Litigious madness

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6238364.stm

[quote]US man loses $54m trousers claim

A US man has lost a $54m (£27m) claim against a South Korean dry-cleaning firm which lost a pair of his trousers.[/quote]

the right result, and a brief respite from the madness…

but in terms of the image of the US judicial system being damaged, boy has the horse already bolted on that one…

Nope, don’t buy it. The question is, how did the case proceed for so long. Why wasn’t it seen, heard and squashed much earlier.

HG

excuse my French but i fail to find another word for such lowlifes

what an asshole

[quote=“plasmatron”]the right result, and a brief respite from the madness…

but in terms of the image of the US judicial system being damaged, boy has the horse already bolted on that one…[/quote]

You think so? I’m not so sure. I would think most people will view this case – correctly – as an example of one, isolated, out of control lunatic abusing the system, and the system finally shutting him up.

Incidentally, as is customary in the US, because he lost he was ordered to pay the defendants’ costs, which will be a few thousand dollars in court fees, expert fees, etc., and the defendants will undoubtedly request the judge to order him to pay their attorney fees (there’s no guarantee of that right as there might be in the UK, but they may have good odds in this case). Decisions on those matters may take a week or two.

And then, part II, will be the malicious prosecution lawsuit against him. One of the key prerequisites for filing such a suit is that the underlying lawsuit must be unsuccessful, and that requirement was just satisfied. So, now he will almost find himself on the other end of the lawsuit. Expect that suit to be filed within the next few weeks.

As for how to describe the plaintiff, I don’t believe “asshole” is the correct term. I believe “mentally ill” is more accurate.

Will it be possible for the plaintiff to appeal?

Sure. If one loses at trial one can first file in the same court possible post-trial motions to overturn the verdict on the grounds of some alleged impropriety at trial. One can then file an appeal to the next higher level court and if they reject him, one can file again and again and again till they finally shut you up for good and make you pay for being such a goddamned nuisance.

My gut feeling is that he won’t file a lot of further motions and appeals, because I suspect he was finally starting to get the message that the whole world thinks he’s crazy, but he had just dug himself into such a deep hole that there was no easy way for him to climb out. After so much noise and publicity there was no easy way for him to gracefully dismiss the whole damn thing and say he was sorry. But now that he lost, I suspect he’d like to just slink away and forget about it all (except that he won’t be able to once they sue him back).

MT, I can’t for the life of me see how someone who is mentally ill can: a) fight a protracted legal case; or b) the courts allow mentally ill people into its domain to fight protracted legal cases based on understandably spurious grounds.

There are obvious failings either with your court system that allowed a lawyer to harass these people for two years running and at great risk to their financial health - bearing in mind that they can not be guaranteed being reimbursed the lawyers fees - or the mental health act which allowed a man to do considerable damage to his professional and career standing while fighting a claim inspired by mental illness.

HG

[quote=“Mother Theresa”][quote=“plasmatron”]the right result, and a brief respite from the madness…

but in terms of the image of the US judicial system being damaged, boy has the horse already bolted on that one…[/quote]

You think so? I’m not so sure. I would think most people will view this case – correctly – as an example of one, isolated, out of control lunatic abusing the system, and the system finally shutting him up.[/quote]

HGC’s valid points about how this preposterous case was allowed to go on for so long in the first place aside, I’d agree that this case would seem to be a victory of sanity over stupidity, but on the whole I think it’s fair to say that to the majority of the world’s amatuer observers, the most overriding (though perhaps flawed and stereotyped) impression of the US legal system would pretty much boil down to “lunatic lawsuit land” where everyone is suing everyone else, serving hot coffee is a crime, burglars can sue property owners and $54million dollar pants are the court order of the day…

Really? How about someone who is mentally ill being Emperor of France or Fuhrer of Germany or President of the United States? You’re a nurse; you know how many total nutcases are out there in our midst, living apparently ordinary lives despite the turmoil inside their heads.

It’s a serious thing to deprive a person of his right to a trial. The damages he claimed were totally absurd and it’s insane that he didn’t accept their generous settlement offers (US$12k at one point), but certainly a man should have a right to sue for a pair of lost trousers. In the end justice prevailed, more or less. He made lots of flamboyant claims, but the court didn’t grant him a penny and, as I’ve said, his turn to pay them back is coming up next.

By modern definition a mentally ill person is unlikley to be capable of carrying on their work. That scenario of someone carrying on with a mental illness unnotticed is extremely rare and relates almost exclusively to paranoid schizophrenia.

Surely in the process of executing a law suit it must have become glaringly apparent the man was bonkers. Why was that not acted upon? Simple enough. Then again perhaps there are big problems with the laws governing the mentally ill in the US, as highlighted by the repeat warnings that preceeded those murders by that Korean gunmen.

On the face of it, a man suing a laundromat for US$54m over a pair of missing trousers is clearly bonkers. That option should have been investigated and eliminated.

HG

REALLY? I’ve never heard anyone say that before. Isn’t bi-polar disorder a form of mental illness? Doesn’t a significant portion of the populace suffer from that? What about ADD, paranoia, hypochondria, obsessive-compulsive disorder, etc.? Aren’t those all forms of mental illness. . . and very common ones?

[quote]Surely in the process of executing a law suit it must have become glaringly apparent the man was bonkers. Why was that not acted upon? Simple enough. Then again perhaps there are big problems with the laws governing the mentally ill in the US, as highlighted by the repeat warnings that preceeded those murders by that Korean gunmen.

On the face of it, a man suing a laundromat for US$54m over a pair of missing trousers is clearly bonkers. That option should have been investigated and eliminated.[/quote]

Reminds me of the thought I always have when some mommy in Texas ( :wink: ) murders her babies or some guy shoots up a university or some other horrendous act and people are screaming out for the death penalty and get upset when his/her lawyer argues “not guilty by reason of insanity,” and the people claim it’s just a sneaky trick to avoid facing punishment. I always think in such cases that of course he/she is crazy – if someone commits a crime that is so extreme no sane person would even think of doing such a thing, then that person therefore must be insane, right?

This case is different, though, because it’s the lunatic’s civil case, not a criminal case against him. Keep in mind, too, that a civil case always has two components: liability and damages. In this case the guy’s damages claim was totally nuts, but he may have had a plausible claim for liability, for establishing liability based on missing trousers. If so, he should have a right to try that claim and then try to prove up the amount of his damages, which should presumably come to about $100 or so. That may be part of hte reason the judge didn’t throw it out. Give him his day in court, let him try to prove his case, and ultimately he failed, not even establishing any liability. By giving him that chance the judge more finally and definitely terminated the lawsuit – he went to trial and lost. If the judge had instead chosen to dismiss the lawsuit prior to trial it would have likely ended up immediately in the court of appeals and perhaps would have then been sent back down to give him his right to a trial. After all, while the damages claim was nuts, the liability argument may have been credible.

Incidentally, people say all the time “I’ll sue him for a million dollars.” Now we can all see how crazy that common sentiment is. One can sue for any claim one wants in any amount one wants. But in the end, one gets nothing unless one proves liability and one only gets the amount of damages that one can actually prove – not just any absurd number pulled out of the air.

REALLY? I’ve never heard anyone say that before. Isn’t bi-polar disorder a form of mental illness? Doesn’t a significant portion of the populace suffer from that? What about ADD, paranoia, hypochondria, obsessive-compulsive disorder, etc.? Aren’t those all forms of mental illness. . . and very common ones?[/quote]

Bah! Hollywood poppycock, coffee table psychology, or grubby phamarceutical company driven syndromes, for the most part. But lawyers don’t have a monopoly on linguistic gymnastics. A true full blown mental illness can’t be ignored. Yes, people maybe bipolar (have a mental illness), but you will goddamn know when they are manic! (ie, acutely mentally ill).

That judge dude may have a history of mental illness, but that doesn’t necessarily make him mentally ill. However, if he was acutely mentally ill, that should be glaringly obvious.

The distinction a psychiatrist will tend to look at is organic or inorganic/neurosis or psychosis. Very simply, neurosis is relatively mild (ADD, paranoia, hypochondria, obsessive-compulsive disorder) while psychosis (bipolar and schizophrenia, including paranoid schizophrenia) are considered more severe. However, there are grades of severity in all illnesses and obviously a neurosis can dissrupt a functtioning lfe just as readily as a psychosis.

HG

Hope Pearson is forced to pay the legal fees…this will make him think twice about filing an appeal.

Sure that might be their impression – my dad periodically sends me those chain emails in which a bunch of debunked cases that didn’t happen (check snopes.com) are presented as a series of outrageous examples of a system gone amok.

The McDonald’s case is also often presented as a huge miscarriage of justice, ignoring the facts that McDonald’s had their machines specially made to keep coffee super-hot as a competitive advantage for truckers who liked coffee that would stay warmer longer, despite their knowing of 700 other people who had been burned by their super-hot coffee, despite the coffee being so frickin’ hot that contact with it for even the briefest of periods would take flesh to 2nd and 3rd degree burns – instead of the greater leniency offered by coffee served at “normal” temperatures. The woman initially only asked McDonald’s to cover her medical bills – they told her to take a hike so she filed and won once McDonald’s super-heated coffee and burning incidents were established.

Some people (presumably McDonald’s fans) see injustice in this – I see it as being part of the economics of the world. McDonald’s gets the economic advantages of selling more super-heated-burn-your-skin-instantly coffee (i.e., increased trucker sales) but it also gets the economic disadvantages (i.e., paying for burning people’s genitals off). How much would you take to have your genitals burned so badly that they’re sticking on skin grafts to hold your nuts in?