Kevin Tarr wrote: > > At 10:27 PM 11/20/2002 -0800, you wrote: > >Kevin Tarr wrote: > > > >> > >>When a thief gets accidentally stuck in a pipe or falls through a > >>skylight or gets locked in a garage for days on end, and can sue the > >>business or home owner, and WIN, we truly have lost it. > > > >Are these actual cases you are familiar with? > > > >Doug > > Do you mean "Were you involved" or "Did you just make them up", or "Did you > read about them in the paper"? Number 3 of course. > > I can't find example one with google. > > Here is example two: > > http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv17n3/reg17n3-hayward.html > > And number 3 I'll just quote: 3. October 1998: A Terrence Dickson of > Bristol, Pennsylvania was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by > way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since > the automatic door opener was malfunctioning. He couldn't re-enter the > house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he > pulled it shut. The family was on vacation. Mr. Dickson found himself > locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he > found, and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the homeowner's insurance > claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to > the tune of half a million dollars. > > I didn't run the snoopes test on them, DSL is too slow
Number 3 is listed as false at snopes. There are a number of *real* cases illustrating the problem at http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.htm (and in fact, this is the page that debunks the above). Real ones include a man suing the Escondido Public Library for $1.5 million because the 12-pound cat which is the library mascot attacked his 50-pound Labrador mix, and a student at the University of Idaho suing the university over his fall from a third-story dorm window as he was mooning other students. Personally, I think that in number 3, it's somewhat a case of just desserts. (And I likely would not have been seated on the jury in the first place with that attitude, right?) Julia _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
