On Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:00:38 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Oh, I don't know that that's sufficient.  At least here in the US, it
>> still has to be somebody's *fault*.
> 
> Not really. However, product safety has been legislated to be a
> strict-liability tort. What that means is, the Congress made rules that
> said if someone gets hurt by your product, even through no fault of the
> manufacturer, they can still get money from the manufacturer.

I'm not necessarily talking legally, I'm just talking about how most 
people seem to behave - that they couldn't have made a mistake, it has to 
be someone else's responsibility.  Suing someone else over something 
you've done that is stupid is a way to "strike it rich".  Most of the 
time, the person doing the suing doesn't understand that there's a 
difference between getting a judgement and collecting it, though.

The best example I have (personally) of this behaviour is when I broke my 
leg; I was rollerblading, and someone who was going against the flow ran 
into me and knocked me over.  She was *actively* afraid of me being able 
to identify her, and sent a friend over to say she was sorry.

I told her friend to tell her not to worry about it - was my own stupid 
fault for going on the more experienced rink my second time out.  A lot 
of people would've been looking to sue over it.

Another example: My son's girlfriend was in a car accident about 8 months 
ago; someone ran a red light and hit her truck, totaling it.  The kid in 
the other car ran the light, and they sued *her* for the damage to their 
vehicle, as well as for their medical injuries.  Even though THEY were 
not wearing their seat belts.

Personally, I don't think they stand much of a chance of winning, but 
there is *a* chance, and it's costing Ken's girlfriend and her family a 
lot of money to even *defend* against the suit.

> This was originally due to the fact that polio vaccinations would
> normally be expected to kill some tiny percentage (1 in a million?) of
> those receiving them, simply due to the way they worked. The government
> thought it would be reasonable to make the polio vaccine manufacturers
> buy the insurance to pay off claims associated with that. But they had a
> hard time limiting it to just vaccinations.
> 
> So now, about a third of the cost of a ladder goes towards paying
> insurance against claims by people too stupid to know how to use a
> ladder (or using it wrongly even when they're not stupid). About half
> the cost of a bicycle helmet goes towards paying insurance. Etc.
> 
> (There are a handful of other strict-liability torts around too:
> excavation, construction using explosives, etc. Even if you do
> everything right when you're digging a swimming pool, and the
> neighborhood kid falls in and breaks his leg, or your house collapses
> because it was built wrong, it's the responsibility of the pool builder
> to pay it off.)

Yep, what you've written here is a good explanation of how things work 
and how the costs are factored into the cost of goods.

Jim

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