Garage Jumping

Okay … The lawsuit mentality in this country is flat out of hand. No matter how stupid, or illegal, an act you commit it seems that you are not only able to sue someone else for it, but WIN.

Two cases I’ve heard about recently have really got my blood boiling … its ridiculous and it needs to be stopped. The problem, however, goes beyond just the courts system … it goes all the way down to the juries themselves. The juries have it in their power to STOP the nonsense but they continue to encourage it instead.

This isn’t a small problem either … it has MANY implications on things that too many people just don’t consider.

First let’s look at a case out of Orlando, FL. Just a bit of background … Some of the younger population of the Orlando area have taken to the trend of “Garage Jumping” … the art of jumping from the top of one parking garage to the top of another.

Well in the recent case, reported originally on Feb 28th 2005, one local teen was following his friends when he failed to reach the other side and fell 6 stories where he was knocked unconscious. So what is the father’s answer to his son’s stupidity? SUE THE GARAGE OWNER! Get me some phat cash for this one!!

Never mind the fact that they were trespassing … never mind that they entered the garage illegally … never mind that they chose of their own free will to try and jump between these garages. They knew the risk when they jumped … it was 6 stories to the ground … chances were pretty good that it would be a fatal fall. So the kid gets lucky and survives a failed attempt … and they are going to sue the city and the garage owner for not stopping him.

Okay … so now it is the responsibility of the city and private property owners to make sure that YOU don’t do something completely STUPID. Screw it … lets just make it so that everyone is completely safe no matter what stupid thing they try … lets gate all the sidewalks in cities so that people can’t stupidly step out in front of a car or truck. Require padding on all the walls and doors so people don’t accidentally run into them and hurt themselves.

How about this … lets lock the kid up for trespassing and reckless endangerment (of himself and anyone he might accidentally land on) … lets teach the kid a friggin lesson in personal responsibility because it’s obvious that his dad doesn’t have a clue.

The other case that I heard about in conjunction with this was a reported case (I haven’t been able to find specifics) in which a thief broke into a house, and in the process of robbing it fell down the stairs and broke his leg. After his arrest the thief sued the homeowner for personal injury and won the case…. I didn’t hear what the jury awarded the thief … but it was apparently a good sized sum of money.

Yes … that’s right … if someone BREAKS INTO YOUR HOUSE and gets injured robbing you they can SUE YOU … so make sure it’s safe glass and put safety equipment around to make sure that potential robbers don’t slip and fall or anything.

These lawsuits fail to teach people the lessons of personal responsibility that they need to be learning, but they have other detrimental effects as well. Namely and most importantly they drive up EVERYONE’S insurance premiums. Because, you see, they juries look at it as “well it’s just those rich insurance companies that have to pay … give them the money” … they always seem to conveniently forget that the insurance companies GET the money in the form of Insurance Premiums … as more of these suits go through and the awards get higher the Insurance companies have to raise premiums in order to cover possible law suits.

In other words … EVERYONE ends up paying for this crap. Do you know how much the imbedded liability cost is on everything you buy? Well … about 20% of what you pay at the store is sales tax and other imbedded taxes … about 40% is imbedded liability costs both the Liability Insurance that the companies have to carry AND the cost of the lawyers that the company must retain to help protect itself …. In other words … that parking garage has liability insurance … that cost makes up about 40% of the cost of parking there … if the suit is successful their insurance is going to go up … therefore the cost of parking is going to go up … plus they will tack on a portion of the cost associated with preventing other idiots from doing the same thing.

Not to mention that crap like this fills up the courts and is the result of about half our legal problems.

Let’s get a grip on this folks … charge the kid as I mentioned above, and slap the father with about a $500,000 fine for a frivolous lawsuit.