Don Boudreaux has some thoughts on that. [Cafe Hayek]
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Posts tagged as:
product liability
Class action plaintiffs claim that all three of Nintendo’s designs are defective [Colin Miller, Evidence Law Prof]
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It’s among the most wince-makingly embarrassing ever (not for the squeamish or prudish). [Above the Law; Freed v. Hanes, decision in PDF]
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“Jury clears companies in lawn mower lawsuit” [Eugene, Oregon, Register-Guard]
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- Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce: “Elmer Fudd” commenter defamed us [Sun-News via Patrick at Popehat]
- “New Texas law seeks common sense instead of ‘zero tolerance’ in punishment of students” [Star-Telegram]
- Oprah can relax, poet’s self-scripted $1 trillion lawsuit against her is dismissed [THR Esq., Lowering the Bar and more, New Jersey Lawsuit Reform Watch]
- Overview of big push for new federal food safety laws [Kristin Choo, ABA Journal]
- And thanks for all the booze: “Chronic drunk costs SF taxpayers at least $150,000/year” [Obscure Store, Common Room]
- “We have made a grave mistake in politicizing the economy so deeply, and should back away now.” [Tyler Cowen, NYT]
- As a phrase, “sex toy product liability” is probably going to bring us the wrong sort of search engine traffic [Law and More]
- Overturning Supreme Court’s Iqbal/Twombly pleading jurisprudence emerging as key Congressional objective for trial lawyer lobby [Freddoso, Examiner; recent post of mine at Point of Law, and much other coverage there]
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“The family of former Minnesota Vikings offensive lineman Korey Stringer won an important legal victory Monday against the manufacturer of the helmets and shoulder pads he wore when he died nearly eight years ago from complications of heatstroke. A federal judge in Ohio concluded that manufacturer Riddell Inc. had a duty to warn Stringer that its helmets and shoulder pads could contribute to heat stroke when used in hot conditions.” [Kevin Seifert, ESPN]
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Paul Breed, Unreasonable Rocket:
A long time ago a normal mortal could buy rocket grade peroxide. Then someone crashed their rocket pack and sued the peroxide supplier. They won and the supplier lost more on that suit than they had ever made on the small rocket grade peroxide sales. So they did the smart thing and stopped selling rocket grade peroxide to anyone that did not have a government contract.
Result: he decides to try making his own. (That sounds like a step forward for safety, doesn’t it?) What happened next, as well as commenter reactions, at the link.
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19-year-old Sidney Odom happily went along when 20-year-old Travis Kirby and 18-year-old Riley Strickland asked “Who wants to go to the Beacon?”—a bar in Terry, Mississippi. A long night of drinking and driving came to an end at about 3 am when Kirby’s Camaro hit a tree at about 90 mph. As none of the three were wearing seatbelts, all were ejected from the vehicle. Kirby, whose blood-alcohol level was three times the legal limit at 0.25%, died at the scene; the other two were injured.
Since we’re talking about the case, you can guess that the three blamed everyone except the underage drunk drivers: in this case, the car seller, the tire installer, and the tire manufacturer, Goodyear Tires. The car seller settled for about half a million dollars; a Copiah County jury found the other defendants liable for an additional $2.1 million. Goodyear appealed, complaining about various prejudicial statements made by the plaintiffs’ attorneys, such as introducing evidence from other lawsuits about other types of tires, but the Mississippi state appellate court affirmed. (Holbrook Mohr, “Miss. court agrees tire, not alcohol caused crash”, AP/Washington Post, Apr. 22; Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. v. Kirby (Miss. App. 2009)).
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A judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Stratford, Connecticut woman against the cosmetics firm L’Oreal, saying she hadn’t proven her contention that the company had put dark brown dye in a box labeled as blonde. “I can never go back to my natural blonde hair,” complained Charlotte Feeney, who said that she ended up going on medications for depression as well as wearing hats. “I feel fake about that. Also blondes do get more attention than brunettes, of course, emotionally, I miss that.” (Daniel Tepfer, “Woman sues over wrong hair color”, Connecticut Post, Oct. 7)(via ABA Journal).
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Gary Charbonneau had a gambling history, including substantial wins, which devolved into compulsive gambling in 2002. He blames this on his Parkinson’s disease medication, Mirapex, which he started taking in 1997. Mirapex changed its warning label to include reports of a correlation while Charbonneau was taking the drug; Charbonneau’s doctor kept prescribing the drug. Nevertheless, Charbonneau was able to persuade a jury that the failure to warn was what was responsible for his $200,000 gambling losses (much of which came from gambling illegally) and resulting marital troubles. The jury verdict even awarded $8 million in punitive damages, giving a whole new meaning to jackpot justice (though one would expect the trial court to reduce this substantially). The only press coverage of this lawsuit, aside from a handful of blogs (Pharmalot; TortsProf; InjuryBoard), is in an op-ed I wrote for today’s Examiner about the case and about how a Supreme Court case and Congressional legislation could affect it. (Theodore H. Frank, “Jackpot justice gets new meaning,” DC Examiner, Aug. 19).
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Tim Sandefur asks this only half-facetiously as he reviews mass torts. Of course, as a must-read comment letter to FASB (via the indispensable Beck/Herrmann) submitted by six pharmaceutical companies notes, “A mass tort occurs when the plaintiffs’ bar decides to invest in it.”
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The nurse gave the child at least twice as much as the dosage was supposed to be. “Plaintiffs sued everyone in sight” including the manufacturer of the little medicine cup. Would redesigning the little graduated markings on the cup have made a difference? (Beck & Herrmann, Drug & Device Law Blog, Jul. 30).
When meter maid Mercy Zamora’s cart crashed, she was injured — with such serious and permanent injuries, testified her husband, that she could no longer engage in strenuous or demanding physical activities. Then a defense lawyer introduced a photo showing Zamora with arms thrown over her head in triumph after completing a 10-kilometer race. If you think that spelled an ignominious end to the case, you must be a new reader here: the jury nonetheless “awarded about $1.6 million against Cushman Inc., maker of the cart Zamora was driving, and employer city of San Francisco, which had already settled out.” (Scott Graham, CalLaw “Legal Pad”, Jul. 22; CJAC, Jul. 24).
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As Michael Krauss notes, an AP story today rehashes the details of last week’s Flax v. Chrysler case, though it falsely treats Paul Sheridan as a credible witness and doesn’t acknowledge most of Chrysler’s arguments.
It’s worth noting the Jim Butler firm’s description of the case:
The evidence showed the impact was minor. Though Stockell was speeding at the time, the minivan was also moving forward and the change in velocity (Delta V) was only 17 to 20 mph.
To repeat: the plaintiffs’ attorney said that a Delta-V of 17-20 mph is “minor.” I suppose in the astronomical sense that a Delta-V of 17-20 mph wouldn’t escape earth orbit, but it seems fairly major for someone in a heavy minivan. For those of you at home who want to experience what a “minor” Delta-V collision of “only” 17-20 mph feels like, drive into a reinforced brick wall at 17-20 mph with your airbag turned off, but be sure to wear your seat-belt to reduce the chance that you go through your windshield. Another way you can have a Delta-V of 20 mph is if you are dropped about 12-15 feet onto a concrete surface. I sure hope that the trial judge didn’t let Butler lie about physics to the jury like that, but I fear I know the answer.
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Perhaps we spoke too soon when we commended the Tennessee appellate court for getting it partially right. As we stated in November 2004:
In 2001, Louis Stockell, driving his pickup at 70 mph, twice the speed limit, rear-ended a Chrysler minivan. Physics being what they are, the front passenger seat in the van collapsed backwards and the passenger’s head struck and fatally injured 8-month old Joshua Flax. The rest of the family walked away from the horrific accident. Plaintiffs’ attorney Jim Butler argued that Chrysler, which already designed its seats above federal standards, should be punished for not making the seats stronger — never mind that a stronger and stiffer seat would result in more injuries from other kinds of crashes because it wouldn’t absorb any energy from the crash. (Rear-end collisions are responsible for only 3% of auto fatalities.) Apparently car companies are expected to anticipate which type of crash a particular vehicle will encounter, and design accordingly. The $105M verdict includes $98M in punitives.
We had more details of trial shenanigans in December 2004 and noted the reduction of the punitives by the trial court to a still unreasonable $20 million in June 2005. In December 2006, the intermediate appellate court threw out the punitive damages and the negligent infliction of emotional distress claim, leaving a $5 million compensatory damages verdict to be split between Chrysler and the driver responsible for the accident. An injustice, but at least a smaller injustice.
However, today, a 3-2 vote of the Tennessee Supreme Court made it a larger injustice again, reinstating $13,367,345 of punitive damages over a good-faith dispute over appropriate seatback design, giving no credit to evidence that the design in the Caravan was safer than the plaintiffs’ proposed design, and effectively disregarding Tennessee statutory law that compliance with federal standards creates a presumption against punitive damages. The Court did not mention Exxon Shipping’s suggestion that punitive damages greater than a 1:1 ratio were possibly constitutionally inappropriate where compensatory damages were substantial and the defendant’s actions were not intentional or done for profit. The Court unanimously affirmed the elimination of the NIED claim; one justice would have thrown out the compensatory damages, as well, because of the volume of inadmissible and improperly prejudicial evidence admitted. (Flax v. Daimler Chrysler (Tenn. Jul. 24, 2008); id. (Wade, J., concurring); id. (Clark, J., partially dissenting); id. (Koch, J., partially dissenting); E. Thomas Wood, “High court upholds $18.4M damage award in DaimlerChrysler case”, Nashville Post, Jul. 24; Kristin M. Hall, AP/Chicago Tribune, Jul. 24). The majority decision relied heavily on the expert testimony of Paul Sheridan, an MBA non-engineer and professional anti-Chrysler witness whom a federal court called “wholly unqualified” to testify on seat back design.
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On November 14, 1999, high-school dropout Rolando Domingo Montez, celebrating his 19th birthday, was arrested for public intoxication and trespass after the owner of the boat on which he and his friends were sitting complained. Police placed him in Cell No. 1 of the Port Isabel City Jail. The next morning, Montez was permitted to make some collect calls from his jail cell to seek bail money from his mother, Pearl Iris Garza. Mom, complaining that Montez was in jail again, refused. But she generously came to pick up Montez on the 16th when he was released on his own recognizance. Unfortunately, while Garza was waiting in the lobby, and while police were responding to a call for assistance regarding a suspicious vehicle, Montez hung himself with the 19-inch phone cord from the phone he had used to make the calls.
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The manual for the L120 John Deere mower reads:
DANGER: ROTATING BLADES CUT OFF ARMS AND LEGS
· Do not mow when children or others are around.
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