Is is just me, or does this title fit a good portion of the people that post in the Rant & Raves? Personally, I am a Heterosexual Conservative, God-fearing Christian, but to each their own. Before you get all froggy & jump, I have many friends from all walks of life & that includes homosexual liberal.....well, I don't know any atheists.

Basically, I just wanted a reason to post this pic. Ya'll can Rant & Rave about it. Have fun & I'll enjoy reading.

TOM: Your last sentence makes a good point in this argument. Carlene also explains in her posts why so many people are frustrated with our litigious approach to many things that are "accidents." Wheetsin shows us how all of this influences what doctors make and perhaps even who is willing to practice medicine these days. I believe we can all agree that the pendulum has swung too far in one direction and things need to swing back the other way a bit.

Bubble asked me if I was saying that bartenders should be held responsible for serving an already intoxicated patron. She probably hadn't read my earlier posts. I do not feel that there should be laws compelling bartenders to enforce the law regarding public drunkenness or drunk drivers. If a bartender has coerced a patron to drink until they are legally drunk, or if a bartender has in some way been negligent, the patron who suffers damage due to the bartender's negligence, should be able to go through the court system in an effort to prove that the bartender was negligent - just the same as in any other case where an individual whose negligence has caused damage. I absolutely do not believe that a bartender should be compelled to enforce a law that says he or she may not serve an alcoholic beverage to someone who may have already had enough to drink. Like you, Bubble, I cannot fathom the argument that says we want our bartenders to be the beverage police. People need to be responsible for their own behavior.

I totally understand the information TOM posted relating to the McDonald's hot coffee in her shorts case. However, I believe if I were on the jury I believe I would have voted to charge the idiot customer 80% at fault, not 20%.

I personally feel that if a bartender serves someone that is obviously intoxicated, then they should be held at least partially reliable for whatever the person does afterward. If the person isn't obviously intoxicated, then I don't see how the bartender could be held responsible, since they can't read minds.

While I think the McDonald's lady didn't have the smartest idea when she was holding the coffee between her legs, I don't think anyone would have thought that coffee would be hot enough to cause severe injury. Mild burns, yes. But severe injury? I doubt it. If it was proven that the coffee was way too hot, then the company was negligent, IMO. To me, heating the coffee to the temperatures necessary to cause severe injury is a clearly negligent act. What if the woman had been sitting at a table in the restaurant and had knocked over her cup of coffee and it had run into her lap and burned her that way? Would that still be her fault for getting burned? I doubt most of us would see it that way. While McDonald's didn't spill the coffee on her, they caused her injuries by heating the coffee to a dangerously high temperature.

Carlene: It might interest you to know that my daughter-in-law became pregnant with identical twins. She suffered from a malady known as Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome. She consulted with four doctors including 2 "specialists" on TTTS. All but one recommended that she and my son "START OVER"!!! The fourth doctor told her what her medical alternative was, serial amniocentesis (weekly withdrawal of amniotic fluid), which might save one or both babies. That procedure carried quite a lot of risk and could also have a possible outcome of one or both babies dying in utero, or if one or both survived to his 2nd year of life, would have a very good chance of developing Cerebral Palsy. My DH got online and researched and read everything he could find and learned that there were two doctors in the United States who do a procedure (surgery) that could actually cure the problem.

Long story short, we flew to Milwaukee and had the doctor who has devoted his life to the research and development of the now relatively routine (for him) procedure. It was a 15 minute surgery that was captured on video and we all got to see. He did a small mid-line incision, went in and with a laser, cauterized the connecting blood vessels on the placenta so that they no longer allowed blood to circulate back and forth between the twins. Although she spent much of the remaining months of the pregnancy in bed, she delivered the boys by cesaerian and they are now rompin' stompin' healthy 4 year olds.

Now let's just all calm down a bit and put all thoughts of hot curling irons and where they might be inserted, far far out of our minds!!

Now let's just all calm down a bit and put all thoughts of hot curling irons and where they might be inserted, far far out of our minds!!

Yes, please! Just the thought of it makes me think "OWIE!"

Then I would think that ultimately your belief is that people should be able to choose on the matter of abortion for themselves, and that you would be voting based on your beliefs.

Not really, the alternative to what you say would be to close my eyes and throw a dart not really knowing if I voted or not, let alone what I voted for.

I "believe" abortion is wrong so if I voted according to MY beliefs I would vote anti-abortion. Not everyone agrees with me about abortion and they have valid reasons for it so I vote for the greater good of the community vs. what is right for me personally.

Lables on stuff kill me.

On my curling iron: "Do not place heated device in to any body cavity."

On a bucket: "Do not place head in bucket filled with water, drowning my occur."

You know that someone had to sue these people based on "they didnt tell me it could happen".

I belive the rise of easy high limit credit available has led us down the path of "easy money lawsuits"

Though you all may well be irritated by my comparisons of our two countries, it is well known in Canada that Americans are litigous and thus the array of idiocy labels on all products sold south of the border. Many of the law suits which are successfully launched in the United States would not fly in Canada. They would be turfed out of court for they would be deemed as frivolous.

The understanding up here is that basic commonsense must apply when an adult is using tools or indeed any other item. A lawsuit can only be launched when the item can be shown to be defective. Thus a bonehead who ends up sawing his leg off with his brand new circular saw, the one that does not carry the caveat that this item is not to be used on limbs, is $h!t outta luck up here. And for the same reason, the famous MacDonalds' coffee case would be unlikely to fly even though their coffee is both horrible and horribly hot.:heh:

The courts up here are never sympathetic when products are misused; they are sympathetic when a product is proven to be defective. My layman's reading of the local system is that the courts are most protective of victims who are children or those victims who have been badly injured by those faulty items produced by major manufacturers, the ones who can afford adequate R&D: of course this most usually comes down to the vehicle folk. The pharmaceutical gang are also vulnerable.

The industries which produce items, clothing, toys, and such, for children are also vulnerable and in the case of children's items this is not an area that is easily controlled. There are many, many small companies and then there are many off-shore companies which produce items for this market. I don't know how things work stateside but we do have government inspectors and civilian consumer groups examining toys, etc for potential safety problems. As an example: when it comes to young children there is the concern that they might be able to swallow material from their stuffed animals and other toys. And then there is this issue of flammable clothing. By the way, all my comments to do with the difficulties concerning the safety and protection of children are in the way of a side bar and should be considered as being kind of off topic. (Green got carried away, eh:o )

Now let's just all calm down a bit and put all thoughts of hot curling irons and where they might be inserted, far far out of our minds!!

Umm. Ow. My doctor friend that I mentioned on one of the other threads tells me stories of the things they see come into the ER. A hot curling iron doesn't touch the tip of the iceberg. A like to have my fun - but man - I'm just not as creative as some of these ladies. Or men.

Everyone wants someone else to shoulder the blame! Drives me CRAZY!!!!

Remember the woman who sued McDonald's (and won) because she tried to drive with a cup of hot coffee between her legs and it spilled and scalded her hoo-hoo? Maybe restaurants should give everyone an IQ test before they serve them, since common sense seems to be such a rare commodity! And bars should be equipped to administer sobriety tests, just so they don't make a human error in judgment and over-serve some idiot.

Next, we can take on pharmacies. If my druggist sells me sleeping pills and I kill myself, should he have known, maybe by my history of anti-depressant meds, that I was suicidal? Even better....he refuses to sell me the sleeping pills and I fall asleep at the wheel (because I didn't sleep last night), wiping out an entire family on their way to Disneyworld. Is the pharmacist responsible?

Always go for those deep pockets....Most big corporations will settle out of court just to avoid bad publicity, and every sleazy lawyer in the country knows that. Never mind who's right or wrong, just SHOW ME THE MONEY....that's the American way!

I so totally agree with you. I keep yammering about it and a couple here keep missing the point completely. Personal responsibility, is it such a horror?

Mexico knows how we are, that's why they have a law that says if you are not a Mexican citizen you can't sue for medical malpractice. They don't have the medical malpractice issues that we have here AT ALL and they don't want them. Their citizens have a little more common sense and a lot less greed when it comes to those things. I don't blame them.

I used to run a care home. One night I fired someone and since it was 11PM I took the shift myself. There was a fire (fired person became a disgruntled employee), I was pulling a woman out of a burning building and she was fighting me. She was just scared. But if I didn't pull her out she'd die. I was behind her with my arms around her dragging her out of the building. Got out of the building, shut the door, that room exploded. The explosion blew open the door, the hot air hit me in the face and I dropped her. She broke her hip.

We were sued not because of the disgruntled employee setting a fire, not because there was a fire, but because I was careless in the way I was dragging a woman out of the building. Per our lawyers if I would have let her die they wouldn't have had much of a case all things considered. But I was careless in the way I SAVED her life.

I could have worried about my own life, I could have waited for the fire dept to get there. I didn't, I saved her life and the care home was sued.

Her family was suing for $5,000,000. Our lawyers were ready to go. They kept wanting to settle out of court, our lawyers said no, we are fighting this because it's wrong. Our insurance was willing to pay all medical bills and not a penny more.

The day of court the lawyers on both sides were bringing in all their paperwork and getting ready for court. Their side kept asking to settle. Our lawyer said no, we'll pay medical bills. Period.

They settled for medical bills only.

People will try if they can.

And without these lawsuits we would have products that explode in our faces and electric saws that cut people's feet and fingers off, and pajamas for infants that burn out of control and thousands of other products that would make our lives a lot less safe.

People can always quote a case here and there that sounds absurd, but in the majority of cases, our lives are made better by them.

I disagree. The backlog in courts due to stupid greedy lawsuits is ridiculous. The cost is skyrocketing.

When I look at my hair dryer and it has a warning not to use the hair dryer in the shower it reduces our society down to protecting people from themselves. We promote a lack of personal responsibility.

BTW, Wheets was once a pre med student, but focusing on medical research (specifically genetics and study of congential malformations). She's very happy she opted not to pursue her MD.

Ohhhhhhh Wheetsin, I have a book I'd bet you'd love to see.

You know who Victor McKusic is, don't you? Geez, can't recall if I spelled that right or not. It doesn't look right. Father of medical genetics? I have THE very first textbook of genetics in medicine, autographed too! LOL

You should talk to this man, he is amazing. Still working too.

Umm. Ow. My doctor friend that I mentioned on one of the other threads tells me stories of the things they see come into the ER. A hot curling iron doesn't touch the tip of the iceberg. A like to have my fun - but man - I'm just not as creative as some of these ladies. Or men.

I have a link you will absolutely love:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=257985

The thread has been going on for years now. It continues to grow. It is hysterical. It is mostly emergency medicine folks talking about what they learn from their patients. I think you'll like it.

The understanding up here is that basic commonsense must apply when an adult is using tools or indeed any other item. A lawsuit can only be launched when the item can be shown to be defective. Thus a bonehead who ends up sawing his leg off with his brand new circular saw, the one that does not carry the caveat that this item is not to be used on limbs, is $h!t outta luck up here.

:clap2: :clap2: :clap2:

I so totally agree with you. I keep yammering about it and a couple here keep missing the point completely. Personal responsibility, is it such a horror?

There is a difference between someone sticking a hot curling iron where it doesn't belong and someone simply holding a cup between their legs. Personal responsibility is great, but companies should also take responsibility when their products become dangerous when used in forseeable ways. Someone sticking a hot curling iron up their hooha isn't exactly foreseeable. Someone holding a cup between their legs is foreseeable, and I would imagine that every single one of us has done that a time or two in the past. Was McDonald's 100% at fault for her getting burned? No, they weren't. But the fact remains that the liquid that was spilled was meant to be consumed, and if it was hot enough to cause severe injuries to the woman, it was heated past the point of consumption.

Think of it this way: if a car wrecks due to driver negligence, and the airbag goes off with far more force than necessary to save the driver's life, and actually injures the driver (and it was proven that the driver would have not been injured, if not for the airbag), is the manufacturer of the car liable for the injury? I think most of us would answer that they are. While the airbag performed the way it was meant to (by going off in a collision, I mean), the manufacturer made the mistake that resulted in the actual injury of the driver. I view the McDonald's case the same way. While the woman made the mistake that resulted in the actual tipping of the cup, the coffee would not have injured her severely if it had not been super-heated.

laurend: I believe that in the case of negligence a company or person should be liable for damages caused by that negligence. I personally have never held a cup of hot java between my legs, or my breasts or on the top of my head, or when I was fatter on my shelf that was my butt. It doesn't belong in those places, wasn't designed for that and was designed to be held in one's hand, where if one is not asleep or drunk, one can sense the degree of heat that is being emitted from said cup. If what you're saying is true, then why not ban drive-thrus completely because they may promote or at least offer up for misuse, a cup of hot coffee.

I think more like BubbleButt, that some of these lawsuits promote a serious absence of personal responsibility by consumers in this country. Just think how happy that makes all the attorneys.

By the way, one valid reason why McDonald's was making their coffee so hot is because water that is not hot enough cannot produce a decent cup of coffee. They were probably losing sales because of their lousy coffee and decided to step up to the plate and do what it took to make better coffee. The fact that they didn't consider that some silly twit would try to drink her coffee from the wrong hole and burn herself in the process.