[PRCo] Re: Wabash Tunnel in Operation

[John Swindler]

And then there are the "Stella" awards (similar to Darwin awards) named 
after women who was awarded a large settlement for managing to spill 
McDonald's coffee on herself.  It's an annual list of jury awards - such as 
the award for pain and suffering to a burgler who managed to lock himself in 
the garage of a family on vacation and had to subsist on dog food for eight 
days.

Maybe too often it becomes like a 'lottery', in that the winner is the 
irresponsible person who manages to involve someone with deep pockets.  (and 
then there was a co-worker, whose mother was hit by a motorist without deep 
pockets.  He and the lawyer were trying to figure out how they could involve 
a witness driving in other direction who had deep pockets-and wasn't even 
moving at time)

These 'responsibility' comments remind me of an Army advance course 
instructor some 25 years ago.  One evening after class, he was talking about 
his two sons, and how different they were.  For one of them, nothing was his 
responsibility - it was always someone else's fault.  And the other seemed 
to take responsibility for everything.  Even when it wasn't his fault.  
(strange what one remembers over the years - dont' remember anything else 
from the classes, but was impressed by the instructor's family comments)

I guess we have strayed quite a bit.

John



>From: Joshua Dunfield <joshuad at cs.cmu.edu>
>Reply-To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>Subject: [PRCo] Re: Wabash Tunnel in Operation Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 
>23:22:21 -0500
>
>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.
>

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