I have heard of the "lawn mower case" before. It may have been one of the
Harvard case studies I had to read in one of the Business Law classes I
took to get my masters. Even if it is a hoax, we all know of worse cases
than that. How about the lady that dropped the McDonald's coffee in her
lap?
My favorite is the case where an experienced pilot rented an airplane to
fly to Aspen. He was circling the house of the person he was going to
visit dropping pebbles on the roof to let the person know it was time to
pick him up at the airport when he bored himself right into a mountain.
The pilot's wife sued the club that rented the plane and Piper, the
airplane manufacturer, for negligence and won 2 million dollars. A few
other salient facts: 1) The couple was estranged. Their divorse was to be
final less than a month after the accident occured 2) The guy, a plumber,
hadn't worked in two years due to a disability - alcoholism. 3) The pilot
had no other dependents. Those facts were deemed inadmissible by the
judge.
And lawyers wonder why we love them so.
Lawyer joke: Did you hear about the two lawyers walking down the street?
When they saw a beautiful blonde one said "boy would I like to scr** her".
The other one asks "Out of what?". (My appologies to any lawyers who are
not blood sucking vampires. I personnally have met two.)
By the way, I really like LBCs but I love flying. Unfortunately, with
wife, child in private school and mortgage, I can't afford to right now.
Due to all of the litigation affordable general aviation aircraft went out
of production for almost 20 years. Thanks to some limited liability
legislation that was signed into law in Clinton's first term, Cessna is
back to producing 172s. Unfortunately, they base price over 100 grand even
though the the actual cost to build one is less than $20,000. Cessna's
insuror insists they puts the rest of the money in a reserve fund just in
case they get sued.
Herb
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