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INCREDIBLE lawsuit

#45
i should sue mike meyers for the "dr evil" and i should sue the creators of the AADAMS FAMILY for uncle fester........yeah i should just sue anyone who is bald because i own the trade mark on baldness.....yeah thats the ticket......i look more like michael jordan than that guy does.......WAIT i'll sue michael jordan because he's bald too.......man i am so not going to work anymore after i win all of these lawsuits........see ya
 
#46
burk48237 said:
The fact that even the POSSIBILITY of this case showing up in court shows exactly what's wrong with the American legal system. Every American flushes about 30% of his income (very conservative burk guess) in the cost of legal fees and court settlements. Lawyers buy Bentleys and the average citizen trying to get by gets SCREWED. Lawyers are leaches that prey on our society and accomplish multiple injuries to society for everyone they so-called protect! Shakespeare was right! Oh well thats my rant for the day!:rolleyes:
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:eyebrow:

...before I begin, I'd like to say, for the record, that I'm a pre-law, moderate-liberal student.

[rant]

People come to us... we don't go to them (advertisements aside...). Too many Americans think they can sue for anything nowadays, and that's the real problem.

Although I will agree... the court system in this country needs some sort of "credibility" filter to knock down cases like these. The U.S. Supreme Court may be the only court I can think of with such a filter.

For lawyers, every case becomes a moral/ethical/logical dilemma. It's part of the profession. It's never easy to sort the liars from those who tell the truth, because both sides can often sound equally credible. However, I won't deny that sometimes, it's pretty damn obvious who the guilty person or liar is, and there are enough people in this world in ALL professions who would gladly accrue more money through the means of lies...

We generalize about lawyers because of the outrageous settlements that the media love to expose. In other words, the exposure of the devil's advocates at their best. :D

Believe it or not, most lawyers aren't rich, or even close to that - one lives in my old apartment building with a bunch of UC Berkeley students in the apartments next to him, because he can't afford to live elsewhere. He's an immigration lawyer who came from Northern Europe a long time ago to make a living here in America. I've known many lower and middle class lawyers. I've known ones with good intentions, and ones with profit-based intentions (Good or bad? You decide...). It's like any other occupation... there's always enough rich guys and dirty crooks who stand out to inspire a stereotype about the whole.

Unfortunately, lawyers have quite the collection...

*cough**cough*JohnnyCochrane*cough**cough*

[/rant]

Anyhow... getting back to the story... Allen Heckard is a nut, to say the least. If you look like Jordan, wear Air Jordans, and play basketball fairly well, expect to be referred to as Michael Jordan. I'd like to have a word with the lawyer who told him he had a legitimate case...:scowl:

This reminds me of the Wendy's "finger in the chili" incident. A woman spent a good chunk of her life establishing falsified cases against various corporations and winning them. After she planted a friend's real finger in a bowl of Wendy's chili and hoped to sue, it was the end of the road for her lies - they discovered the fraud, and Wendy's counter-sued.

That's poetic justice, if you ask me.
 
#48
When I was in high school there was this guitarist who always had premium gear...full Marshall stack, nice guitars, etc.. I once asked him what his dad does and he said "He sues people." He did not mean that his dad was a lawyer.

bc
 
#49
DigMe said:
When I was in high school there was this guitarist who always had premium gear...full Marshall stack, nice guitars, etc.. I once asked him what his dad does and he said "He sues people." He did not mean that his dad was a lawyer.

bc
Click to expand...
I knew someone like that. I used to skateboard (back when I was not a fatass), and this kid's parents tried to sue me for f'ing up the kids deck. Yeah right, just because I could skate and he couldn't, and he OFFERED the board to me to see how well I could skate, they [tried to] sue me for messing up the paint. :rollno:
I gave the kid 50 bucks to go get a new one, and he didn't even offer to give away the old one. What a ****face.

Peace,
Drake
 
#50
Besides my previous rant, this lawsuit also brought back memories of some of the stuff my dad was involved in. As a defendant, that is.

Worker's Compensation + False Claim = Ridiculous Lawsuit

The last thing a small-time contractor like my dad needs is some guy who injures himself off-the-job with the intent to sue my dad for every penny he's got. That's happened three times already... with each case being more ridiculous than the last. Fortunately, we learned a lot from case #1, so overall, my dad has been minimally scarred by these financial nightmares.

With so many loopholes in Worker's Comp alone, I can't imagine how bad the local laws must be. Or the state.

...Or the federal.
 
#51
burk48237 said:
The fact that even the POSSIBILITY of this case showing up in court shows exactly what's wrong with the American legal system. Every American flushes about 30% of his income (very conservative burk guess) in the cost of legal fees and court settlements. Lawyers buy Bentleys and the average citizen trying to get by gets SCREWED. Lawyers are leaches that prey on our society and accomplish multiple injuries to society for everyone they so-called protect! Shakespeare was right! Oh well thats my rant for the day!:rolleyes:
Click to expand...
That's crap.

If there wasn't court systems and judges and precedents willing to take on stuff like this, what are the lawyers going to do? Nothing. This has very little to do with lawyers. This has to do with an American legal system that's flawed well beyond repair.

To point a finger at lawyers while leaving out the big picture is bogus, dude.
 
#52
Eric618 said:
That's crap.

If there wasn't court systems and judges and precedents willing to take on stuff like this, what are the lawyers going to do? Nothing. This has very little to do with lawyers. This has to do with an American legal system that's flawed well beyond repair.

To point a finger at lawyers while leaving out the big picture is bogus, dude.
Click to expand...

Eric, Who are judges? Their Lawyers that ware robes instead of suits. Their all buddies and they all game the system. The amount of money that is leached away from the American public is absurd. One classic example is Silicon breast implants. Their is NOT ONE BIT OF SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT ANY WOMEN GOT SICK because of a silicon breast implant. But the lawsuits against them have resulted in several companies going bankrupt, close to a hundred thousand people losing their jobs, cities losing those companies in their tax base and a bunch of Lawyers getting new Bentleys. The legal fees in those cases amounted to BILLIONS of dollars. Is any women safer because of those lawsuits? NOT ONE. It's just a get rich scheme for lawyers who are protected by judges (all lawyers) and legislatures (mostly lawyers). The vast majority of Lawsuits in this country are absurd and just an excuse for people not taking personal responsibility for their actions. Get fat, sue McDonalds, Get cancer (after ignoring years of warnings) sue the cigarette companies, get in a car accident while driving drunk, sue the car company.

Just today their was a story on our local news about a family suing because of a tragic boating accident when the boat was overloaded, had not been serviced and capsized. Sounds like a good reason for a lawsuit, except their not suing the charter company (who overloaded the boat) or the captain (who made negligent decisions running the boat). No, their suing the makers of the boats engine and bilge pump! So Eric, if you ever buy a boat and motor just expect to pay additional cost, we'll call it the "legal fee tax".

And in a vast majority of cases most of the plaintiffs had zero, zip, nada, nothing. to do with the negligence, if their was any negligence that caused the mishap in the first place. But that won't prevent some lawyer somewhere from suing and some judge who he probably went to school with and made a campaign contribution too from taking the case. And the problem is NO ONE WINS EXCEPT THE LAWYERS, because both sides have to pay enormous legal fees, even to settle out of court. So get out your wallet because you pay the "legal fee tax" when you buy ANYTHING, and just remember it's going to a worthy cause because some lawyer somewhere needs a Porsche.:(
 
#53
All lawyers may not be "rich" but with an average income of 92,000 making it the sixth highest paying profession in the US, I'm sure their aren't too many waiting for food stamps. Their are several lawyers among the top money earners in the country and a few make more money then the evil corporations they "defend us" from. Peter Angelos, a lawyer and the owner of the Baltimore Orioles made one BILLION dollars in legal fees from the tobacco settlement. A debacle where the legal fees averaged thirty thousand dollars an hour!



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#54
burk48237 said:
Sounds like a good reason for a lawsuit, except their not suing the charter company (who overloaded the boat) or the captain (who made negligent decisions running the boat). No, their suing the makers of the boats engine and bilge pump!
Click to expand...

But isn't this an argument for the problem lying in the American legal system, too, not just with judges and lawyers?
I mean, IMHO it shouldn't even be possible to sue the makers of the engine and pump in this case.
If such a lawsuit was unadmissable by law the lawyers and judes could be friends all they want... the case would still be unadmissible.

BTW, three people have told me I look like the guy who played Spiderman... what was his name Tobey something... Up to now I thought: "Well, the girls seem to find that guy pretty attractive... so me looking a bit like him isn't such a bad thing". But now... maybe I can sue the movie-company... ;)
 
#55
displaced said:
But isn't this an argument for the problem lying in the American legal system, too, not just with judges and lawyers?
I mean, IMHO it shouldn't even be possible to sue the makers of the engine and pump in this case.
If such a lawsuit was unadmissable by law the lawyers and judes could be friends all they want... the case would still be unadmissible.

BTW, three people have told me I look like the guy who played Spiderman... what was his name Tobey something... Up to now I thought: "Well, the girls seem to find that guy pretty attractive... so me looking a bit like him isn't such a bad thing". But now... maybe I can sue the movie-company... ;)
Click to expand...
DO IT!
Then host a world-wide bassist GTG with your 900 mil, with free drinks and food and basses for all. I'm sure you could spare a little?
 
#57
displaced said:
But isn't this an argument for the problem lying in the American legal system, too, not just with judges and lawyers?
I mean, IMHO it shouldn't even be possible to sue the makers of the engine and pump in this case.
If such a lawsuit was unadmissable by law the lawyers and judes could be friends all they want... the case would still be unadmissible.

BTW, three people have told me I look like the guy who played Spiderman... what was his name Tobey something... Up to now I thought: "Well, the girls seem to find that guy pretty attractive... so me looking a bit like him isn't such a bad thing". But now... maybe I can sue the movie-company... ;)
Click to expand...

The problem is the system is set up and controlled by Lawyers. Most Legislatures are lawyers, all judges are ex lawyers. So these are the people deciding if a lawsuit is valid in the first place. The biggest problem in the US legal system is the one thing that separates our legal system from most of the rest of the world. In most of the world if you sue and lose you have to pay the legal fees of those you sue (Loser Pays). This is a strong disincentive for filling a frivolous lawsuit. Remember the first 80 tobacco lawsuits lost, but theirs no reason not to go to court 81 times if you don't face any consequences for your actions.

Most lawyers taking a case get payed on contingency and get BIG money if they win, nothing if the case is thrown out, but the defendant has to pay all legal fees (big money) to defend themselves wether or not the case has any merit. That is why a vast majority of cases are settled out of court, the legal fees are more expensive then the settlements. But this drives insurance cost to exorbitant levels.

Gynecologist win a vast majority of the lawsuits against them, but because of lawyers like John Edward's who made a very good living (multi millionaire) convincing juries that not performing c-sections causes cerebral palsy (there is zero, zip, nada, scientific evidence for this), they spend on the average 120,000 a year for malpractice insurance, they perform far more c-sections then necessary, and despite the facts that their are more c-sections then ever, their has been NO decline in cerebral palsy. The ONLY winner was the lawyer, women lost with more painful c-sections, you and I lost because the cost of health care has skyrocketed due to unnecessary proceeders and malpractice insurance, and kids didn't receive any help in preventing cerebral palsy.

Right now their are THOUSANDS of american citizens that make a living suing people. They sue you if your kid dribbles a basketball loudly at night, if your sidewalk has a spot that is a 1/4" higher, if you accidently water their grass. My friend got sued by a women who claimed she stumbled on the sidewalk in front of his house, she had been involved in over 800 lawsuits!. You say it's a problem with the system I would assert to you that lawyers ARE the system.
 

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