What does this provision mean? They can't foreclose on the lien, or they can't even collect when the person chooses to sell his house?
Plainly, if it's, say, a 30,000 dollar lien and a 500,000 dollar house, if they have to pay the lien when they sell, they'll still sell.
What about after death? If someone dies with an unpaid judgment, is his estate obliged to pay it? One of the few things I remember from a NY law school is about the commmon line in wills, "I direct my executor to pay all my debts". The professor said that that's required whether you say it or not, but I don't remember about unpaid judgments. I would think so.
Very little recourse. If the suit is clearly baseless, you might ask the judge for sanctions and payment of your attorney fees. But if there's *any* reasonable basis for suing, such an effort will fail.
Many people have not read up on it, I grant you, but as it happens I have. There were some faults on both sides, and it is a gross oversimplification to portray the plaintiff as an innocent victim. I don't want to get into whether the verdict was appropriate or not -- that's way off topic for this newsgroup.
Not so. The evidence showed that McD was selling its coffee at 10 or actually I think it was 20 degrees hotter than the competition.
They did this on purpose so that it would stay hot longer.
Since then, McD has lowered the temp of its coffee, so we can't verify this directly now.
Plus they were selling it at this temp through the drive-thru window, and it's foreseeable and probably known, and probably known by mcd that many customers hold the coffee in their lap. (I"m saying probably. I don't know what proof was offerred or what the jury decided on that. They might have concluded that other companies knew, or that poeople who themselves bought coffee at drive-thrus worked for mcd, and mcd "should have" known.)
She had second degree burns over much of her legs etc. and the competition's coffee would not have done that.
She admitted she spilled it. It's obvious anyhow.
The punitive part of the verdict, which as great as the injury was, was still most of the verdict, was large because McDonalds is large. If it was a guy who owned one restaurant and netted 50,000 dollars a year, a 5, 3, maybe even 1 thousand dollar punitive amount might have been considered by the jury enough to punish him, to make him hurt.
In this case, they took the profit that McDonalds made on coffee alone, for only one day, and I think they took only a portion of that, and that was the punitive amount. Anything less would have been petty change to a company as big as McDonalds. The amount was decresed a lot on appeal, and I don't know what fraction of the coffee amount they ended up with.
This is the way punitive damages have worked for I believe more than
I think this view arose when dealing with the 30 percent or more of people who have very little in the way of assets, and don't make much money either. With those, they settle for the insurance amount, which I guess almost every defendant and insurance company is willing to do when the damages are really higher than that, even a little bit.
You can't squeeze blood from a turnip. But when dealing with the maybe as much as 70 percent of respondants who aren't turnips, plaintiffs use the rules you give below.
"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote in news:SWLqi.11738$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr13.news.prodigy.net:
Nobody "likes" their coffee at over 180 degrees F. It's undrinkable at that temperature. And dangerous.
Certainly nobody intentionally "puts it in their crotch" at any time. The questions was whether the hot coffee constituted a danger for which McDonald's was responsible.
The case was "settled" in court. Ignornant people's unmovable opinions have no bearing on whether the case was a bad decision. It wasn't, in the sense that it comports with the current state of liability law.
Richard J Kinch wrote in news:Xns997B98B5D28C2someconundrum@216.196.97.131:
Do you have a reading problem? Or is it a more serious cognitive deficiency? The future is unknown (at least to mere mortals), and we cannot precisely prepare for all eventualities. That does not mean we have no moral and legal obligation to make reasonable preparations. And nowhere do I maintain otherwise.
A confidence interval is a statistical measure of the reliablity of an estimate. I'm pretty sure that's not what you mean. People make judgments based on costs and perceived risks.
Congratulations. You've just won an argument with yourself. You're not having this argument with me, anyway.
Nobody claims a right to harm others. Nobody claims that you shouldn't obey your state's laws to carry insurance to compensate victims of your negligence. The question is how much you should pay to cover that unknown. Your net worth is certainly relevant to how much insurance you can afford. This seems blazingly obvious to me.
Well, then I guess it's a good idea I'm not arguing that, eh?
The OP was considering upping his coverage to the amount of the worth of his house, $800K. This is forty times my state's minimum. Not enough for you?
Thanks for sharing. Now answer my question: How much coverage should the OP buy?
To be fair, they did it to you. Your mother was past caring.
I'm sorry for your loss even if Ultraman isn't. But his advice isn't necessarily wrong. If the funeral home violated the law or their licensing regulations, talk to the authorities; if they damaged you through their negligence, take them to court. Bad mouthing them in public might put you in a bad position. If the insurance company thought that your speech was deliberate slander, then their policy might not cover you.
For the last 22 years, I have had auto and home insurance with the same ins. company. I also pay extra to have an umbrella policy for $1,000,000 that covers both of those policies. I don't have flood insurance and don't need it, since I am 400 feet above sea level and nowhere close is anything higher. If I get a flood out, someone better be building an ark ( I figure I'll be safe even if the polar ice caps melted). :-)
dpb wrote in news:f8g81b$g9t$ snipped-for-privacy@aioe.org:
This is incorrect. The coffee was *kept* at that temperature, presumably because that gave the longest drive-time for drinkably hot coffee.
The victim (or "idiot" as you prefer to call her) did own up to spilling the coffee. That's why the jury found her to be 20% at fault. Spilling coffee might be stupidity (or mere clumsiness), but it shouldn't result in third degree burns. Especially when McDonald's knew about the danger, and did nothing to avoid the problemm or even warn customers.
Before you go off on a rant about how everyone knows that hot coffee burns, let me point out that I've spilled hot coffee on myself several times. I've never required reconstructive surgery.
That's not the same thing as owning up to the stupidity of the action and living with the consequences of her poor decision...
So, who at MickeyD's spilled it on her? She ordered coffee, she got coffee. She sat it in an inappropriate place and did something stupid (drove) afterwards.
Still no case anywhere there I can see other than negligence and (mostly) stupidity on the part of the driver/customer...
She didn't just "spill" it, she sat the damn cup between her legs and tried to drive with it there...how far from "stupid" do you have to be to not qualify?
Have you tried her experiment? I suspect "location, location, location" had something to do with it.
I'll stand by my assessment of it was a _STUPID_ place to set a hot cup of coffee and even stupider to try to drive off from the window with it there...
dpb wrote in news:f8gf7v$55s$ snipped-for-privacy@aioe.org:
I'm not sure that "owning up to stupidity" has a legal meaning. She admitted to her part in court.
Drinking coffee while driving is a commonplace action, one that McDonald's relies on to sell coffee at their drive-throughs.
It's called contributory negligence. Even if one party is partly to blame (in this case a woman handling a coffee cup clumsily), the other party may also be to blame (in this case McDonald's knowingly selling a product dangerous enough to cause third-degree burns). This accident was not an isolated incident.
dpb wrote in news:f8gfht$635$ snipped-for-privacy@aioe.org:
One expects "HOT" beverages to hurt when spilled on onself; one doesn't expect "HOT" to mean third degree burns within seconds. At least, I don't.
So she shouldn't have done that (and the jury said so). That doesn't relieve McDonald's from liability for selling a beverage that's seriously dangerous. They should have forseen that such events would happen, mainly because similar events *did* happen, some not involving any "stupidity."
OK, fine. You're going to make me 'fess up to being stupid and clumsy and spilling coffee in my lap. Happy, now? No, I didn't hold a styrofoam cup between my thighs, but I didn't need reconstructive surgery on my groin either.
And yet it probably happens dozens of times a day at McDonald's drive- throughs. And McDonald's should have known that. Actually, testimony showed that they *did* know that.
And if the woman was judged 20% liable, her award was decreased by
20%, including even the medical costs and lost income and the punitive and all that.
I forgot about that. Mcd had had I think it was over a hundred complaints of burns caused by their coffee. They probably had had lawsuits that spelled out the cause and effect and their liability. But they didn't change their temperature or anything else. I'm sure they had paid off on most of them, and they considered it the cost of doing business, like the cost of the paper cup.
That's another reason, or the main reason, why punitive damages have to be so high with a large company, so they won't just consider it the cost of doing business, and continue.
AIUI, the actions of some of those who sold vicodin, of the ones who knew it it could kill people, could have supported a conviction for
2nd degree murder. But all they had to do was pay a fine, maybe even a large fine, but not as large as the profits they made.
As of yesterday, some of the food recalled for botulism is still on the shelves in stores. Some of the cans have exploded, but some won't cause trouble until someone eats the stuff.
The only way one can stop some people is by punishing them or making them afraid of punishment like others got.
IIRC, in the McD's case there was also testimony that at 190 degrees F, McD's could water down the coffee and get an extra 6 - 8 cups more out of every pound as compared to, say Dunkin Donuts coffee, because at the high heat McD's used, there was much more coffee "aroma". In other words, McDs was saving money on ground coffee by serving the extra hot liquid, and refused to make changes despite the prior incidents because McD s was trying to make extra profits on the coffee.
Shades of the Ford Pinto or the Chevy / GM pick up trucks with the side saddle gas tanks.
You, sir, are correct. It needs to be brewed at 180-190 to be brewed properly, and not leach out the bitter acids. But then it needs to be cooled to be drunk.
I pour water from a bubbling tea kettle through a Melitta paper filter to make my one mug of coffee a day. That has to be around 200. But I have a lot of cold creamer and my five spoons of sugar in the cup, and when the mug is full, I have to put it back into the microwave for twenty seconds.
Overheated coffee is bitter as all get out, but some people like it that way.
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