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It's a mad, mad, mad world
Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University and a local restaurateur. He can be reached at via e-mail.
Rather than blame the mishap on a lousy pitch or a missed catch, or on the intrinsic risks of the game, Hannant sued the maker of the bat, Hillerich & Bradsby. Seeking in excess of $1 million, Hannant's lawyer argued that the company should have put labels on its Louisville Slugger bats warning that the product "could cause a baseball to be propelled with such velocity that when hit directly towards a pitcher it does not allow the pitcher sufficient reaction time to avoid being struck."
What we need, in short, are slower bats, not better pitchers. And slower sleds. The label this year on the sleds at my local hardware: "Warning: Beware that sled may develop high speed under certain snow conditions."
Writing in October on TechCentralStation.com, Scott Norvell, the London bureau chief for Fox News, explained how things are a bit more laissez faire in Britain: "For a father of three young children coming from America, one of the more remarkable things over here is the playgrounds. A new adventure playground in Central London's Holland Park, for example, is full of the sort of amusements that can -- and probably do on occasion -- smash little fingers, sprain little ankles and bloody little noses. There's a massive tire swing with room for about half a dozen kids. There are rope swings and a spider web-like maze of wires and platforms dangling four feet off the ground. All sorts of things that make a playground great; things that would never fly in America."
Buttressing Norvell's observation, Newsweek in its Dec. 15 cover story, "Lawsuit Hell," points to America's playgrounds as a case in point of how the fear of being sued in America has changed the nation's landscape: "Playgrounds all over the country have been stripped of monkey bars, jungle gyms, high slides and swings, seesaws and other old-fashioned equipment once popularized by President John F. Kennedy's physical-fitness campaign. The reason: thousands of lawsuits by people who hurt themselves at playgrounds."
Still, says Newsweek, not everything has turned out as safe or as free from lawsuits as expected: "Some experts say the new, supposedly safer equipment is actually more dangerous because risk-loving kids will test themselves by, for instance, climbing across the top of a swing set. Other kids sit at home and get fat -- and their parents sue McDonald's."
Or the kid can sit at home and smoke or eat the paint off the wall and sue Marlboro or Sherwin-Williams. I hate to bring up Stella Liebeck again, the McDonald's coffee lady, but the premise behind all this is that we're no longer responsible for our own conduct, and that someone else should be around to pick up the tab for anything that goes wrong.
In the case of Ms. Liebeck hitting the jackpot after spilling coffee on herself, law professor David E. Bernstein at George Mason University points out that "the burn rate from McDonald's coffee was 1 per 24 million cups served, hardly common." Less common, in fact, than death by lightning -- 10 times less common. In a typical year, reports ABC News, the number Americans hit and killed by lightning is 1 per 2.32 million.
In any event, with the jungle gyms gone and the fat kids pigging out at McDonald's, George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf, a pioneer in the big tobacco settlements, sees new pockets that are ripe for picking.
"It's important for lawyers to pick cases easiest to argue," Banzhaf told a group of lawyers assembled at a recent obesity conference. "I'd find a poor homeless fat kid if I could. One-hundred-million-dollar awards are inevitable, like tobacco."
Saying enough is enough, the owners of the 5 Spot restaurant in Seattle have created a super-sized dessert called "The Bulge" -- a gooey concoction of a deep-fried, sugar-coated banana topped with lots of vanilla ice cream, caramel, whipped cream, macadamia nuts and a chocolate drizzle. Before a customer can dig in, a waiver must be signed, saying: "I release the 5 Spot from all liability of any weight gain that may result from ordering and devouring this sinfully fattening treat. I will not impose any sort of obesity-related lawsuit against the 5 Spot or consider any similar type of frivolous litigation created by a hungry trial lawyer."
