It’s a good job that nobody has suggested that, then. They should be sued (if not prosecuted) because they deliberately put people in a potentially lethal situation without warning them of the consequences. Furthermore, they were apparently warned by a health professional of the dangers of hyponatraemia, and continued regardless. This strikes me as verging on criminal negligence; doesn’t it you?
They should be sued because they’re fucking liable, and because as a direct result of their actions, three kids now do not have a mother. For you to pretend that people are just following the money is just ridiculous. Can you really not comprehend how blame can attach to the station here?
I googled “contest to drink water” without quotation marks. The second hit was this. I also ran “water drinking contest” without quotation marks and got the same result.
So, I think the information was pretty available even without a bias. Even if someone said, “Hey, has anyone ever had a water drinking contest?” they could have found it out.
To my mind, it is the fact that they set up the situation.
Seems to me that if one sets an activity into motion such as a contest, one has a duty to ensure that the terms of the activity are not inherently unsafe; or to warn those participating about foreseeable dangers.
In this case, the dangers were not those likely to be readily understood by a random person off the street (for evidence see this thread), but were easily discoverable with a little dilligent enquiry; and in fact the contest holders had allegedly been specifically warned about the dangers (but chose to do nothing and hold the contest anyway) - assuming the facts as cited above are true.
They are rightfully subject to liability for not undertaking the enquiry and making adequate warning to the participants. They are under a higher duty to make such an enquiry because a reasonable person, acting reasonably, would do so if organizing such an event; because they had specific warning which they chose to ignore; and because it would not be unreasonable for a person participating in such a contest to assume that the contest organizers had ensured its safety or had warned them of its inherent dangers.
And that’s exactly what’s wrong with our current legal system; idiots like you who don’t think things through.
Let’s get this straight: A couple of DJs put together a stupid contest. They get approval from their boss. Maybe it gets discussed at network level, but I very much doubt it. For that, you want to completely destroy all of the other radio stations owned by that network and put boatloads of people who knew nothing about this stupid contest out of work?
Punish the people who did something wrong. Take it as far up the chain of command as you wish. Fire and criminally charge the station manager, district manager, corporate officers, board of directors (although I think that’s extreme). But why take down everybody else?
There is a difference between criminal charges, regulatory fines, and civil liability.
Generally, for criminal charges, one has to be personally responsible in order to be charged; for regulatory offences, not necessarily (a company may or may not be on the hook for offences committed by company agents and employees, and there are issues concerning Director’s liability); for civil liability, the issue is whether the employer should be liable in damages for the acts of the employee on the basis of so-called “vicarious liability”.
The latter doctrine is imposed because a company of necessity acts through employees; if the employees alone were liable for negligence, the harmed person’s entitlement to damages may be illusory - as an employee is unlikely to be able to pay him or herself. This would create all sorts of unfairness, and opportunity for companies to escape liability, etc.
The issue brought up by the previous poster is really the use of punitive damages (“100s of millions … put them out of business”). This is indeed a serious concern. The use of punitives severs the relationship of actual harm done to the quantum of damages - IMHO puts too much emphasis on deterrence and results in unfair “windfall” awards. Plus it really ought to be used, if at all, only in circumstances where the person hit with punitives has acted with some truly abomitable disregard for others warranting extra punishment from the court - there is nothing so far to indicate this is the case here.
<<Is it possible to drink too much water? Several comedians found it necessary to comment: Sure, you could drown! But the fact is, in extreme circumstances too much water can kill you, even if all you do is drink it. Kelly Barrett, a 43-year-old pediatric dentist from Littleton, Colorado, died of a condition known as hyponatremia after drinking too much water during the 1998 Chicago marathon. Hyponatremia, AKA water intoxication, occurs when the body’s salt and water levels get dangerously out of balance, leading to swelling of the brain and leakage of fluid into the lungs. It can occur when athletes, hikers, etc., sweat heavily, losing both salt and water, but replace only water. Diagnostic signs: dizziness, disorientation, headaches, extreme fatigue, death. Prevention: salty snacks and sports drinks. So pass the taco chips and Gatorade, bubba, and let’s get healthy. >>
My thoughts exactly, though I wouldn’t have called him an idiot. He’s angry, which is understandable, and probably hasn’t thought the whole thing through.
I can see why you’re confused, but I was responding to the whole sentence (bolding mine):
People have indeed advocated suing the radio station into oblivion, but not “just because they … have Big Buck$”, but for the rather more understandable reason that they killed someone through negligence and stupidity. My point was that no-one said “hey, those guys are rich; sue them!” as LE was bizarrely claiming.
I personally think that their richness or otherwise is irrelevant, and that they should pay exactly the amount required to compensate the children for the loss of their mother, whatever that may be.
It would make a big difference to me if the woman entered the contest knowing the risks. If she signed a waiver saying something like “I know this could be dangerous to my health, up to and including death and I’m ok with that” then she was properly informed. If a company wants to set up a dangerous stunt (like Fear Factor or whatever) they have a responsibility to look into all possible risks and inform the participants about those risks. After that, I would hold the participants as responsible for their own actions and the results. I realize that maybe both parties were just ignorant, but I do think that the party that sets up the contest is more responsible to make sure that: all reasonable precautions are taken, that all contestants are fully informed, and that medical help is nearby if it is needed.
I did know that drinking too much water could kill you, but honestly, in a set up like this I would not have assume that could happen. I have only heard of it happening in marathons and I would have thought here that your bladder would give out before that dangerous threshold was reached. Heck, I have had to drink a lot of water before getting ultrasounds when I was pregnant, and my bladder was in serious pain and over full just from that, I never would have thought someone could hold it long enough to die. I thought it only happened to athletes because they were sweating it out.
To me the radio station has more responsibility here and should be punished. They did not disclose the risks involved (that I know of, at least the nurse calling in should have been a clue!). Even having a general disclaimer saying “we are not responsible for anything bad happening to you blah blah” is not enough for me, to be informed properly the contestants should have been told “If you drink too much water this condition could happen and you could die.” To me it is more necessary to research a contest like this and inform people than something obvious, like the grenade scenario. I would say 99% of people know that grenades could equal death, but maybe, say, 50% know that too much water could equal death. And even those, like me, might not realize that it could happen here.
The DJ’s are partly responsible, but so are their employers. Surely they are not given free reign to do any contest they want, so someone higher up had to approve it. I don’t think it is a case of malice or intention, I really do believe that they never thought the contestants were in real danger, but negligence (I am speaking generally, not legally as I have no knowledge of that.)
Again, brain damage, so sorry but English composition doesn’t work that way. When you address someone, particularly to demand that I “just come out and call them Hitler-juniors” or whatever your coy little phrase was, and then go on to complain about something, these thoughts are thematically connected, and its not a paragraph that magically makes them completely distinct: that break has to be spelled out or directed at another party.
What, you’ve never written more than one paragraph directed at any single person before? You should try it.
Uh huh. Say, are you planning on addressing any of the issues raised in this thread (the woman’s responsibility v. the radio stations, if lawsuits should be filed) or are you content just to call me stupid and call it a day?
In my estimation:
The radio station was negligent in not knowing the full danger of the action it asked people to undertake on its behalf*: the station in general for not doing adequate research, in that almost any research would have been enough to quash the idea, and the DJs personally for the calling-nurse incident. I think it crosses into gross negligence, but a court would have to decide.
The woman’s reasonability in the matter consists of not knowing of water intoxication, which is not common knowledge, and wrongfully assuming a radio station would not conduct a contest that could result in her death. These factors do not absolve the station of its negligent actions.
Any result of a lawsuit should include barring the station from holding any contests of any kind for some number of years.
*: Contests like these are primarily for the station’s benefit, with the relatively small prize for the contestant being a financial cost incurred by the station in its endeavor for better ratings.
If you weren’t so stupid, you’d have noticed that I, well, started the thread itself, and have been discussing those things. Just not with people too stupid to read.
Since I’ve worked for a network of radio stations, designing stunts like this, or similar, I just want to say that it was standard of practice to check if there was any way anyone could come to harm. A lot of times, the D.J.'s would come up with really stupid stunts, which we had to stop them from putting on the air. And this in a country where litigation is a rare thing. In the U.S. where people seem to sue each other for being cut off in traffic, it should be corporate policy to check all possible outcomes of contests like this.
The stupidty of those involved is monumental. And the responsible person(s) need to feel some pain.
You’re probably right. I reacted that way because it infuriates me when people simply don’t get the concept of punitive damages being about punishing people who had something to do with it, as opposed to being about giving plaintiffs large amounts of other people’s money.
When a huge judgement is won against a corporation, what can happen?
The business goes bankrupt and hundreds (or thousands) of innocent people lose their jobs, or
The business has to raise their prices to come up with the money to pay the judgement and thousands (or millions) of innocent people have to pay more for the products or services, or
The company “tightens their belts” and hundreds (or thousands) of innocent employees don’t get raises, or
The stock value plummets and thousands (or millions) of innocent investors and/or pensioners lose piles of money, or
The people responsible get fired (the only good and proper outcome)
How do any of these situations address idiot DJs and dangerous contests?
I am all for punishing the people directly involved, but punishing a corporate entity simply makes no sense. People like DanBlather don’t understand that (for example) if a jury grants a hundred-million-dollar award against an insurance company, it’s the insurance company’s customers and shareholders that get screwed, not the executives responsible for the action that prompted the lawsuit.
Oy. This is going to turn into one of those five page cluster-fucks where we end up quibbling over the definition of “stupid” isn’t it. Look, I got shit to do. My point is simple: The situation is terrible and the people responsible need to be punished/sued, but inflammatory language such as in your OP, title, and every post you have made in this thread isn’t helping the matter.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to have my helmet’s straps adjusted. Then its’ sloppy joe night. Don’t you love sloppy joes?
Punishing the corporation, however, is the only way to encourage corporations from having corporate wide policy, process, governance and controls around anything. If corporations can just “pass the buck” and let the individual employee hang, than they won’t take reasonable steps. Imagine an airline without maintenence controls “well, the mechanics are just responsible for making sure it gets done.” Imagine a CPA firm that allowed individual auditors to approve audits without any guidelines. Corporate accountability is the only way we can ensure corporations as a whole act responsibly, and don’t allow individuals to act irresponsibly.
Does that mean this corporation should be put out of business. No. But if they are successfully sued, the size of the judgement should be large enough to discourage like behavior by others.
If the business could raise their prices, they should have done so already. You won’t pay more for a service/product just because the company offering it needs more for it, so saying that the company needs more for it so they will increase their prices is incorrect.