I've just been speaking to a pal on Msn who lives in Canada. Now during the course of the conversation the subject of Americans came up (he is, shall we say, slightly critical of them) and the way they try to sue everybody for every and the least thing. He sent me a link (listed below) to a Canadian insurance website which mentions something of how bad the U.S has got with litigation and the blame culture in general. Take a read of this, if it's right, I can't believe that this is probably how this country will be in a few years :loopy:

The Stella's are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonalds. That case inspired the Stella Awards for the most frivolous successful lawsuits in the United States.

5th place (Tied)
Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $780,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving toddler was Ms.Robertson's Son.

5th place (Tied)
19-year-old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000 and medical expenses when his neighbour ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently did not notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal the hubcaps.

5th place (Tied)
Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage door. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since the automatic door opener was malfunctioning. He could not reenter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation and Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the garage for 8 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 $500,000.

4th Place
Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas was was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbour's Beagle dog. The Beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have been a little provoked at the time as Mr. Williams, who had climbed over the fence into the yard, was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.

3rd place
A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania$113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and broke her coccyx (tailbone). The beverage was on the floor because Ms.Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.

2nd Place
Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware sued the owner of a nightclub in a neighbouring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out two of her front teeth. This occurred whilst Ms.Walton was trying to crawl in through the window of the Ladies Room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000 and dental expenses.

1st Place
This year's 'runaway' winner was Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mr. Grazinski purchased a new Winnebago motorhome. On his trip home from an OU football game, having driven onto the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, the RV left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the owner's manual that he could not actually do this. The jury awarded him $1,750,000 plus a new Winnebago Motor Home. The company actually changed their manuals on the basis of this suit just in case there were any other complete morons buying their recreation vehicles.

http://jdsmithinsurance.com/jds-claims.htm

The saying 'Stop the world I want to get off' springs to mind here :( :(

If it gets even remotely like this I'm packing up, gesticulating rudely and leaving the country.

Damn the laywers, I curse them all :rant:

Perhaps it's time they suspended jury service in America? :suspect:

Is common sense really such a rare commodity in the good old US of A? Would explain a lot.....

StarSparkle :)

the yanks sue at the drop of a hat but this country is slowly beginning to
catch up really stupid laws appearing at work for health & safety reasons
does USA stand for u sue always :hihi:

Now you see, the common sense ammendment'd be a good ammendment to the bill of rights:

"And each citizen shall be expected to use their own common sense to the fullest of their individual capabilities and not make grandiose, frivilous claims and waste court time. They shall be duty bound to put their brains into gear before acting and not to blame other for whatever cretinous actions they undertake due to insuffiecient amount of thought and are sworn to take responsibility for their deeds."

I reckon George Washington would have called the dumbasses too.

Newsflash! We're probably already most of the way to being like it, I blame those adverts for stuff like Injury Lawyers for U etc, encouraging people to sue the pants off the Council for tripping over in Town for instance... Why can't people just look where they're going instead of walking round with their eyes shut for god sake?! :rant:

I mean yeah stuff like that guy who's told to lift a heavy box allegedly without heavy lifting training about bending your knees and keeping your back straight, in his situation he's probably right to sue his work as they were possibly negligent, but to go to all the messing about of sueing people over the slightest little trip or fall is beyond daftness :loopy:

But even in the heavy lifting situation any claims lawyer who knows what he's doing'll tell him to go away and stop being so daft, cos surely common sense should tell you not to even attempt to do something you've not been shown how to do properly even if your boss has told you to.

I knew of a scumbag who was in a pub bragging how he succesfully sued a city council because one night he came in drunk, tripped, and cut open his head. the next morning he smashed the area of the incident with a sledgehammer and sued the council for the massive hole he had created...and won.

these are, most certainly all false (http://www.stellaawards.com/bogus.html).

Surely a good test of whether compensation is justified or not could be to award compensation only to those who are injured .......etc......through no fault of their own whilst going about their lawful business .
If that were the benchmark , it would automatically exclude a lot or all of the American examples above .
Also in , " grey " ares where the cause of an injury has been " six of one and half a dozen of the other " , I'm sure the procedure could be simplified with minimum and maximum awards in place for certain common injuries .
If a car swerves off a pavement and injures a pedestrian they obviously need full compensation ; in the American examples above , in any sensible society , some of them would be prosecuted for having the cheek and impudence to bring frivolous claims to court .

Newsflash! We're probably already most of the way to being like it, I blame those adverts for stuff like Injury Lawyers for U etc, encouraging people to sue the pants off the Council for tripping over in Town for instance... Why can't people just look where they're going instead of walking round with their eyes shut for god sake?! :rant:

I mean yeah stuff like that guy who's told to lift a heavy box allegedly without heavy lifting training about bending your knees and keeping your back straight, in his situation he's probably right to sue his work as they were possibly negligent, but to go to all the messing about of sueing people over the slightest little trip or fall is beyond daftness :loopy:

But even in the heavy lifting situation any claims lawyer who knows what he's doing'll tell him to go away and stop being so daft, cos surely common sense should tell you not to even attempt to do something you've not been shown how to do properly even if your boss has told you to.


So what do you suggest the pedestrian should do where they trip over and falls because of a very large pothole; in state of shock and car is approaching rather more rapidly than 35mph which is in any event over the speed limit. Also COuncil was informed countless times of a large pothole in the middle of a fairly narrow 2-way traffic road but Highways did nothing about it.

these are, most certainly all false (http://www.stellaawards.com/bogus.html).
Though there are probably umpteen equally daft genuine lawsuits, these were on Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp)last year, and were shown to be false.

Though there are probably umpteen equally daft genuine lawsuits, these were on Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp)last year, and were shown to be false.

Yep - these are all crap, and have been doing the e-mail rounds for years.

Still worryingly believeable!:o

I could write several pages on why bogus lawsuits occur in the US, but it all seems to boil down to greed and stupidity from the top down. Could it happen in the UK? Of course it could. Will it happen in the next few years? It all depends on how you vote.

lol, I read somewhere that the number one route to becoming a millionaire in the States was through litigation!

I think we have reached this level in relation to employment litigation (which seem to be particularly prevalent in the City of London (i.e. in the financial services industry) and in the public services. The awards in such cases seem to be particularly high, particularly in cases involving alleged gender or racial discrimination.

Finaly a sensible Judge,a claim was made to "Wendy's" (hamburger chain) a human finger tip was found in a hamburger,later it was found it came fm industrial mishap,The couple have been given 12 yrs for false claim.The U.S is sue happy & slowly coming to Canada.I sat on a jury,and what a fight i had, poor boy broke leg fooling around onthe swings alot of the jury would have give'n lg sum because he was poor &School board had lot of tax$, responsabilty &play safe was hardly mentioned,they wanted all play grounds grassed over with all swings etc removed.