(You _have_ to be from Canada to understand the special place NFLD holds here. Man o man, try to decipher what someone from the east coast of the island is saying when they get revved up. Reminds me of that Brad Pitt "pikey" character. :)
Any way, during that night, we got talking about auto insurance. She and her boyfriend were complaining about it -- as is typical of working class folks, with limited incomes. I kept asking what they would do to change it? The system?
The first response was "limit awards."
We stayed on this theme quite a bit through the night -- it was fun, playful jibes traded. But at the end of the evening, I asked her why she would want to limit what the victims get. Relative to their means, Bush-esque tort reform benefits the rich, not the working class (of which she was directly descended). Why not at least _try_ a few other things? Insurance companies could return funds in years with low claims. That sort of thing. Why create a system that actually hurts you (her) directly. If ever she, or any one in her family, were seriously injured or killed, and could not sustain income, would she also be wanting to limit in some arbitrary manner the limit of recovery?
What I found was they kept bringing up the propaganda from the insurance lobby -- things about outrageous awards, like Ed McMahon's dog being worth $7.2 m. (That item was actually printed in the WSJ editorial page, though it was an outright lie, if you check the suit. I did. The WSJ was just repeating a "think tank" press release which was trying to claim "tort warriors" are an "industry" worth $60 b USD a year, worth more than Coke and Nike. You can guess where they wanted to go with that.)
The following report is reprinted in today's Toronto Star. Why is the Canadian news media interested enough to give column space to this? Because it's so bizarre. And it fits into the bitching about tort cases. I think it could also be used to fool some folks into backing an ideological position (tort reform/limitation) that is actually contrary to their own self interests.
Torts, in general, help the lesser well off.
(I think torts were born of clan law in the feudal era, ways to have local problems addressed without clan warfare.)
Ken.
-- The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
-- Paul Valery
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Suit filed as toddler misses true crawling
NEW YORK (REUTERS Dec. 27, 2003) — The mother of a 2-year-old boy who hurt himself in a public playground is suing the city of Stamford, Conn., for income she says the toddler is losing because the injury prevents him working as a model.
The Advocate, a local paper, reported yesterday that Deena Mader filed a claim last week saying she wants compensation for son Konrad's medical bills, pain and suffering and a "lost wage amount due to his inability to audition or take modelling or commercial jobs while his head heals".
The child, who lives in affluent Greenwich, Conn., received stitches after crashing into a railing at the public playground, the paper said.
Mader said the green-painted railing had sharp edges and blended in with the shrubbery. "A design flaw or oversight at this new playground" was to blame for the injury, she said in her filing.
Neither Mader nor a spokesperson for the city could be contacted for comment yesterday.