Jury awards $850,000 to family of kid killed during baseball game

[brackis1]

I like the up to date movie options you've presented graverobber.

[doyawanna]

Originally Posted by Leviathan

I see it the opposite way. A lawyer's job is to represent his clients interests to the best of his ability and to the benefit of his client. He is not supposed to be impartial or equally weigh both sides. His living depends on how well he is able to know, interpret, and manipulate the laws that are on the books. When he is successful, his clients are successful.

Jurors, on the other hand, are civil servants responsible for making sure the just and correct verdict is given out. They must weigh both sides and come to a conclusion based upon the evidence presented. They must judge if a law was truly broken, what the damage of breaking that law is, and so on. So in a case where they claim the product has no defects of any kind, yet also decide to be generous with somebody elses money, I personally see it as their failure, not the lawyers.

All of which may be true if the underlying case exists. In this case, a child died. It's a tragic accident in which parents look for some meaning, any meaning. A lawyer follows the hearse to the house and tells them that someone other than God or fate is at fault and that they can make money from this horrible incident. Voila, ignore the people directly involved in the incident since they cant' get money from them. Rather, sue the biggest company involved in a lawsuit-friendly district. The jury finds no fault with the company, but the jury empathizes with the grieving family and awards them money in sympathy. This has nothing to do with the law or justice, just greed.

If a parent feels that the accidental death of a child will cause them to be unable to work, then they should buy life insurance on the kid. It would probably cost them $5 /year for $1M in coverage and they wouldn't have to pay 80% of their award to the lawyer. This kind of ruling and scumbag lawyering does substantive damage to the legitimate work done by so many people in law. I am not a fan of the adversarial system in general, but it is probably the best system available. This kind of case makes a mockery of the process, IMO.

[doyawanna]

As an aside, I think many people feel frustrated with the legal system because of cases like this, where all the lawyers involved see this as part of the legal process: two sides arbitrated their cases in front of a jury. To an outsider, however, the process is not as important as a result of truth, justice, balance, etc. The adversarial system is essentially a system for finding the truth by having advocates for extremes making their point with no interest in wholeness of truth or justice -just to state the extreme of their case as loudly and clearly as possible. The theory is that having two parties doing this will result in the truth being exposed somewhere in the middle. Unfortunately, truth is not a requirement (well, partial truth is, but partial truth is often so misleading it is equivalent to a lie). The system is akin to pundit shows where extreme conservatives exchange ludicrous statements with extreme liberals in a format that in theory is therefore balanced, but in reality never even touches on balanced or reasoned arguments that approach the truth. Because of that, I don't think the process is more valuable than the result, although I openly admit that any system seeking "justice" is flawed, this one no more so than most.

[brackis1]

Originally Posted by doyawanna

All of which may be true if the underlying case exists. In this case, a child died. It's a tragic accident in which parents look for some meaning, any meaning. A lawyer follows the hearse to the house and tells them that someone other than God or fate is at fault and that they can make money from this horrible incident. Voila, ignore the people directly involved in the incident since they cant' get money from them. Rather, sue the biggest company involved in a lawsuit-friendly district. The jury finds no fault with the company, but the jury empathizes with the grieving family and awards them money in sympathy. This has nothing to do with the law or justice, just greed.

If a parent feels that the accidental death of a child will cause them to be unable to work, then they should buy life insurance on the kid. It would probably cost them $5 /year for $1M in coverage and they wouldn't have to pay 80% of their award to the lawyer. This kind of ruling and scumbag lawyering does substantive damage to the legitimate work done by so many people in law. I am not a fan of the adversarial system in general, but it is probably the best system available. This kind of case makes a mockery of the process, IMO.

This isn't how it works. Some lawyer doesn't follow the hearse. The family probably went to a lawyer, brought with them some case or proposition for a case at a free consultation, then the lawyer took it on contingency. The other scenario (unlikely given the payout description) is that they retained this lawyer at some expensive rate to go after the bat company because they were so mad and believed they could win.

[Allcomplete]

The family probably only got about $300,000 from this whole ordeal while the Lawyer got about $550,000. To win this case you must have been one hell of a Lawyer.

[Leviathan]

Originally Posted by doyawanna

As an aside, I think many people feel frustrated with the legal system because of cases like this, where all the lawyers involved see this as part of the legal process: two sides arbitrated their cases in front of a jury. To an outsider, however, the process is not as important as a result of truth, justice, balance, etc. The adversarial system is essentially a system for finding the truth by having advocates for extremes making their point with no interest in wholeness of truth or justice -just to state the extreme of their case as loudly and clearly as possible. The theory is that having two parties doing this will result in the truth being exposed somewhere in the middle. Unfortunately, truth is not a requirement (well, partial truth is, but partial truth is often so misleading it is equivalent to a lie). The system is akin to pundit shows where extreme conservatives exchange ludicrous statements with extreme liberals in a format that in theory is therefore balanced, but in reality never even touches on balanced or reasoned arguments that approach the truth. Because of that, I don't think the process is more valuable than the result, although I openly admit that any system seeking "justice" is flawed, this one no more so than most.

I see what you are saying, and that makes sense. Do you think that a system where a judge decides a verdict would be better? If a reasonable alternative was available, I would be open to it, but I have never really heard one presented.

[Leviathan]

Originally Posted by doyawanna

All of which may be true if the underlying case exists. In this case, a child died. It's a tragic accident in which parents look for some meaning, any meaning. A lawyer follows the hearse to the house and tells them that someone other than God or fate is at fault and that they can make money from this horrible incident. Voila, ignore the people directly involved in the incident since they cant' get money from them. Rather, sue the biggest company involved in a lawsuit-friendly district. The jury finds no fault with the company, but the jury empathizes with the grieving family and awards them money in sympathy. This has nothing to do with the law or justice, just greed.

If a parent feels that the accidental death of a child will cause them to be unable to work, then they should buy life insurance on the kid. It would probably cost them $5 /year for $1M in coverage and they wouldn't have to pay 80% of their award to the lawyer. This kind of ruling and scumbag lawyering does substantive damage to the legitimate work done by so many people in law. I am not a fan of the adversarial system in general, but it is probably the best system available. This kind of case makes a mockery of the process, IMO.

Like Brackis said, I think you are writing your own backstory on this one. Blaming the lawyers is appealing because they seem like scumbags, but the people who are legitmately responsible are the jury and to some extent the judge. Those are the people who are actually supposed to be impartial and responsible for finding the "truth."

[nhbbear]

Originally Posted by brackis1

This isn't how it works. Some lawyer doesn't follow the hearse. The family probably went to a lawyer, brought with them some case or proposition for a case at a free consultation, then the lawyer took it on contingency. The other scenario (unlikely given the payout description) is that they retained this lawyer at some expensive rate to go after the bat company because they were so mad and believed they could win.

Or the lawyers contacted the family, or as seems to be the favored method of the day, advertise class action cases. "Have you ever taken drug x and had any type of health problem-you deserve money"

[zuretal]

I was great pitcher in midde school. I even had a couple of agents talk to me about minor league prospects, ya, before I even went to high school. But they had a rule about no "basket catching" fly balls. And I needed to basket catch a flyball one game or a runner would have scored, so I did. I got suspended for a game ot two and ended up quitting baseball because I was so pissed off about it.

When I read stupid shit like this, it makes me want to write an apology to my old baseball coach.(obviously no basket catching is to reduce the chance players get smacked in the head by the ball, for those not sure what the relevance is).

[RogerB08]

Originally Posted by Allcomplete

The family probably only got about $300,000 from this whole ordeal while the Lawyer got about $550,000. To win this case you must have been one hell of a Lawyer.

Payout to the attorney is typically 1/3 of the judgement amount, so the attroney probably got $280k. A nice amount of money, but after taxes not as much. Also consider that this would have been a major case for this attorney meaning that it would have taken up the bulk of his time, particularly in the run up to the trial, and there for he's not making money working on much else.