<p>My son has a nut allergy, and although he hasn’t died from it yet, he’s gotten sick numerous times, usually because of careless cross-contamination.</p>
<p>But hey, I’m not in favor of having the government ban nuts. I believe in letting the market take care of it. So, if your carelessness with nuts kills my son, I will sue you for negligence, and your umbrella insurance can pay for it. That’s the market at work!</p>
<p>I have not personally done research on suicide as it relates to access to means, but I am a therapist and I work with depression and, as a result, I treat people who become actively suicidal. When I assess risk, i ask about their plan – time, place, means, etc. Usually if someone is quite suicidal, they have decided how and when they will do it and they have a detailed plan. They have usually ruled out certain methods (e.g. don’t want to do pills in case they don’t work and I survive with brain damage). Often, they choose the means that they have access to – a gun if they own a gun, pills if they have lots of medication on hand, etc. I work to remove the means. Often this involves another family member taking a weapon, taking medication and doling it out a few pills at a time, etc. People who are extremely depressed often have a very low level of energy and coming up with a new plan takes a certain amount of energy. Sometimes removing the means is helpful. It might make them feel safer, it removes one thing they might do impulsively that is already planned. (A dangerous period is when they start to feel better and the energy level increases.) Is it foolproof? No, absolutely not. Every mental health professional knows you can’t totally prevent suicide, especially if the person is not hospitalized (and you’d be surprised to know how easily people can get themselves out of being on a 72 hour hold). But does it sometimes help? I think it probably does. I can’t prove it. But I certainly have people in my practice who came very close and who are doing very well now and are no longer suicidal. I think in some cases it helps to have someone say, “This is how we are going to keep you safe until you feel better.” But how you help someone on an individual basis is much different than trying to prevent suicide by institutional changes on bridges, etc. It takes more than that to help someone in my opinion.</p>
<p>Does you son wear a warning label so that the unaware of such a rare affliction can be warned? After all, you have a duty too to take reasonable precautions.</p>
<p>You’re completely off base, and frankly need some education (and should be ashamed of yourself). Depression has a biological basis to it in many cases … you can no more “prevent” depression by having a supportive network / unconditional love, than you can prevent diabetes or arthritis by having a supportive network / unconditional love. For you to suggest that a depressed, suicidal or other troubled child “just didn’t have parents who showed they cared” is ignorant and wrong.</p>
He doesn’t wear a label, but when he eats in a restaurant, we take precautions and always ask the server (for example). His college has done a few dumb things, though–last year, they accepted a promotional deal with the Peanut Council (or whatever it’s called) and had a special meal in which everything included peanuts. While they provided a nut-free meal in one other cafeteria, the dining halls that had the peanut meal had a lot of contamination. That, in my view, was negligent on the college’s part, and they are just lucky that it didn’t have worse consequences than it did.</p>
<p>It’s always difficult to say how much extra care should be taken to protect people who have special vulnerabilities–and it certainly matters how rare those vulnerabilities are. For Cornell, it’s a valid question, in my mind, whether they should have done more sooner to make it difficult for kids to jump off those bridges–especially after kids jumped off the bridges in clusters.</p>
<p>Yes, but on the other hand is a prison-like steel chain link fence over a bridge that has been there forever and countless people walk across every single day or every single year protecting a very small number of people from essentially themselves. When is it protecting all and when it is protecting just a few from self-infliction? And how far do institutions have to go to protect themselves? Those are the thorny questions. </p>
<p>Reasonable is also a word that is dynamite. Unfortunately often “protection” has evolved from making decisions for the good of the majority to making decisions to protect institutions and people from lawsuits. We have an apartment with a small landing at the top of an outdoor fire escape, we’ve seen stupid tenants sitting on the railing. Clearly the possibility exists that someone could pitch off backward and land on the cement below. A reasonable person would know that sitting on the railing is probably not a smart idea. I feel no need to put barbed wire on top of the railing to keep people from doing dumb things. I have faith that our courts can separate out individual stupidity from gross negligence. I’m not equating stupidity with suicidal tendencies but each is in essence an individual decision or action that a reasonable person would not make.</p>
<p>Most people know very little about the facts of the McDonald’s coffee case and once they do, they understand completely why the jury came to the conclusion it did. If you’re trying to come up with an example of a frivolous suit, that is not a good one.</p>
<p>MOM OF 3 GT KIDS, How lucky you are to have 3 great kids. Most of us have kids that go thru some very rough times. Sometimes, in my job, I feel overwhelmed by the need to hospitalize someone who talks of suicide and has a plan. I worry about their future job prospects and their entry to law school. I am never flippant about this.</p>
<p>I do not know the details of this young man’s suicide. Perhaps his parents will learn, thru their law suit, if he was alone, if he was returning from a frat party, what he had shared-in terms of depression–with friends. Maybe they need these details to come to terms with the death of their son. Through a mutual friend, I’ve hear sketchy answers to these questions.</p>
<p>I guess Thai food is out then. The data indicate actual deaths from nut allergy are very very very rare. More likely to be hit by lightning or die in a car accident.
I have read the McD’s suit info and still think it was a nutty decision. You don’t put what you should know is hot coffee between your knees with the lid off to put in cream and sugar. If you want to add stuff go inside and do it safely or at least put it in the cup holder or someplace else not next to your most sensitive skin. Why assume it is not hot and won’t burn you??</p>
Maybe - but the comment I quoted still reminded me of it. I don’t know the details and wasn’t sitting on the jury but on the surface the idea of buying a hot coffee in a drive thru, sticking it between one’s legs (if I recall correctly), driving off with it and then being surprised that the hot liquid might actually spill on the leg comes across as a frivolous basis for a lawsuit. Maybe there was some merit - I don’t know. Regardless, I’m sure there are plenty of examples of frivolous lawsuits including some where they were awarded damages frivolously in the minds of many reasonable people. </p>
<p>This lawsuit against the school for the bridge due to the suicide is frivolous IMO. If one carries this out there’s nothing safe from lawsuits due to the decisions and actions of someone who decides to commit suicide regardless of their motives - bridges, buildings, overpasses, cars, matches, guns, ropes (hangings), medications, plastic bags, walking (in front of a car), water (drowning), and the list goes on. The suicide is unfortunate and if someone could have intervened and stopped it, it’d be great, but I can’t imagine that even the hideous chain link fence over the formerly picturesque bridge would do that much to stop a moderately determined person, especially a smart Cornell student, from climbing up that fence and toppling himself to the other side - or maybe just using a different bridge or other means (given that they know there’s a chain link fence there and would plan something different).</p>
<p>The McDonald’s case is apropos as an example of it taking a lawsuit to change behavior. Mrs. Liebeck only wanted $20k to cover her medical expenses. They offered $800. McDonald’s ignored her even though it had 700 complaints on file of coffee burns. The trial judge called McDonald’s behavior willful, wanton, reckless and callous. The doctor said it was the worse scalding case he had ever seen. The injuries were horrendous. After the suit, McDonald’s lowered the temperature of its coffee from 190 degrees to less than 160 degrees. </p>
<p>She wasn’t driving and the car wasn’t moving, BTW. </p>
<p>“Hot Coffee” is a really good documentary - on HBO.</p>
<p>When I was teaching an online course on law for undergrads, I used the hot coffee case as an example of something that everybody “knows,” but that further research will reveal to be different from what most people think about it. I try always to have this attitude about any kind of article or factual claim (and it’s an attitude for which I, and others, took a lot of flak on the Penn State thread).</p>
<p>This bridge case may be similar. If you found that the officials of Cornell and Ithaca all agreed that better guards were needed, but argued for years over who should pay for them–just as an example–your view of the case might be different.</p>
<p>I have given talks to legal associations on the McDonald’s case and cartera is correct. No one really understands the background and just how awful the McDonald’s witnesses were. One actually said that the plaintiff was “an old lady with thin skin” which is why she was burned. The company did NOT present itself well, and there had been the huge number of prior complaints/reports.<br>
There are many, many examples of ridiculous lawsuits, but that probably is not one of them despite all the press.</p>
<p>There are other cases profiled in the “Hot Coffee” documentary, which is largely about the battle to limit damages by major corporations. It is eye opening.</p>
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