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Maybe-Mathematical Musings

@jadagul / jadagul.tumblr.com

I math, I dance, I argue weird philosophy on the internet.
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tanadrin

laser tag places are always like “no running, no laying down, no touching, waah waah we can’t afford the liability insurance.” boring. where do i go for the  underground full-contact laser tag where i can tackle people from on top of the crates.

where can i get a melee kill

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tehamelie

I’m gonna go with “someplace not in the US.” That’s the country of frivolous lawsuits.

this is your regular reminder that the US is not the country of frivolous lawsuits, and the idea that it is is 90s era conservative propaganda toward capping punitive damages so that malicious actors can get away with bad behavior due to a weak regulatory enforcement regime (the other thing conservatives in the 90s pushed hard). the US long ago made a decision that a lot of regulatory enforcement would come not from agencies proactively enforcing rules but from creating specific causes of action through legislation so that individuals could sue to protect their own rights. fine as far as it goes, and maybe appealing to those with a libertarian streak, but even that was too much for conservatives who oppose any and all regulatory framework regardless of how it was managed.

and it worked–by capping punitive damages under the justification that there were people running around getting rich filing frivolous lawsuits (often by lying about cases of serious harm caused by firms acting in genuinely negligent ways, like in Liebeck v McDonalds), weak regulatory regimes in areas like environmental law and consumer safety were hollowed out further. the real danger of frivolous lawsuits never came from consumers suing over harm they suffered, it always came from people with deep pockets using lawsuits to silence people who challenged them. some states have passed anti-SLAPP legislation to curb such abuses of the legal system, but there’s still no federal anti-SLAPP statute, and there really should be.

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jadagul

You know, no matter how many times people bring this up (and no matter how horrific Liebeck’s injuries were, which it seems like they were), I just can’t see a good argument for holding McDonald’s liable for the injuries.

Actually I have now discovered one thing which I feel like doesn't come up a lot, but which does persuade me at least somewhat, which is that they'd had hundreds of reports of burns. That might rise to a "dangerous product" standard.

But I do feel like, if market research says people prefer the coffee to be served hotter even if they "shouldn't", that's something that we should be offering to them.

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reblogged
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tanadrin

laser tag places are always like “no running, no laying down, no touching, waah waah we can’t afford the liability insurance.” boring. where do i go for the  underground full-contact laser tag where i can tackle people from on top of the crates.

where can i get a melee kill

Avatar
tehamelie

I’m gonna go with “someplace not in the US.” That’s the country of frivolous lawsuits.

this is your regular reminder that the US is not the country of frivolous lawsuits, and the idea that it is is 90s era conservative propaganda toward capping punitive damages so that malicious actors can get away with bad behavior due to a weak regulatory enforcement regime (the other thing conservatives in the 90s pushed hard). the US long ago made a decision that a lot of regulatory enforcement would come not from agencies proactively enforcing rules but from creating specific causes of action through legislation so that individuals could sue to protect their own rights. fine as far as it goes, and maybe appealing to those with a libertarian streak, but even that was too much for conservatives who oppose any and all regulatory framework regardless of how it was managed.

and it worked–by capping punitive damages under the justification that there were people running around getting rich filing frivolous lawsuits (often by lying about cases of serious harm caused by firms acting in genuinely negligent ways, like in Liebeck v McDonalds), weak regulatory regimes in areas like environmental law and consumer safety were hollowed out further. the real danger of frivolous lawsuits never came from consumers suing over harm they suffered, it always came from people with deep pockets using lawsuits to silence people who challenged them. some states have passed anti-SLAPP legislation to curb such abuses of the legal system, but there’s still no federal anti-SLAPP statute, and there really should be.

Avatar
jadagul

You know, no matter how many times people bring this up (and no matter how horrific Liebeck's injuries were, which it seems like they were), I just can't see a good argument for holding McDonald's liable for the injuries.

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