Judicial Lunacy

Just last month a couple of Darwin Award candidates won a 2.5 million dollar lawsuit because they opened their car windows at the African Lion Safari and (surprise!) got mauled by tigers. Duhh!

Pretty soon hammer manufacturers will be facing class action suits from carpenters who have hit their thumbs while nailing boards together. It will be argued the hammer makers knew all along they were selling a hazardous product and failed to take adequate measures to prevent injury... like having an adjustable safety strap (the province would eventually make these mandatory) which would be anchored to the user's neck causing the hammer to stop dead in it's path at a distance just short of the thumb. Maybe they could be equipped with mandatory air sacs that would inflate somehow before hitting the thumb.

All other toolmakers would be subject to similar attacks.

The list of potential lawsuits is virtually endless:

• slipped in the shower? Sue the homebuilder for including a shower without proper harnesses.
• a few years ago a teenager cut himself up badly because he apparently didn't realize that when you jump into a glass window it might break. Think of all the people he could have sued... the glassmaker for manufacturing glass known to cause lacerations when broken by idiots hurling themselves at it, the window installer and the store owners for using a materials known to cause lacerations when broken by idiots hurling themselves at it...
• While we're at it, why not sue the public school the window jumping kid went to for not having taught the kids a song about the dangers of broken glass.
• How many of you have ever cut yourself with a knife while preparing a meal? I smell a lawsuit here... a nice juicy one worth loads of payola. But... who do you sue for this particularly dangerous product, a product which when used as intended actually cuts stuff? Do you sue the manufacturer of the knife? Or do you sue the vendor of vegetables and meat for not having provided pre-cut product (leaving aside the question of how this company providing the product would protect itself from employee lawsuits for asking them to perform such dangerous work in the first place.)
• tripped over your shoelace? Sue the shoe maker and the lace maker.
• Drowned in a lake? Sue the bathing suit manufactuer for not integrating a life jacket into it's beach attire. It is well known that a person buying a bathing suit likely intends to venture into water at some point. It ought therefore not to be too much of a stretch, given the Canadian way of thinking, that the bathing suit manufacturer had to have known of the risks associated with normal use of their product.

  Here you might also have reason to sue the government for not requiring that all bathing suit purchasers not be properly trained and licensed before entering the water.

• got hit by a meteorite? Sue God.

How long can this country maintain it's standard of living if this kind of lunacy continues to be reinforced by governments and courts?

Come to think of it, in the spirit of the foregoing rant, I would like the reader to hear a song I wrote.... I dedicated it specifically to Dalton McGuinty, an asshole if there ever was one, but it can easily be adapted to anyone's favourite politician or political "activist". It's called, Fuck Off You Asshole.

last modified:Wednesday,March 19, 2008 at 04:40