|
[sigh]
OK, as a guy that deals all day, every day in corporate liability my opinion is that there is no such thing as a "frivolous" lawsuit. There are fraudulent lawsuits where people are claiming injuries that either didn't happen at all or didn't happen the way that the claimant describes, but these aren't "frivolous" since they're based on lies. Fradulent suits are almost always either grounded in greed or revenge - there's rarely any other motive. People that file fraudulent suits are generally taken to task by the court and can end up paying the defendant's (or more like their insurance company's) legal costs. I see the loss information on every single account that I write, and in my experience the average amount spent to make one of these fraudulent cases go away is about $2,500. Sometimes it's more and sometimes it's less, but that's as good an average as I can come up with now.
One thing about meritless cases is that they tend to go away quickly. Filing suit is one of the only ways to get a company's attention sometimes.
The suit that generally cited as being the most "frivolous" is the McDonald's coffee case. I'm sure that would fit the definition of "human stupidity", at least until you actually review the facts of the case. Full disclosure - I know more than most on this particular case because I know the underwriter that ended up paying a good portion of the claim very well.
First of all, do you know who's responsible for this even going to court? It's not the insurance company - it's McDonald's. Their insurance program at the time covered them for claims over $1M, with McDonald's being responsible for handling all claims under that amount (called a self-insured retention or SIR). Given that this was a simple burn case without any major injuries (which in my world means death or loss of limb, etc.), it should have gone away for $100,000, but McDonald's didn't want to settle. They thought that they hadn't done anything wrong - and they had. What came out in court was that the lid on the cup didn't fasten correctly and the cup was overfilled. The employee at the drive-thru handed her (the claimant) a cup of coffee that was too hot to drink in a cup that was ready to spill. When she put it between her legs, it did spill. She orginally wanted her medical bills paid and an apology, but McDonald's wouldn't give her that so she had no recourse but to sue. It's not her fault the jury gave her an outrageous award (greatly reduced on appeal). If you have a problem, maybe it should be with the amount of punitive damages paid in this country - that can account for up to 75% of any judgement in some venues. Because McDonald's had the right to handle the claims up to $1M, they screwed themselves and their insurors by not giving her what she wanted since other claimants who had similar experiences generally decided it wasn't worth it to pursue the claim. Let me state for the record, in case it wasn't perfectly clear before, this woman was injured by the coffee and suffered some pretty severe burns, and that was, without a doubt, McDonald's fault. They knew, or should have known, that their coffee was too hot and that the lids didn't fasten correctly.
The most likely kind of lawsuit that's going to be deemed "frivolous" is a claim for bodily injury. And those are also the ones that are most likely to get paid - that's because the case usually has some degree of merit. If a manufacturer of a snowblower didn't warn you not to stick your hand down the chute because it's dangerous, they didn't take the necessary precautions to warn you about the use of their product. Labels are there generally because either manufacturers (or sometimes insurance companies) have found that people hurt themselves in the way described or it's easily imagined. Do you know why Q-tips have a label that they aren't supposed to used in the ear? It's because Johnson & Johnson had to pay after a bunch of people punctured their eardrums. And they paid not out of the goodness of their corporate hearts but because the courts told them to.
So, Forrest Gump is welcome to sue the owner of the dog that produced the shit he stepped in, but he didn't suffer an injury that's going to result in any court finding against the owner.
__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo
|