If the judge has any intelligence, he/she will throw out the case, nail the mother with costs and nail the lawyer with a fine equal to 3 x the costs. Talk about wasting time.

Then, send the mother to parenting classes.

While all of the things that the mother is saying the electric company should have done seem like reasonable requests (except making it unclimbable), I don’t know if she should get paid because they didn’t. But, that doesn’t really factor into my feelings.

I also think that it is rather presumptuous to assume she needs parenting classes. Maybe she’s greedy. But, I thought greed way good, right, righties?

I’ve come to a sort of inner peace regarding our culture’s litigiousness, and the elevation of the lawsuit to the lottery. In the past, I would bitch about it. But, don’t give a flying fuck, and often wind up rooting for these people to win!

First of all, it is pretty clear that the market for all goods is manipulated. What we pay doesn’t necessarily reflect to cost of extracting or creating the good, or any of those base economic principals, we’re just forced to open our assholes wide enough to accommodate the dildo chosen by those control the market. I have no delusions that a multi-million dollar suit against any large corporation or entity will have any influence on the price point of the product.

So, that’s one obstacle down.

Now, I ask myself, with the knowledge of the point above, who would I rather have to money?

Let’s take the pet ridiculous lawsuit, the McDonalds coffee case. This dumb bitch spilled coffee on herself an sued Mickey Dees because the coffee was hot. Yeah, she’s an idiot, so what? I’d still rather she have the money that the corporation. I don’t care if she is crack addict, who is going to take the settlement and buy one huge crack rock with it, like Tyrone Bigguns from Chapelle Show…

Climbing powerline towers is an old game. Of course it’s stupid. Of course kids do it. And the people who build and operate them should know that.

There’s a long-established legal doctrine of “attractive nuisance” – dangerous situations that inherently tend to draw people into that danger, like unfenced swimming pools, abandoned refrigerators with locking doors, etc. The law holds that you are responsible for preventing others from being injured on an attractive nuisance, notwithstanding that they don’t have permission to fool with it.

Given that people – especially young people with poor judgment – will tend to stick their noses in unwisely, you have a responsibility to reasonably foresee that and to take reasonable precautions to prevent harm if they do. The alternative – leaving poisoned candy and loaded shotguns strewn around your property and just saying “hey, I told them damfool neighbor kids to keep off my lawn!” – is not a reasonable option for a civilized society.

The precautions this woman alleges were negligently omitted – posting warnings, making the powerline towers inaccessible, and trying to prevent harm if someone does access them – pretty much exactly parallel what we require the owners of swimming pools to do. Her demands may or may not be technically feasible, but they hardly seem out of line. Whether the danger was reasonably foreseeable (it seems to me obviously yes) and whether it was reasonably preventable by the suggested remedies or similar precautions (it seems to me probably yes) are questions of fact that a jury can decide. That there is a duty to take such reasonable precautions is settled law, and, I think, rightly so.

From the few facts available above, I would think she not only has a triable case, but a winnable one. Sure, her kid shouldn’t have been climbing the tower – but the people who put 20K volts within reach of an impulsive 13-year-old decided to gamble his life on the hope he wouldn’t get into trouble with their equipment, when they could have taken reasonable steps to make sure he wouldn’t. They deserve to be held accountable.

diggalahh:

Actually, I’m kind of glad you mentioned the McDonald’s coffee case, because it illustrates a common principle here: often, these cases aren’t as ridiculous as the sound bites you often hear about them. In the McDonald’s case, they had internal studies telling them that they were serving their coffee at a dangerously hot temperature. There were other mitigating factors as well, that get almost no publicity.

Now I’m not saying that she deserved the few hundred thousand dollars she probably got (the judge reduced the $2.9 million settlement to around half a million, and McDonald’s then settled with her for an unspecified amount to avoid appeals), or that she was completely without fault. I’m just saying that the common narrative, that McDonald’s had to pay out millions because of one stupid, litigious old woman, is patently false.

More on this.

Also in the McDonald’s case, the health department had been in within the previous month and advised them to lower the temperature of the coffee as it was a risk.

Regarding the “transmission tower”, the kid fell from 35 feet and was hit with 19,700 volts. That would indicate it was likely one of the regular poles you find about every quarter block in most cities. It is unreasonable to expect the hydro company to put fences around each pole that would be large enough and far enough away to prevent someone from climbing it. And how many owners would want to give up the extra space on their property to allow for such?

Next time you go for a walk down a back lane, see if you have 10 or 20 feet or so to get past the power pole because if you walk too closely, then you may be trespassing.

Where I grew up, pretty much every power pole and transmission tower was labeled with a “Danger: High Voltage” sign.

But issues like this have me on the fence. On one hand, it’s right and proper to expect the owners of such utilities to take reasonable precautions against such actions. But on the other hand, there has to be some point at which reasonable people would agree that the proper precautions were taken, and at that point, there shouldn’t be any liability.

Without knowing the specifics of this case, I can’t really comment on whether or not there should be any liability on the part of the utility.

Also, KTK’s comment reminds me of a friend of mine, whose parents tore down their swimming pool when they learned they could be held liable if a trespasser got hurt or drowned. (I’m guessing they were overreacting, and that simply building a fence would have been enough to avoid such liability, but I don’t really know what the laws were like back then…)

Here’s a concept. Teenage kids do this type of thing precisely because it is dangerous. I did, you did, they did, and future generations will. The really daring and/or unlucky kids will kill themselves in accidents. It is unfortunate, but it is true. Warning signs are not a deterrent.

Ted,
Warning signs are a deterrent — to a certain subset of those who would consider it. They shift the balance of how daring you have to be to also be in danger. Same goes for other deterrents, but more so.

Personally, I think liability must attach whenever there is insufficient labelling. I also think there’s something to be said for the idea of attractive nuisance, insofar as the harm done by a thing may exceed its tendency to be left alone. Pools aren’t especially deadly, so much as especially likely to have a fair chance of being deadly.

So, I think requiring signs is A-OK. I think requiring fencing is probably fair. I think requiring insulation is unreasonable. And I think making the tower unclimbable is insane, since that interferes with its proper use.

How do you quantify an “attractive n nuisance,” especially one that is less than forthcoming about warning the public?

Would, say, McDonalds, cartoon characters, trans-fat, a tiny poster hidden behind the counter listing nutritional information, etc. count?

A couple of points. Last night I saw an ad on the tube. BGE (the local utility company) was explaining that overhead wires are dangerous and what not to do around them. If you think about it, you too have probably seen these.

I could be wrong, but I am thinking a fall from 35 feet is going to be lethal more often than not. Therefore, Dan M, if you have trees in your yard, I expect you to put warning signs on them that they are dangerous and to fence them off so kids can’t climb them.

Again, Ted, it’s a question of where you draw the line. Nobody’s arguing for labeling every possible hazard, nor is anyone arguing for not labeling anything. The question is what hazards can we reasonably expect to be labeled or otherwise have deterrence built in?

Is it asking too much to have every tall object labeled “falling hazard, do not climb?” In my estimation, yes, it is. Is it expecting too much to have high-voltage equipment labeled with “Danger: High Voltage” signage? I really don’t think so. But I honestly can’t think of a hard-and-fast rule for where to draw that line.

I will say that even if the power company turns out to be in the wrong here, having not labeled the tower, I don’t think this entitles the kid’s mother to all sorts of damages. But you could (and probably should) hit the utility with a civil fine of some sort, if that turns out to be the case.

Tgirsch (“c” included this time), I agree. Something like a sub-station, which is on ground level and protected by a fence, should (and does) require a High Voltage warning sign. Because it might not be obvious that there is high voltage in that little building. But a transmission line tower? Not sure a sign would impart much new knowledge. That seems to me like requiring signs along beach front to warn people that water is a drowning hazard.

On an unrelated note, my sister was a trauma nurse out in Colorado. She flew in a helicopter to crash scenes. She and her crew went out one night the week before Christmas in a storm to save the victims of a drunk driving accident. As they were taking off from the crash site, the pilot forgot to check overhead and he flew into a transmission line, killing everyone in the helicopter – five people in all.