The Issues - No. 39 - Frivolous Lawsuits

I upsets me that a woman can buy a take out cup of coffee at McDonald's, get in the passenger seat of a car driven by a relative, spill it on her lap and burn her legs while the car is pulled over and she's trying to add sugar, sue McDonald's because the coffee was too hot, and get over a $1,000,000 settlement in a court of law. Give me a break! Doesn't she have responsibility for her actions and the resulting injury she caused to herself? Because of her, McDonald's lowered the temperature of its coffee everywhere there's a McDonald's in the entire world just so someone else couldn't sue them because the coffee was too hot. And that, together with the $1,000,000 plus they had to pay to that poor woman, probably contributed to a rise in McDonald's prices. So, because of this totally frivolous lawsuit, now you can only get a cup of warm coffee at McDonald's and it costs you more than a hot one did previously. Ridiculous! How about the magistrate judge in Washington, DC who tried and continues try to sue a dry cleaning establishment for millions of dollars over a lost pair of pants. At least so far that one hasn't gotten very far.

I think there is something wrong with our system of justice when people are allowed to sue for something that they caused themselves. I think judges, in these situations should have the leeway to throw that kind of stuff out and, in cases where a jury is involved, judges should be allowed to throw out or temper what a jury decides. It seems that what often happens in these kind of cases is that a person, who was injured due to his/her own mistake, will sue a company whose product is involved. Their lawyer will convince them to have a jury trial and then appeal to the jury that the company is far better able to pay for the medical, emotional, and economic costs (such as loss of income) than the injured person. Juries have a tendency to side with the poor individual over the big rich company and thus award atrocious amounts of money to the poor injured person. So, the jury awards $1,000,000 and who do you suppose gets a great big chunk of that money? If you guessed the lawyers, you're absolutely right.

And that's another problem. Lawyers make huge amounts of money from these lawsuits and so it's in their best interest to take these kind of cases on. They get some poor injured idiot to file a suit against a big rich company, get some ignorant jury that will side with the poor injured idiot against the big rich company, and get rich from it all. It's just not right and judges ought to be allowed or required to throw these cases out or limit the awards made by juries. I would like to see something done to change the law or the legal procedures to prevent anyone from suing in cases where they caused the damage to themselves or their property. In our society people need to take responsibility for their own actions, not rewarded when they do something stupid.