After collapse, millions in legal claims likely

The Star Tribune: By Chris Serres and Matt McKinney,

The state's liability is limited by law to $1 million, regardless of how many people were injured.

A larger payout would be possible if the state DOT had an insurance policy, but it doesn't, according to Robert McFarlin, an assistant to the commissioner of the Department of Transportation.

None of the people involved in the bridge's construction or design could be sued successfully, said attorney Robert King, of the Lommen Abdo law firm in Minneapolis. State law generally places a six-year statute of limitations on a lawsuit against contractors, he added. 'You have to figure out what the triggering event was,' said Mark Kulda, spokesman for the Insurance Federation of Minnesota. 'If this was a faulty design or a faulty construction technique, then many of the claims are probably time barred.'

Given those limitations, attorneys likely will focus on the private entities involved in the bridge's maintenance, particularly if state and federal investigators find that private firms bear any of the blame for the collapse.

Didn't take long to start in on the legal issues presented by a major disaster. It rarely does.
Do these comments suggest that the law is too generous in awarding damages, as some would have it?

Freak Amusement Park Accident Severs Girl's Feet

New York Times Blog: By Patrick J. Lyons

Your stomach falls out at the thought of it: a 13-year-old girl is happily enjoying an amusement-park ride one minute, and is grotesquely injured the next.

It happened late Thursday afternoon at a Six Flags park in Kentucky, on one of those tower-drop rides. Something - perhaps a snapped cable, it isn’t clear yet - suddenly whipped across the girl’s shins and severed both her feet.

UPDATE: Bill Clary, a spokesman for the Kentucky Division of Regulation and Inspection, which has oversight over amusement parks, said this afternoon that a frayed cable on the ride snapped and hit the girl’s legs. That agrees with what witnesses have told CNN...

But there’s no denying the public’s morbid fascination with such stories, or the news media’s, especially at a time like the end of June, when school is letting out and jubilant children are pouring into the nation’s theme parks to start the summer off with a bang.

The very essence of an amusement-park ride is imitation danger: getting to enjoy all the adrenaline-pumping thrill of a seemingly life-threatening experience without risking any real harm, testing one’s courage and mettle when the price of falling short won’t be worse than a red face and maybe a lost lunch.

Perhaps that is why this kind of incident tugs at the mind so strongly, in a world where accidents of other sorts claim young lives and limbs every day to scant public notice. When pretend danger proves to be real danger, for us or especially for our children, we feel not only frightened but betrayed.

The amusement industry winces at the attention paid to these accidents, of course, and on a statistical level they have a point - serious injuries and deaths caused by amusement park rides are pretty rare, and the reputable park operators go to considerable trouble and expense to keep them that way.

Still, they happen, and they resonate - to the point that elaborate web sites are devoted to tracking them, like www.rideaccidents.com and an accident page on Theme Park Insider, which also includes a list of safety tips for parkgoers. ...

Amusement park accidents are a fixture of Torts courses, particularly regarding the tort doctrine of "assumption of the risk" (also a feature of much individual tobacco litigation). Interesting aspects of this story include the juxtaposition of perceptions of risk ("imitation danger" and "testing one’s courage and mettle") with statistical evidence of the rarity of serious injuries and the feeling of betrayal when such an accident actually occurs.

I'll leave it at that, since I may want to return to this incident in future teaching (and perhaps exams...) in my Torts classes...

Bork v. Bork

New York Times (Editorial):

There are many versions of the cliché that “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged,” and Robert Bork has just given rise to another. A tort plaintiff, it turns out, is a critic of tort lawsuits who has slipped and fallen at the Yale Club.

Mr. Bork, of course, is the former federal appeals court judge who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987 but not confirmed by the Senate. He has long been famous for his lack of sympathy for people who go to court with claims of race or sex discrimination, or other injustices. He has gotten particularly exercised about accident victims driving up the cost of business by filing lawsuits. In an op-ed article, he once complained that “juries dispense lottery-like windfalls,” and compared the civil justice system to “Barbary pirates.”

That was before Mr. Bork spoke at the Yale Club last year, and fell on his way to the dais, injuring his leg and bumping his head. Mr. Bork is not merely suing the club for failing to provide a set of stairs and a handrail between the floor and the dais. He has filed a suit that is so aggressive about the law that, if he had not filed it himself, we suspect he might regard it as, well, piratical.

Mr. Bork puts the actual damages for his apparently non-life-threatening injuries (after his fall, he was reportedly able to go on and deliver his speech) at “in excess of $1,000,000.” He is also claiming punitive damages. And he is demanding that the Yale Club pay his attorney’s fees.

We can imagine what Mr. Bork the legal scholar would ask if he had a chance to question Mr. Bork the plaintiff. If it was “reasonably foreseeable” that without stairs and a handrail, “a guest such as Mr. Bork” would be injured, why did Mr. Bork try to climb up to the dais? Where does personal responsibility enter in? And wouldn’t $1 million-plus punitive damages amount to a “lottery-like windfall”?

Since we believe in the tort system, when properly used, all we would ask is whether Mr. Bork’s unfortunate experience at the Yale Club has led him to re-evaluate any of the harsh things he has said in the past about injured people, much like himself, who simply wanted their day in court.

This is so delicious I'm quoting it in full. In the spirit of the piece, I think it constitutes "fair (ab)use."

Robert Bork sues Yale club over injuries

Yale Daily News :

Law School professor Peter Schuck said the central point of contention in the case will likely be proving whether or not the Yale Club was negligent in failing to provide stairs to the dais. Bork will try to prove that the club violated a well-established custom of providing stairs, he said, while the club will likely counter by asserting that there was no such custom, that the accident was Bork's fault, or that he assumed the risk of falling.

'He will probably have to try to overcome two defenses,' said Schuck, who includes tort law among his major fields of teaching. 'One is comparative fault, which would be based on the idea that even if Yale was negligent, he was also negligent in having observed the height of the dais and then not asking for assistance, such as steps, to reduce the risk. The other defense is assumption of risk, Yale's claim being that he observed the risk and decided knowingly to take it without assistance.'...

Schuck, who was on the Yale Law School faculty with Bork for a very brief period from 1979 to 1980, said he believes Bork should have been confirmed for the Court seat on the basis of his intellectual merits and academic work. But he said Bork has harbored a grudge against the law school since the confirmation battle.

"I think his having elevated his defeat into a now 20-year crusade of resentment and fury seems rather churlish," Schuck said. "I certainly sympathize with his anger in having been defeated in his bid for a seat he had every reason to believe he deserved, but I think that this is in the nature of modern-style high Supreme Court nomination politics, and he should get over it."

(Time stamp artificial)

Bork v. Yale Club: Jurist Seeks Redress Over a Fall - New York Times

From The New York Times:

"Mr. Bork has been known to chuckle during speeches when he cites a bit of popular wisdom that he says he once saw on a bumper sticker: “Save America. Close Yale Law School.”"

I hope he loses his law suit. Preferably on a technicality. Even better: something like assumption of the risk. It would serve him right.

Bork Cites 'Wanton' Negligence in Suing Yale Club for $1-Million

The Chronicle: Daily News Blog: Robert Bork Cites 'Wanton' Negligence in Suing Yale Club for $1-Million: "Robert Bork Cites 'Wanton' Negligence in Suing Yale Club for $1-Million

Irving Kristol once defined a neoconservative as a liberal who had been mugged by reality. By the same token, can a liberal be defined as a neoconservative who had suddenly found a need for the tort bar?

We may find that out in a Manhattan court, where Robert H. Bork — the Supreme Court nominee rejected by the U.S. Senate in 1987 — filed a $1-million lawsuit today against the Yale Club of New York City, whose negligence, he says, was to blame for injuries he suffered in a fall at the club a year ago.

Mr. Bork, who is 80, said in the lawsuit that he had suffered injuries to his left leg and his head when he tripped while stepping onto a dais at the club to address a gathering sponsored by The New Criterion, a tradition-minded monthly journal of culture. According to the Associated Press, the suit accuses the Yale Club of “wanton, willful, and reckless disregard for the safety of its guests.” The suit, which cites the “excruciating pain” he has experienced during a recovery that continues, seeks damages for pain and suffering, medical treatment, lost work time, and lost income.

Mr. Bork, a former federal judge, first drew public attention in 1973, when he fired the Watergate special prosecutor at the behest of President Richard M. Nixon. He currently holds posts at the Hudson Institute, Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, and the Ave Maria School of Law. He has written on many subjects, including the need for tort reform.

I try not to take pleasure in the pain of others. There is, nonetheless, a certain ironic charm pervading this report.

My torts professor at Yale, Guido Calabresi (now a federal judge, although he continues to teach torts), tended to speak well of Bork in those years (as he did of most Yalies). Not sure whether that changed over the years, as Bork became a more embittered and pathetic figure. I wonder what emotions pass over his wise and knowing countenance as he encounters this story.