“Things are supposed to be fun, not injury-producing,” says attorney Lawrence Saftler, whose client, Manhattan screenwriter Aaron Schnore, didn’t succeed in staying on the raging mechanical bull at Johnny Utah’s restaurant in midtown. (Jose Martinez, “Raging bull rider suing restaurant”, New York Daily News, Sept. 5; Popehat).
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I can easily see two scenarios where such a suit might be viable, so I wouldn’t be too quick to jump on this as an example of litigation gone wild.
1. An obviously very drunk patron. While the drunk is responsible for his/her conduct, it doesn’t give others license to act with impunity toward that person. The conduct of the bull operator could still be an issue.
2. An inexperienced rider who tells the bull operator to go easy due to inexperience, and the operator ignores this warning and jacks the bull way beyond the rider’s admitted capabilities.
Whether either scenario occurred here, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be too quick to say the suit is meritless.
Sometimes you throw the bull. Sometimes the bull throws you.
“Things are supposed to be fun, not injury-producing.”
Why can’t they be both?
Right.
It’s all fun and games until you loose an eye, then it’s fun but you just can’t see it!
So many opportunities for a pun and double entendre. However, this girly-man will surely lose all his non-girly-man friends. He’s likely to have trouble attracting members of the opposite sex when word of this gets out, as well.
More background on Lawrence Saftler, who was a minor political celebrity back in the 90s:
“It turns out that Barbara Bush’s 81-year-old stepmother, Willa Martin Pierce, is being sued for $5 million in a personal-injury case in Westchester County.
Lawrence B. Saftler, the lawyer for the plaintiff, said he would request tomorrow that the case go to trial before the election to, as he put it, “keep the pressure on.” He said he had been told that the President and Mrs. Bush did not know about the lawsuit, but he figured that could change.
“They coughed up money for Neil Bush,” Mr. Saftler said, referring to the President’s son, who received family assistance to pay fines associated with the collapse of the Silverado Savings and Loan, of which he was a director. “Why not for my client?”
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE2DE143CF932A0575BC0A964958260
I’m surprised the resteraunt wouldn’t have an airtight disclaimer for just this sort of situation.
Is there such a thing as an “airtight disclaimer” any more? Some of you lawyers want to comment on this? Please.
“Airtight disclaimer.” This is funny.
“Airtight disclaimer” just means you pay your lawyer a fortune, not them and their lawyer as well.
Or it guarantees you a lower settlement offer.
Given how things seem to go these days, I am surprised that the disclaimers are not used as evidence against defendants of the obvious risk.
“They knew it was so dangerous, they tried to force my client to sign away his right to be protected. Don’t let them get away with it!”
Bull-riding is a sport, thus mechanical bull-riding can be seen as practice for a sport.
Most sports have a certain degree of risk to the participant. Even a non-contact sport like baseball has a whole myriad of potential injuries one can sustain. Heck even fishing can be dangerous…ever gotten stung by a fish with a venom gland?
If this guy wanted bull-riding without risk, he should just play a videogame of it.
I’m waiting for a headline such as: Guest Stung at Scorpion Petting Zoo – files $58MM lawsuit.
Subhead: Who knew that scorpions were poisonous?
Two words, Personal Responsibility!
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