or sugar in, she should have stopped or ask the driver to stop for 30 seconds so she could do that.

Sorry, I was being rational again.

The thing that people are glossing over is this:  spills happen.  There is a reasonable expectation that people will spill coffee on themselves, at some time in their lives.  In this particular case, she was probably more complicit in the spill than most -- she was partially negligent in how she held the cup between her legs, for example.

But there is also the expectation that the coffee served can be consumed.  There is a reasonable expectation that coffee (even hot coffee) will not scald the person.

Sometimes, these things are just bad luck that can't be avoided.  But in this case, there was reason to believe that McDonald's knew about this problem and that it went against their own standards, but refused to act on it.  By doing so, they are partially responsible.

I agree about the insane sum of money, but that's a different issue.  I am not sue-happy.  I don't come from a family that's like that.  However, we've had two incidents of negligence from companies that injured people in my family, and the lengths that you have to go through to get compensation can take away lots of your time and energy.

Here are the two things that happened to us:

My Dad got run off the road by a company truck with an unsecured load.  Things started falling off the back of the truck.  So, when the driver realized, he jerked off the road, into my dad, sending him off of I-95, down a ditch and into a tree.  It almost killed him, totaled the car, and he was injured (neck and back) for a long time.  In addition, my Dad, who is a really tough guy, was afraid to drive and was having nightmares all the time.  It really shook our family to have our rock be so fragile.  We had private investigators hanging around our house, trying to capture a picture of my Dad doing anything physical, so that they could prove that he was faking.  It made him unable to do any of the things he loved, like gardening even a little bit, for nearly 2 years.

The other was in a CVS type store...can't remember what it was called, but it was a chain.  They were selling rocking chairs, but they had positioned them on top of the aisles.  The legs of the rocking chairs hung over the edge.  Then, they installed carts that had the long pole on them so you couldn't roll them out the door into the parking lot.  My 80 year old grandmother pushed the cart down the aisle, it dragged the edge of the rocking chair, and it fell on her head.  I don't believe we ever sought litigation, but that was definitely the store's negligence.

And she did.

She was a passenger and the car was parked when it happened.

Any time someone cites the McDonald's coffee case, some corporate lawyer gets his wings.  It's the textbook example of a huge megacorp deciding that they simply don't care what the consequences are, they are going to make whatever decisions they find most profitable and to hell with the consumer.

This is precisely the reason why we have the judicial system we do; so that the court of public opinion doesn't simply say "suing the restaurant for spilling coffee on yourself?  WTF SO FRIVOLOUS".  McDonald's consciously abused the system and their position of power over multiple injured customers, and had no intention whatsoever of modifying their behavior, no matter how many people suffered life-threatening injuries from a spilled drink.

That's one possible result.

Another possible result is people don't sue the makers of Tylenol for distributing contaminated medicine that caused the death of their child, because losing that lawsuit would bankrupt you (after paying the costs for a stable of corporate lawyers).  This is what happens in "loser pays" jurisdictions; moneyed interests have very little to fear from individuals, as the risk in suing a megacorp is far too great.

Personally, I'd rather see a system where the judge determines whether or not the lawsuit is frivolous (on a case-by-case basis) and fines the plaintiff accordingly.

^^

God point. Never thought about it like that. You could say that a case like Tylenol would not lose, but who knows.

I have read that before. I do not think she was assigned enough responsibility. She was trying to take the lid off in a moving.... I will say that again, a moving vehicle. Wether the coffee was super boiling or not, everyone knows a hot liquid will burn you if spillied, and it is stupid to remove the lid while in a moving vehicle as this significantly increases the chance of spillage.

One person says the car was moving, another says the car was parked. Anyone know for sure?

^ While that factors into her level of responsibility, it does not factor into McDonald's level of negligence.  They still served her a dangerous beverage. 

I don't care if the beverage is scalding or not, I don't want to spill it on myself. 
However, McDonalds made the coffee way too hot if it caused that kind of damage.  I would agree with the 80% blame for them and the 20% blame for the customer.

The Consumer Attorneys of California link I referenced says "not moving", but I don't recall if this was a disputed issue in the case.

The car was parked.  The claim that it was moving is a completely debunked myth.

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm


bsmooth, if you are going to continue to claim that the car was moving, cite your sources.