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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (44729)	7/9/1999 11:55:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Hey - we just had a Florida jury adjudicate (can juries do that?) cigarettes to be a "defective" product. I don't get it ... they seem to work just fine.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (44729)	7/10/1999 11:26:00 AM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 108807

I don't know enough about 1979 Chevy Malibu gas tanks to venture an opinion as to whether they are, in fact, safe. The fact that they met government safety regulations isn't a bar to a products liability suit. All that means is that they met government safety regulations in effect at the time of manufacture - and that could mean nothing. Products liability suits are funny things. Jurors vote with their emotions. It's up to the judicial system to rein them in. The famous McDonald's coffee verdict was knocked down to a few hundred thousand on appeal, but you never read about that in the paper. I know some lawyers that won a $13 million verdict in a products liability case, and had it reversed to zero on appeal. Law suits are not over until they are over. I am friends with the junior lawyer in that suit - he introduced me to his boss at a convention, right after the verdict was reversed, and I couldn't help myself, I said, "oh, yes, the unluckiest man in the world." He laughed, thank goodness, and said, "yes, but for a while I was the luckiest man in the world."

To: Dayuhan who wrote (44729)	7/10/1999 10:11:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Steven, the news account you cited on the huge settlement in the GM case was not really very complete. The reason the award was so large is that according to GM's own records, they calculated that the cost to settle suits due to deaths by burning gas tanks was $2.40 per dead person, while the cost to fix the design defect was $8-12 per death. So the jury is making a statement that deliberate and callous calculations by large corporation where they value profit over human suffering is wrong. Does that make a bit more sense? I would be curious to know whether Terrence, in particular, believes that GM is justified in acting in this manner, since he doesn't seem to believe that a moral component to good business should be written into our laws. Here is a more complete article: dailynews.yahoo.com