This is why the US is going down the toilet

dteowner said:

Not the same situation, although I'll admit there's a judgment call hidden in that. With the cars, you're an active participant in the situation. This is a bystander, only tangentially related to the event itself.

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Ok how about this scenario: car goes out of control and hits a pedestrian. Is pedestrian "an active participant in the situation"? Give up dte. You had knee jerk revulsion like we all did. You just decided to stick with your first impressions.

dteowner said:

Not the same situation, although I'll admit there's a judgment call hidden in that. With the cars, you're an active participant in the situation. This is a bystander, only tangentially related to the event itself. The hidden judgment lurking in there is that bystanders have less standing than active participants, and I'll willingly admit that's open to debate.

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The bystander in this case is the one suing the estate. There is reasonable argument that the sole active participant was Park, according to the appellate judge. He found the facts of the case were sufficient and the argument sound enough to suggest that Park's decision to cross the tracks failure to head the warning siren and failure to look before crossing were the decisions which caused the accident. One could argue the company involved was an active participant as well though they were found not to be responsible.

Note this is not a judgment on the arguments themselves but rather on the decision to dismiss them instead of proceeding to trial. Basically the judge was saying - they have a sound enough argument for Park being at sufficient fault to merit being heard in court. It has been remanded to that court which will not decide on whether the argument is also correct what if any damages it may involve.

CountChocula said:

In Japan if you commit suicide by jumping in front of a train, your family is obligated to pay a fee of $100 million yen.

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I think that's like 10 bucks.

zahratustra said:

I agree but I also remember seeing (while ago) CCTV footage of public transport buss crash in Chicago. Injured were evacuated through one door while people climbed in through another so they could claim to be victims too. Everybody seems to have their own version of what "land of opportunity" means?

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Public hangings could cure this!

dteowner said:

It's about time to start shooting the lawyers.

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I wholeheartedly agree. How much will be their profits in that ?
Because that's the only way I can imagine that going on.
Someone is profiting from this ... useless case ...

And : How can you sue some-body (pun indended) who is no more ?

dteowner said:

Not the same situation, although I'll admit there's a judgment call hidden in that. With the cars, you're an active participant in the situation. This is a bystander, only tangentially related to the event itself. The hidden judgment lurking in there is that bystanders have less standing than active participants, and I'll willingly admit that's open to debate.

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Ok, change the situation. In the accident, you're walking on the sidewalk and a tire flies off and breaks your leg. Would you try to recover damages from the person that caused the accident?

blatantninja said:

Ok, change the situation. In the accident, you're walking on the sidewalk and a tire flies off and breaks your leg. Would you try to recover damages from the person that caused the accident?

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This is something different. A tire is not a disembodied person which is no more that hits you.
A tire is a property. Since when are body parts property of the owner ? I mean - a human being CONSISTS of body parts !

blatantninja said:

Ok, change the situation. In the accident, you're walking on the sidewalk and a tire flies off and breaks your leg. Would you try to recover damages from the person that caused the accident?

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Nope. Wrong place, wrong time...shit happens. As a bystander, I'd have less standing. Like I said, though, I can clearly see the other side of that argument. So, in summation, I can see where people could side with the woman in question, but I don't. In the bigger picture, I still say this clearly demonstrates our overgrown need to assign blame and cash in.

@Z-- don't be an ass. The car and pedestrian are directly involved in the situation, so obviously the pedestrian is not a bystander to the event. Spend a little more time thinking and a little less searching for some "gotcha moment".

jhwisner said:

The bystander in this case is the one suing the estate. There is reasonable argument that the sole active participant was Park, according to the appellate judge. He found the facts of the case were sufficient and the argument sound enough to suggest that Park's decision to cross the tracks failure to head the warning siren and failure to look before crossing were the decisions which caused the accident. One could argue the company involved was an active participant as well though they were found not to be responsible.

Note this is not a judgment on the arguments themselves but rather on the decision to dismiss them instead of proceeding to trial. Basically the judge was saying - they have a sound enough argument for Park being at sufficient fault to merit being heard in court. It has been remanded to that court which will not decide on whether the argument is also correct what if any damages it may involve.

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I agree with 100% of what you've said there, but I'm still of the opinion that the suit shouldn't have been filed in the first place. The appeals court obviously disagrees with me.

dteowner said:

@Z— don't be an ass. The car and pedestrian are directly involved in the situation, so obviously the pedestrian is not a bystander to the event. Spend a little more time thinking and a little less searching for some "gotcha moment".

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As usual you haven't read what I have wrote before replying. I wasn't talking about pedestrian crossing the road but about driver loosing control over his/her vehicle and hitting a pedestrian. How does that make pedestrian "directly involved"?

Car hits person. Simple event between 2 entities, right? Car hits person—two directly involved parties—piece of car gets ripped off and hits a 3rd person—THIRD person, not the directly involved parties, therefore a bystander to the event. Maybe I'm confusing you by using the word "bystander", even if it's a dictionary-accurate usage? In this case, I'm using "bystander" as "tangential to the event" rather than "bystander" as "any innocent victim".

What I don't understand is why this woman is bothering to sue the estate of a teenager to begin with. Like the article asks.. what does she hope to gain? How many US teenagers even have any kind of estate? It's unlikely that he even had insurance.

I sympathise with her over the injuries, but I think she's wasting her time. She's 58 years old, she should have her own insurance to cover this.

Interesting point; why not claim on your own insurance and then let your insurance company sue the estate or his insurance company if he had one?

dteowner said:

Car hits person. Simple event between 2 entities, right? Car hits person—two directly involved parties—piece of car gets ripped off and hits a 3rd person—THIRD person, not the directly involved parties, therefore a bystander to the event.

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Act of being hit by a car does makes car and victim "directly involved" but doesn't it follow that a 3rd person being hit by debris of the "directly involved" stops being a bystander and becomes "directly involved" too?

Corwin said:

Interesting point; why not claim on your own insurance and then let your insurance company sue the estate or his insurance company if he had one?

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That's why I think that she might not have an insurance or any other options. Wouldn't be a problem in Europe…

zahratustra said:

Act of being hit by a car does makes car and victim "directly involved" but doesn't it follow that a 3rd person being hit by debris of the "directly involved" stops being a bystander and becomes "directly involved" too?

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Not to me--that's a secondary event. "INdirectly involved". But as I've said 4 times now, I can see where others wouldn't make such a distinction.

Corwin said:

Interesting point; why not claim on your own insurance and then let your insurance company sue the estate or his insurance company if he had one?

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Two possibilities- the lady does not have insurance of her own, or she's looking to hit the judicial "pain and suffering" lottery and wouldn't get anything beyond actual expenses from insurance.

This does contain the information of the first article but if you scroll down you'll aslo see photos of the station which multiple incidents have happend as well as additional information which suggests the warning signal is no longer in use and discussion of possible misunderstanding on the part of the court with regard to the how difficult such danger may have been to judge.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...CAN-sued-woman-injured-flying-body-parts.html

Another incident involving a person attempting to cross the tracks at the crossing in front of the same station occurred only two months later. While the case is different beyond the non-involvement of additional parties, it may give weight to Mrs. Park's argument that the crossing itself is particularly and excessively dangerous. Additionally this second incident involved an admitted failure to blow the warning horn on the part of the staffer monitoring the platform and resulted in an undisclosed settlement. She is currently appealing the ruling against her lawsuit to the Illinois supreme court.

In the particular case we are discussing it was argued by the representatives for the transit company that the warning siren was sounded and that the train was an visible and obvious enough danger. The judge in that cased agreed despite accepting that the speed of a train may have been difficult to judge and though there was a chain-link fence lining one side and foliage along the side Park was running towards. A repeat incident at the same tracks just two months later at the same location with no apparent attempt to improve safety - rather an apparent decrease in attentiveness - might be something Mrs. Park's lawyer could argue demonstrates either a pervasive negligent attitude on the part Merta. The ruling in her upcoming appeal could change how this progresses.

That was mentioned in the first article you have linked JHW.

zahratustra said:

That was mentioned in the first article you have linked JHW.

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The dailymail article goes into far more detail and contains additional information which made me believe the appeal may have a better chance at success than I would have otherwise thought. Just some of the additional details include:

-photos of the train stop at the crossing.
-that the express train which hit him had overtaken his usual train but the announcement of this alleged not to have been made. it is not just that they did not play an announcement that the incoming train was an express - but that it was also arriving out of order
-that the warning whistle (train whistle) that trains used to use to warn on approach is no longer in use
-arguments about the wide angle approach making the speed more difficult to judge

I suppose my post linking to the dailymail expanded story illustrates why relying on forum and blog posts to get information rather than following through to the actual articles is a pretty piss poor idea. Going by my summary a few posts up you'd think there wasn't anything additional in that article. I'll pretend I did that intentionally to demonstrate an earlier point and that it wasn't just a failure on my part to pay attention to what I was doing.

All of which would go toward negligence by the transit authority. Our subject golddigger is not suing the transit authority. She's going after the guy. While I appreciate all the information you're bringing to the discussion, I don't know what your position is, JHW.

You chastized us for discrediting the lady's case based on a blog, but all the information you've presented just opens the possibility that the transit authority was negligent, which doesn't support your initial accusation one whit.