Interesting Links for 31-12-2011

[andrewducker]

• Bodega, The Self-Actualized Wine Dog
  (tags: wine dogs satire AynRand funny )
• Dead man sued because his dismembered body parts caused injury.
  (tags: death trains law weird )
• If the "Saw" movies were about grammar pedants...
  (tags: grammar funny )

Comments

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with the plaintiff''s* lawyer. The facts may be unusual but this is fundamentally a fairly straighforward tort claim in negligence, with the only issue being whether the causation of injury was reasonably foreseeable.

Suing the estate of a dead person is perfectly normal; sadly, a lot of cases of injury caused by negligence are fatal for the person who caused it. In most instances it is really the deceased's insurers who are being sued (especially in road accidents) although here it sounds as if the claim is against the estate directly.

If Fred drives negligently and has a fatal accident, and one of his car's wheels flies off and hits Sally, breaking her leg, I think it straightforward that Sally would have a claim against Fred (strictly, Fred's insurers, or the Motor Insurance Bureau if he was uninsured.) It's foreseeable that if your negligence results in a violent event, that event may cause harm to those nearby. The same principle applies in the case described here. Yes, it's rather gruesome that the way in which Mr Joho's negligence and the violent event which resulted meant that injury was caused by a bit of Mr Joho, but frankly the only legal consequence of that might be to add an element for psychiatric injury to the damages.



* I know we call them 'claimants' now over here, but the US still retains the older terminology. A lot of US legalese sounds oddly old-fashioned to English lawyers!

[andrewducker]

Thank you!

I was informed yesterday that apparently the Japanese rail system takes a very legalistic approach to track suicides. Frankly, I'm not surprised.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Make Ur Choice. Live Or Dye.