A ray of hope here. Today's Wall Street Journal the CPSC recommended against banning the sale of ATV's for use by children, turning down requests by safety advocates. the heart of the article was that, the CPSC "cannot control the behavior of consumers or prevent adults from allowing childdren to ride adult sized ATVs." Sounds like parenting authority is being given back to the parent, no matter hos stupid the parnt may be.
This is good...

 

Now if we could just get the trail lawyers to realize that being stupid does not mean you are entitled to a settlement for millions of dollars we would be getting somewhere.

Maybe they should make headstones that say "Too Stupid To Live" across the bottom of the headstone, under the persons name. Then when someone thought it was time to cash in because of their own stupidity they could be given one of those headstones to keep until it was needed, instead of millions of dollars.

I saw a cereal box yesterday morning that had instructions for ironing a sticker onto a tee shirt, and the instructions said that you should remove the tee shirt from your chest before ironing on the sticker. Doh! [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-blush.gif[/img]

 

Yeah- honestly, it does make one wonder. Took us only 20 years to get this far, what with all the frivilous lawsuits and all. Because of our dearly beloved lawyers our health insureance is thru the roof too. We have only them to thank.......[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-disgusted.gif[/img]

 

Don't even get me started about lawyers. A few years back, I had a friend of mine that sold his house to a crazy little old lady who was clearly not in the condition it would require to look after the place. My buddy even told her she would be needing help to maintain the house and yard as it was an older house with older house problems like a leaky basement in the spring and a water system to the shop/garage that had to be kept heat taped during the winter. The basement was equipped with a sump pump and sump hole so keeping water out was simple. Flip a switch. Same for the water line to the shop/garage. Now any of you know that when you sell a house, there is a checklist as to whether or not this is OK or that is OK. My buddy filled out everything and even told her about problems she would be encountering. All this happened <u>RIGHT IN FRONT</u> of the real estate agent. The next spring when $hit started happening because she hadn't looked after the house properly, my buddy got sued by her, even after he was up front and honest about the condition of the place and how much maintenance it required, and the real estate agent told him he wouldn't help him as it wasn't his problem. Too make a long story short, he dug in his heels and $6000 later she finally dropped her suit when her lawyer realized she was nuts (not even kidding. She was frickin looney). When he tried to countersue for his defence fees, his lawyer told him it would cost more than $6000 to get back the $6000 he already lost!!! And women wonder why we drink.............

 

I read a study that was done in Denmark a few years ago. They tracked their gross national product for fifty years, and correlated it to everything they could think of. They correlated it against the weather (droughts), against major illness (flu epidemic, etc.), against the number of people graduating college, against the stock markets of major countrys, ... you name it. There was a list of items they correlated their gross national product with that was a page long. And the one item that had a more direct effect on their gross national product than any other item by far was the number of practicing lawyers. Only problem was, it was a negative correlation, meaning that the more practicing lawyers they had the WORSE their gross national product was. This study showed that at least in Denmark, lawyers did more to bring down the overall productiveness of the country than anything else.

 

Fine what the 'study' showed, but did that really change anything? Honestly? Yeah, call me a cynic...

 

Well let's think about this a little deaper. If your quad was broke and you took it to the shop, would you want the guy who worked on it to take a look at it, wiggle a few things and then say, sorry, I'm can't help you? No, you'd want him to do some diagnostic testing, get online and check with the manufacturer for TSBs and or waranty stuff, maybe consult some of his peers for help, basically go all out to fix your toy right?
Well I've never heard of a lawyer suing anybody. Those boys do a job just like the mechanic down at the ATV shop. If you hired one, you'd want him to do everything in his power to find a way to win for you, as YOU paid him to do.
Now I know that most politicians (elected by us BTW) are lawyers or ex-lawyers, but the subject was lawsuits, not politics.
If you really want to stop these lawsuits, the next time you here someone saying "I'm hiring a lawyer" or "I'm suing", have a talk with them about personal responsibility. Yah, I know, it's a new concept to alot of us. IMHO lack of personal responsibility is the biggest problem with our country right now and it is the basis for most of these frivilous lawsuits (except some of the politically motivated ones).
Especially in our sport, it ain't the lawyers, it's the liberals and greeny's who are behind most of our problems. You can either play by there rules and hire a better lawyer and sue them back, or you can kidnap them and throw them on a quad or take them hunting or something like that and try and convert 'em.
Kwackerman, the CPSC is truly driven by liberals and woman who have nothing better to do, not lawyers. Once again, a reasonable idea in the beginning that helped people resolve legitimate consumer product safety concerns, that has evolved into a politically messed up beauracracy for folks with too much time and not enough jobs and family.
Ok I'm done. You have both cents....

 

Thank you. Mike. It truely has spun outta control. While many of these parties, EPA, CPSC ets were originally intended to help and protect the consumer from business fraud and such, they have become the platform for those with a different agenda. I know, one live just down the street from me, damned of I didn't almost go to jail just because I blasted down to the end of the block to test my carburetor jetting.
But it's things like this that makes cynics out of the rest of us.........

 

I don't know if it's still true today but at one time there were as many people studying to become lawyers as there were practicing the profession.

 

The problem with lawyers is that they get paid a percentage of what they win for you. So the more they win for you, the more they get, it's got nothing to do with 'lookin out' for you. It's all about the money.