[PRCo] Re: Wabash Tunnel in Operation

[Joshua Dunfield]

Ed Lybarger wrote:

> It has been my experience that lawyers, like all other professionals, have both good
> actors and bad actors.  What bothers me more than the relative worthiness of any
> profession is the concept that American people don't have to be responsible for their
> own actions, choosing instead to blame everything on others.  

If a pedestrian is run down in a Braddock Avenue crosswalk in the same
place as two previous crashes, should the people who decide not to put in
a stop sign have *no* responsibility?  Sure, the driver who failed to yield
deserves most of the blame, but after two previous incidents it should be
incumbent on the people who control the street to address the situation.
In principle, the Wabash Tunnel is no different from Braddock Avenue;
in practice, I don't think there's a genuine problem with the Wabash
Tunnel...unlike Braddock Avenue.

> If it's our own fault that we kill ourselves, why should others pay?
> 
> Ed

They shouldn't.  But juries in personal injury cases routinely find that
blame is shared.  Sometimes the party most at blame can't pay, which means
that they get off and a third party (say, PAT) ends up paying out of
proportion to its responsibility.  It's not ideal, but do you have a better
way?  *Someone* needs to pay, if at all possible, or a party that's really
not at fault gets nothing.

Seems to me that an awful lot of public concern about people "not taking
responsibility" is based on sensationalist accounts of "runaway juries".
People watch a 60 second news clip and think they know more about the case
than the jury, who sat through hours of actual evidence.

Best,
-j.