| 11th April 1999. Los Angeles Courthouse. The
case: A Vernandez vs Blue Street farms. The
charge: Malpractice and the breaking of food
safety regulations. The Judge's summary: Blue
Street farms were charged with marketing
hazardous foods and unclear labelling by selling
eggs raw. Mr A Vernandez, possibly the world's
stupidest (or cleverest) man, claimed that
because there was no labelling on the box to
indicate the necessity to cook them or even to
remove the shell, by him biting into a raw egg
and drinking the contents the farm could be
blamed for the cuts in his mouth and subsequent
vomiting. The verdict: guilty. Blue Street farms
were forced to pay $2000 in compensation, plus Mr
Vernandez's legal costs.
So what? My point is that this is not an isolated
incident. All over the USA there are ridiculous
legal suits being brought against companies by
people with the obvious IQ of a napkin. And the
major problem is that this phenomenon is
spreading to Britain. You may have noticed the
recent surge in the number of adverts for
compensation claim companies with inventive,
catchy names like 'The Claims Company'. "So
what's wrong with that?" I hear you say. In
theory, nothing. But reality is not theory; it is
a very different creature. In the land of theory,
an elderly person tripping on the pavement and
getting hurt has a 'no risk' way of suing the
local authority for negligence, thus somewhat
comforting the blow. But back in the real world,
there are two major problems. Firstly, nearly all
these companies refuse to take up cases of anyone
older than 60 (except in exceptional
circumstances), as chances are the defence will
blame the accident on the old person being frail
and clumsy anyway. Secondly, the 'No win, no fee'
policy that these companies are so proud of means
that should you win the case, up to 50% of the
money awarded will be taken by the 'expert team
of solicitors' to make up for the losses they've
made on bodged cases.
In my opinion, this sudden rise in the number of
insane prosecution firms can, and will, lead to a
culture of blame; if someone falls over, they
have been clumsy. Get up and stop moaning about
it. If someone is injured (or worse) then it's
tragic, but simply tough luck. There is no need
to sue left right and centre in an effort to
place blame on someone; accidents happen, and
people just have to get over it. By all means,
where someone has genuinely been negligent, they
should pay, but often the case is that the
'victims' are just spongers seeking an easy
source of cash. Terrible.
Michael
Britland
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