Some of you may have heard about the young man who was killed over the weekend by the roller coaster at Six Flags Atlanta. If you don’t know about it, he climbed over two fences, both six feet high, and well marked about danger, keep out, restricted area, etc. He then went under the roller coaster and was decapitated by the roller coaster. Now, some cretinous scumbag of a lawyer announces that a lawsuit is pending because the park didn’t do enough to protect the guy and they should be made to pay. It seems that the only protection businesses have nowadays is to go out of business. The whole thing makes me sick
I know makes me sick when the guy jumped over 2 different fences to get a hat and his family will SUE and win in court. Here is a way to totally protect all business if you have a Rollercoaster like amusment parks due have RAZOR wire on top of the fences gaurding the areas that the guests are not supposed to get to. Then if they are SYUPID enough to jump a fence with razor wire on it electirfy the next one and have signs put up stating this area is OFF LIMITS if you are dumb enough and crazy enough to defeat razor wire and 5000 volts of electricity thinking a hat is worth you LIFE. Your family will be fined 1 million dollars and we WILL COLLECT. Also we will submit your name for a Darwin Award since you are bound and determined to remove yourself from the gene pool.
I personally don’t see any problem with this… provided they put his money where the hat was.
I would hope that should this suit ever make it into a courtroom that the judge will look them straight in the eye and point out what this young man had to do to get himself killed. Then throw them out, with instructions never to darken his, or any other, courtroom door again.
A few things…
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Apparently, one of the fences did have razor wire/angled spikes on top of it but the kid still did it anyway. Even if this did stop him, then the lawsuit would be on the grounds of disfigurement rather than death.
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Unfortunately, the case will probably go this way: Six Flags will determine it will cost $500,000 in legal fees to defend the case. They will offer a $200,000 settlement to the family. The family will accept and Six Flags will feel fortunate to have “saved” $300,000.
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Technically, you are not off-topic since the roller coaster has cars that ride on tracks
Yet another example of how our society has been completely ruined by removing any concept of personal responsibility. It will all fall apart one day, I used to think not in my lifetime but now I am about 50/50. Jamie
Just like the stories of some boob breaks into your house. He gets hurt while breaking in and then tries to sue you for his injury. This country is very LITIGIOUS!
Talking about your bottom feeders, what about the kid that was mauled by a Tiger in California. It was determined in an autopsy that he was high on pot and drunk.
I am a true believer in the theory of Darwin…[:-^]
I personally don’t recall any major corporation (Six Flags being one of them) going out of business because of a lawsuit. Cigarette makers always seem to be getting sued all the time but they still seem to be in business. In fact almost all of the class action lawsuits that they lost were overturned and/or the amount won was significantly reduced.
The merits of this lawsuit will be reviewed by a jury consisting of American citizans who will determine whether the Six Flags is responsible or not. While much blame has been placed on lawyers who are looking for a payday, I think juries are also part of the issue. They are in fact the ones who determine whether the lawsuit is valid and whether the “victim” should be compensated or not. So long as juries determine that liability lawsuits like this are creditable and say that a high pay out is due, then it gives people (lawyers and victims) a glimmer of hope of winning. I think while lawyers tell their clients the possibility of a big payoff, they also fail to tell them about the appeals process and how often the initial verdict/award gets overturned/ reduced.
In my personal opinion, saying that rollar coasters is sticking to the subject of trains is a REAL stretch. I personally think this tread is off topic.
Give me a “bleeping” break, will you PLEASE!
Unfortunately, some people simply have no concept of danger. I have often said that there are dumb things that people do every day, and I am sure we have all done things that others would rate as “stupid”, but, the word doesn’t apply. In all of my experience in dealing with what appears to be the irredeemably stupid, I see it this way: When someone does, just as this young man had done, they tend to not see the danger in doing what they are doing. In fact, the fact that it is dangerouse doesn’t even enter their heads. They see the “keep out” and “Danger” and “No Trespassing” signs, and look at it as a challenge, so, merrily they go along, blissfully ignorant of what can, or will happen, because they figure, somewhere in the recesses of their mind, that all of those signs apply to someone else. Also, young people tend to think they are indestructible, and therefore, their judgement is clouded, and they don’t view situations as they should. I can’t tell you how many times I have answered 9-1-1 calls for people who were hurt doing things that most people with a bit of common sense wouldn’t attempt. In a few cases, the “victims” weren’t even aware that what they were doing was dangerous.
The fact that he defeated all of those fences, and what not, shows his determination to do what ever it is he set out to do. Were there any others with him… could this have been, perhaps a “dare”, or something? It kind of sounds like that to me…
While not a major business in the terms of Six Flags, etc, the Peter Pirsch Company was indeed forced out of business by a lawsuit. Pirsch manufactured a well-known and well-respected line of custom built fire trucks. Some are still in service.
The cause for the suit was a firefighter falling off a Pirsch truck during a response. At the time, the fully enclosed cabs we see today were rare - most were open at the rear. Pirsch apparatus sported a chrome rail around the top rear of the cab - it was a trademark of sorts, and was desired by those ordering Pirsch rigs.
Despite there being seats available (although seatbelts were not yet standard for such applications), firefighters often chose to stand during responses, holding onto the rail.
The gist of the suit was that Pirsch was negligent in that they installed the rail, providing firefighters something to hang onto while standing.
Pirsch lost the suit and closed their doors.
I’m familiar with the Pirsch lawsuit. The maddening thing was that the Mass. volunteer fireman killed was a high school dropout who was probably never going to amount to much but the jury awarded a verdict, way beyond the company’s liability insurance, that made one think he was a top doctor. Since the Pirsch company was out-of-state, the jury socked it to them. The only consolation was the US Supreme Court in its rulings since them has made it harder to have such an award. In fact, its possible that this case would now be in Federal Court rather than Mass. state court. By the way, my employer would not accept Mass. as governing law in a contract under any circumstances. It’s that bad, especially for out-of-state firms. (Nor would we accept any contract that had the court of record as being in Philadelphia County or Cook County.)
Yeah, and SUE-HAPPY too!
Well, let’s get it back on track …
With all the personal injury and liability lawsuits going around these days, one could make a case that “all of us” are getting “injured” by the personal injury lawyers filing/winning stupid suits… we could get together as a class and engineer a case to sue THEIR fat cabooses for a change. Then with the winnings we could go and build a massive layout and hold gigantic marathon op-sessions and life would be good again… except for the lawyers.
(There, didja like the way I worked in all those TRAIN words??? [:D])
…Looks great to me…you pushed it way down the track.
Wasn’t it Abraham Lincoln who said something along the lines of “Democracy without morality leads only to disaster”? Look at Reader’s Digest: they had to ‘dumb down’ their stories from a 7th grade reading/comprehension level to a 5th grade reading/comprehension level. What a sad commentary about this country that we have things like that happening here. IMO the coutnry collectively acts increasingly less intelligent each year. This has consequences for us as “fans” and those who are “rails”. The result of many things acting in concert got us to where we are today: tension between the two groups and a general distrust and dislike of rail transportation by the general public. It’s a sad state of affairs.
Up the line on this thread somebody mentioned juries. The juries ARE NOT PICKED AT RANDOM. The potential jurors are given a 300 question test, which the slimeballs use to weed out anyone with a brain in their head, and to pack the jury with as many idiots as possible. The kind of morons who don’t care about common sense. These people just want to see “the big bad mean evil corporation pay” whether the case has merit or not.
Thanks for the clue if I ever have to serve on a Civil case involving personal injury I will know to act dumb TIL the Jury gets the case then Hammer the others in the jury room.
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On a related and similar note: I think we should shut down all railroads because of the CSX Kentucky derailment. Darn derailment-happy railroads. Always just looking for a spot to derail. And, as this derailment proves, derailments are on the rise in our derailment-prone society. Pretty soon, our country will be overrun with derailments. It is costing us all. And worse, it is facilitated by their bottom-feeder rail execs and their neophyte followers that believe the industry is going to make this resurgence without exacerbating their penchant to derail all over the place.
Were the above-listed paragraph surreptitiously encouraged by a trucking effort to turn the public toward highway transportation, it would be completely analagous to your above-listed comments.
Gabe
P.S. Normally, I would only be annoyed by the pedantic nature of this thread, but what really has me a bit on edge is the sanctamounious element. I am sure all of you will deny it. But, I have been in this business long enough to say this with ABSOLUTE confidence: I will gaurantee that were you the parent of the kid who died, 80% of you would be looking for an attorney within two weeks.