(ahem) it’s a legume, not a bean. Not the same thing. However, you are correct in saying that a peanut is not a nut.
Live a Lush Life
Da Chef
Chef Troy Saidth:
Yes I live just down Marsh (Betty Jane Lane- road behind Albertsons). You are right that there’s a stoplight, but Marsh (actually Lemmon there) passes over Northwest Highway. The access ramp to the northbound Marsh Lane (right by the Target, and the now-gone Comic book store) has a stop sign installed.
Dogs love cheese
I got a package of christmas lights once which read “for outdoor use only”. Where else would you use them, they’re christmas lights.
My father recently purchased a chainsaw and the warning label read “do not attempt to stop with hands.” I was begining to wonder if anbody had acually tried it.
Technical Note On Restaurant Coffee Makers:
My father used to be an employee of the Bunn Company, a leading manufacturer of coffee makers for the restaurant trade. These differ markedly from the home coffee makers in many ways, including materials (copper & stainless steel guts vs. plastic innards at home)& production capacity (cafeteria models could make hundreds of cups in mere minutes).
The large scale cafeteria/fast food coffee makers have a STERILIZING FUNCTION. This makes it easier to clean these models by forcing VERY HOT WATER & STEAM through the system to clean it. The damn things look like steam engines or huge boilers (well, I guess they are). Improper use of the sterilizing function can produce severe burns & is very dangerous.
This may explain plenty, even if it is not mentioned in the court papers or news sites.
personal note: In the early 70’s, we were the first family around to own a coffee maker, rather than use a percolator. It was a small restaurant model, resembling current coffee makers. But it had copper guts, & was decorated with copper plating on the outside. All metal, you know. It made Mom the envy of the neighborhood, & our kitchen became the local cafe; with all the neighbors dropping by all the time for a cup & a chat. We were sure popular.
Good coffee, too.
Is an appreciation of beauty a function of the human soul?
Cory wrote:
Well, if you were an apartment dweller without a balcony, you might want to hang them inside around the window. But I suspect a lot of people would put them on the tree. After all, not too many people these days have outdoor lights, but most people still put up a tree.
Regarding: “IIRC, and this has all the hallmarks of an UL, someone did do just that (for some other reason, but did enter a suit against God). The judge did a beautiful sidestep. He ruled that (a) his court did not have jurisdiction over God, and (b) even if jurisdiction could be established, he had no way to enforce his decrees as against God.”
It is possible that occurred, but I can say with certainty that that reasoning was used to dismiss a lawsuit a farmer brought against Satan for ruining his crops. This appeared in our Civil Procedure casebook in law school. If I recall correctly, it was in Pennsylvania in the early 1800’s.
In my opinion, most of this stuff started because of lawyers and greedy people. Someone discovered how easy it is to sue a store or product maker and get money from them for their own idiocy. Juries of peers, often sympathize with the person, seeing the manufacturer as a cold, mega-company with plenty of money, and award lots of bucks.
Lawyers, finding this a great source of income with little work, started encouraging people to sue. Years ago, lawyers would decline frivolous suites because they were stupid, but new laws and twists of logic mean that the lawyer will get paid whether he wins or not and that the major company CAN be found liable for the consumer stupidity.
Look at the Mc Donald’s coffee case. Then there was the enormously fat lady who sued a theater for not having extra large seats that she could sit in. There was a wheelchair bound handicapped guy who also sued a theater for not having a handicapped sitting area and not allowing him to sit in his own chair in the aisle.
Examples: Pinneke v. Preisser, 623 F.2d 546 (8th Cir. 1980). Plaintiff successfully sued the state for refusing to pay for his sex change operation.
A surfer recently sued another surfer for “taking his wave.” The case was ultimately dismissed because they were unable to put a price on “pain and suffering” endured by watching someone ride the wave that was “intended for you.”
A bank discovered that millions of dollars deposited in an account were in fact embezzled funds. The bank transferred the funds back to the lawful owner and got sued! The embezzler’s alleged accomplice filed a lawsuit against the bank for returning the money, and asked for $20 million in damages. The bank won in court, but only after spending over $20,000 in legal fees.
To protect themselves, manufacturers have had to act like people who buy their products have the mental level of 3 year olds because given ANY chance, a lawyer somewhere will bring an idiot client into court to sue for his or her own actions. Even if the case is thrown out of court, the lawyer gets paid and the company has to put out cash for legal fees.
Face it, some people just lack common sense. These are the type who would toss a stick of dynamight into a fire because there was no printed warning on it NOT to throw it in a fire.
I figure they are kind of like the girl, who seriously asked me once if Oriental girls snatches were REALLY horizontal instead of vertical like White woman’s are. She’s an adult also. It is for people like her that the little packs of peanuts on airlines have written across them : OPEN PACKET. REMOVE NUTS. EAT NUTS.
Mark
“Think of it as Evolution in action.”
Do you have cites for any of these cases aside from Pinneke v. Preisser, Mark? No? Huh. Let’s see:
Since it’s been rehashed now in many threads, please tell us everything you know about the (cue scary music) McDonald’s Coffee Case. I bet you have almost every fact wrong, but we’ll see.
Cite, please?
This sounds like a pretty clear ADA violation to me. Nearly every theater I’ve been in has an area for wheelchair-bound patrons.
Yes, Pinneke successfully argued that sex reassignment surgery was a medical necessity (and let’s not even get into the enormous amount of casework on transgender issues), and the court agreed, stating that 1) Iowa’s denial [of medical benefits for SRS] constituted an arbitrary denial of benefits based solely on diagnosis, type of illness or condition, and (2) Iowa’s policy of denying Medicaid benefits for sex reassignment surgery was not consistent with the objectives of the Medicaid statute. There are a whole slew of cases at all levels affirming that SRS is medically necessary and not merely cosmetic, and that denial of benefits for it is arbitrary and discriminatory, although there are certainly cases deciding the other way as well.
“Come on, Phonics Monkey–drum!”
And how about some cites for the “new laws” that allow lawyers to get paid whether they win or lose. I’ve never heard of a personal injury case being taken on an hourly basis, only based on a contingency fee. The client may have to pay the costs of litigation but the lawyer won’t get his fee per se unless the case settles or he wins at trial.
This morning I reached for my box of Wheaties, and at the top of the box, by the flaps you use to open it, there was a general notice to allergy sufferers that they should read the ingredients list.
D’oh!
MARK – A lawyer in private practice can earn a fee one of two ways: You can charge an hourly rate (plus expenses) for the time you spend, regardless of the out-come of the case, or you can charge a contingency fee, allowing you to recover a percentage (up to one-third, in my state) of the amount of money, if any, eventually awarded or recovered. The former is the way everyone else in the entire world who offers a service gets paid; the latter is more of a crap shoot because the lawyer makes nothing if he or she loses, but the pay-off may be handsome if he or she wins. Most people with personal injury cases cannot afford the expenses incurred in taking such a case to trial, so the lawyer will agree to take the case on contingency and front the costs. So if the lawyer really wants to ensure that he or she will be paid regardless of whether he or she wins or loses, then he or she will choose to be paid by the hour. Under a contingency fee arrangement, the risk is all on the lawyer – no recovery, no fee, as they say in the ads. Of course, the third way to earn a living is to become a government lawyer and be paid peanuts and cheesy-poofs.
If someone wanted to erect a wooden replica of the Eiffel Tower on their roof, they could find a carpenter to shrug and do the work. If someone wanted to install their faucets upside down so turning the handle made the water spray to the ceiling, they could find a plumber to shrug and do the work. Is the idiocy of the client attributable to the plumber or the carpenter? If not, why is the idiocy of the legal customer always attributed to the greed of a lawyer. As a lawyer, I have an obligation to honestly evaluate a case and advise my client of the chances of making a recovery. If a lawyer frankly tells a client his case is ten pounds of fertilizer in a five pound bag, but the client still wants to pursue it, then the lawyer may choose to do so if he or she wants. I wouldn’t want to, but then I’m not out trying to make a living in private practice.
Jodih wrote
Such is the popular belief, but I can think of a bunch of exceptions: A builder will not be paid if the building is structurally unsound, for example. But an even better example is a repairman of almost any type, such as a car mechanic or computer technician – If my device is broken, and he is unable to fix it, I do not pay his hourly fee, although the travel expense for the housecall might apply.
But even exceptions have exceptions, as physicians are repairmen who do get paid whether they fix the problem or not.
Puffington? thank you 
Cartooniverse
"If you want to kiss the sky, you’d better learn how to kneel :
The McDonald’s coffee case (in New Mexico, I recall) is often trotted out as an example of justice run amok.
A few things that are not mentioned:
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Some folks here have already discussed some of the obvious problems McDonalds had in defending themselves. Yes, the plaintiff wasn’t very bright for putting the cup between her legs, but she did suffer third degree burns. Selling coffee that is hot enough to cause those kind of burns is wilful and wanton conduct, and the jury agreed. McDonalds had received hundreds of complaints. Despite notions that a few hundred complaints involving the millions of cups of coffee served, realize that you can bet that for every actualized complaint, there are probably at least 1000 other incidents left unreported.
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If you’ve read anything about the course of the trial, you will see that McDonald’s dug its own grave. They took the tack that the plaintiff was an idiot for putting the coffee between her legs. She was an elderly woman, who was well educated and appeared very believable and sympathetic on the stand. McDonalds also chided her for wearing clothes that absorbed the coffee, which amplified the burn damages. So she should have chosen a less absorbant pair of pants? Finally, they told the jury that they should take her age into account, because older people don’t heal as well (or arguments in that vein). There were folks on the jury who were over 40 who objected to that reasoning. McDonalds completely misread the attitudes of the jury.
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the huge verdict was a result of a simple argument made by plaintiff’s counsel. He urged the jury to award punitive damages equal to one dollar for every cup of coffee McDonalds sells every day, over a period of time (was it 30 days? I don’t specifically recall). The jury picked up on that, and did a simple computation that resulted in teh obscenely large award. But it had a relationship to reality and was really a drop in the bucket as far as McDonald’s coffee revenue was concerned. The jury also factored into this equation the plaintiff’s comparative negligence for driving with hot coffee between her legs. Thus, the punitive damage award had some offset in it as it was awarded.
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The verdict was reduced on appeal. Substantially reduced! I don’t remember by how much, but I recall it was by millions of dollars.
I actually see the McDonalds case as an example where justice was served; on balance, McDonalds should be responsible to serve coffee that is not so hot as to severely burn people who absent mindedly try and consume it while driving - - something most of you who drink coffee have at least tried to do sometime. And if most of us have tried to do it, its not a totally unreasonable thing to do, which is the basic standard for negligent behavior.
SoxFan59
“Its fiction, but all the facts are true!”
Here’s a few frivilous cases:
GORDON v. SECRETARY OF STATE OF NEW JERSEY, 469 F.Supp. 1026 (D. N.J. 1978).
(Man sues New Jersey’s Secretary of State for the right to be President of the United States instead of Jimmy Carter-
COLLINS v. HENMAN, 676 F.Supp. 175 (S.D.Ill. 1987).
(Prisoner is not Raymond Collins, but the Prophet Muhammad who was convicted under the wrong name by Christians and was mistakenly sent to jail for 175 years by the “Masonic Regime” that now holds him hostage)
SIERRA CLUB v. MORTON, 405 U.S. 727 (1972) [ Douglas, J., dissenting, at 741.]
(United States Supreme Court Justice argues that valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, and air, should be legal persons so they can sue in federal court to protect themselves)
Mark
“Think of it as Evolution in action.”
MARK–what is your point? In Collins, the issue was whether the prisoner had standing to bring a habeas corpus action in federal court. His claim that he was Muhammed was irrelevant to the question, because, as the court correctly noted, his religious beliefs in no way alter his legal rights. The petition was frivolous because he hadn’t yet exhausted his state remedies, not because he thought he was Muhammed. The court noted that “it is not the place of a federal court to decide which is the true faith or who is a true prophet.” Duh.
With regard to the Sierra Club case, I suppose your characterization is correct. However, I think you missed the bigger point that Justice Douglas was attempting to make, which was that, obviously, a river, lake, stream, tree, etc. cannot sue to prevent harm to itself. Therefore, he advocated for a rule that would allow people to commence environmental litigation on behalf of such objects, the same way litigation can be commenced on behalf of inanimate objects such as corporations or ships. I disagree that advocating such a position is “frivolous.”
Finally, the Gordon complaint was dismissed on the court’s own initiative as frivolous.
So, again, what is your point? I certainly agree that plenty of “frivolous” lawsuits are filed but those that are truly frivolous get weeded out. As for the rest, the law does consider the person’s idiocy when deciding whether they should be compensated and if so, what they’re entitled to. In fact, many states bar plaintiffs from receiving anything if the fact-finder determines that the plaintiff was more than 50% responsible for his or her injuries.
I’ve always liked the “reasonable man” doctrine for circumstances like this. I’m not a lawyer, but as I understand it, it goes something like this: if a layman equipped with a modicum of common sense and knowledge of how the world works were to do what the plaintiff attempted to do, would he or she have suffered the injury that the plaintiff complains of? If despite the attached warning and blade guard, I manage to hold my fingers in the path of my circular saw and amputate them, I have not exercised the caution that a reasonable man might. On the other hand, if the company sells a circular saw by mail order with no warning label and no blade guard, and a ten-year-old orders it (with no proof of age required), uses it, and amputates his fingers, that kid (through his parents and their lawyer) has definitely got a case.
KEEVES – The difference, of course, is that a lawyer is generally hired for his or her services – for trying to win – not for a guaranteed result. You hire a repairman to fix your sink; he doesn’t fix it, you don’t pay him – that’s the deal you make. But if fixing the sink was by no means a sure thing, and was largely based on factors beyond the repairman’s control, I think you would soon find repairmen charging for trying to fix the sink and, if that’s the arrangement, you pay them either way. Lawyers provide a service; they do not guarantee results – which is why it behooves you to hire a good attorney, to maximize the chances of obtaining the result you want. I am paid to try to win cases, not to win them on every occasion.
Jodi
Fiat Justina