Lawyers Are Not Engineers!!!!!!!!

The BBQ Pit
1

I realize that this may come as a shock to some that anyone would ever consider substituting a lawyer for an engineer, but apparently its happened.

My dad is out of town for three weeks and is paying me to cut his grass. He’s got a good sized yard and has a riding mower that he uses to cut it with. A fairly new riding mower. One with all kinds of safety interlocks and other gimmicks designed to prevent someone who hasn’t the common sense the gods gave a gannet from killing himself by sticking his hands in some place he shouldn’t. One that damn near killed me today.

I’m no stranger to riding lawnmowers. Some of my earliest memories are of me in my father’s lap as he drove our old yellow International Harvester Cub Cadet lawnmower around the back yard, cutting the grass.

That thing drove like a car. There was a gas pedal and a brake pedal. It had a gearshift, a choke, a lever to raise and lower the deck, and to turn the blades on and off. That was it. Driving it was like driving a car. Came in handy when I learned how to drive, all those Saturdays I spent mowing the yard, let me tell you.

My parents have long since divorced, dad’s remarried and has bought a new place and a new mower. A mower that was obviously designed by a lawyer.

First of all, the damn thing won’t run unless your ass is firmly in the seat. If you get a little uncomfortable while cutting the grass and decide to shift from the left cheek to the right cheek, it’ll shut off. Handy feature that, makes you wish your car had the same feature. :rolleyes:

Second, one cannot move the throttle handle (“conviently” located to the right and rear of the driver’s seat) and have the brake depressed at the same time. The thing’s either fuckin’ movin’ or its fuckin’ stopped. No rapid dancing between pedals to get you out of a tightspot quickly. No, you first touch the brake, slam into the steering wheel, check yourself for injuries, restart the mower (since the screeching halt you just came to has thrown you far enough forward to activate the “kill switch” embedded in the seat) and then, if you’ve got to back up, raise the deck up, take your foot off the brake, slide the throttle handle into reverse, jam on the brakes, restart the mower (because you were thrown hard enough to trip the switch again), put it into forward, lower the deck, and repeat. What a fun time.

Third, the location of the throttle handle. Instead of being a pedal that one could use like they do in a car, or located on the dash, its behind you. So you get to drive the damn thing with one hand on the steering wheel and the other twisted around behind you holding the throttle, so if you accidentally tap the brakes you can put it back into drive (assuming the motor doesn’t cut off).

Now, no self-respecting engineer (And if their fingernails ain’t dirty they ain’t an engineer! They’re just an over-paid dork who smells good.), would design anything like that. But a lawyer would.

A lawyer would be worried that some candidate for natural selection might actually find a way to hurt himself doing something with the lawnmower that the maker didn’t intend. (Like using it to clip his toenails.) Or that said candidate might hurt himself by doing something any rational human would consider such as trying to clear a rope from the blades while they’re still powered. Never mind that the gene pool would be better off without these drecks, the lawyers are worried that the victims’ families will hire other lawyers to sue the piss out of the company that made the machine which insured that the wingnut who decided to cut his hair with a lawnmower is not able to bring down the collective IQ with his spawnings.

Mind you, if someone dies because a bean counter decided to replace a steel strap with a rubber band and the car the person’s riding in explodes when a bird craps on the rear bumper, I say “Sue the motherfuckers!” Especially when you can prove that they knew it could happen and made the damn thing anyways.

:::Wanders off muttering to himself:::

2

Indeed?

While I get coal dust in my hair occasionally, and I do change my own oil and brakes (to get occasional dirty and broken nails), I guess that means I’m mostly an over-paid dorkette who smells pretty…not.

Una, P.E.

(other than that, I agree with most of your rant)

3

The cost of the “sue the bastards” mentality: Lawyers making engineers too scared to design practical equipment.

4

What, no lawyers yet?

and, Tucker, if you can’t defeat a kill switch… :rolleyes:

5

Una, I’d say Coal-dust & Motor oil qualify (IMO).

6

Never heard of “juries,” huh? The people who are too stupid to get out of “jury duty”? The people who actually decide when a design is “defective”? And how much “money” to award the “victims” of those “defective designs”?

Lord knows we wouldn’t want any “facts” to get in the way of your “rant.” :rolleyes:

7

Believe me, happyheathen, if it were my mower, that damn kill switch would have been gone long ago. However, its my dad’s, and I ain’t gonna tamper with it. (Hell, he’s practically an engineer himself and could do it as well, why he didn’t I don’t know.)

Anthracite, coal dust and motor oil do qualify.

minty, lemme ask you some questions:

1.) Do juries spontainously form by themselves?

2.) Did I condemn all lawyers and all product liability lawsuits?

3.) Does “Lawyers and Juries in Product Liability Cases Are Not Engineers and Some Times Make Stupid Decisions About What’s a Safe Design” have the same ring to it as the title of my thread?

4.) Did I post this in Great Debates where one can expect a reasoned and dispassionate discussion of the various facts, much as one would in a court of law or a scientific inquest?

5.) Do I need to tell you what the answers to all these questions are?

:rolleyes: Right back atcha.

8

No, courts form juries when a suit is initiated by an individual believing he or she has been damaged in some way, whether or not that individual decides to use a lawyer.

No, but you could have said “Juries Are Not Engineers!” or even “Courts Are Not Engineers”.

9

Yeah, and Shakespeare could have said, “First thing we do, let’s kill all the juries.” or “First thing we do, let’s kill all the courts.” but he didn’t. He said “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” and while there’s no way my humble skills as a poster will ever compare to Will’s rejects, I’ll take my cues from the Bard, thank you very much.

10

I use a push mower that does not use a motor. When I push it, it cuts. When I stop pushing it, it stops cutting. Simple, effective, inexpensive, and environmentally friendly. I am a lawyer.

11

If somebody has the time, would you please explain to Tuckerfan that the Henry VI “kill all the lawyers” line was employed to show the idiotic lunacy of the character speaking it? I would recommend using small words in explaining that point, however. All those big, fancy words in Shakespeare have obviously befuddled Tuckerfan past the point of rationality.

12

Of course this can lead to the debate of “Should juries made up of incredibly technically and technologically illiterate ‘average people’ be allowed to decide product liability cases?”

And, of course, we could discuss ending strict liability in tort, and forcing claimants to prove that actual negligence existed throughout the process, rather than just defect that caused injury.

13

This link states…

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Another…

15

Tom Paxton’s predictions have come true…

16

Why would one expect someone who can not operate a riding mower to understand Shakespeare?

17

Odd you should mention that, Tuck, my grandfather had a toe cut off by a riding lawn mower. And somehow, it managed to chop off just the middle toe (the roast-beef toe). It didn’t stop him from reproducing, though, so it’s a moot point as far as any Darwinian argument you care to make.

I don’t think there was any thought of suing the manufacturer. Hell, midwest frugality being what it is, they didn’t even get rid of the mower. Hose it off, back in the garage, and then go stitch up Gramps.

As a matter of fact, they kept it long enough that I used it once or twice when I visitied them. Funkiest damn lawn mower you’ve ever seen. The mower deck was mounted on the front. That’s how it developed a taste for toe, it got off the grass into some loose dirt and Grandpa was trying to push it backwards. There was a lever to raise the deck, and it pitched up with the blades facing forward. You could probably still engage the blades that way, in case you wanted to put the fear of whirling death into anybody walking up your driveway.

The body of the mower was hinged in the middle. When you turned the steering wheel, the whole thing bent in half. The seat was attached to the front half, and all the controls for the engine were on the back half. Not only did you have to reach back for the throttle, but if you were turning the lever wasn’t even in the same place where you left it.

My Dad’s John Deere has a little picture on the mower deck. It’s stylized like those stick figures on street signs, except it shows a blade going through a severed hand and foot. They just don’t make 'em like they used to.

Don’t even get me started about snowblowers.

18

Step One: Joe Public decides he deserves to receive damages for his own stupidity in having an accident while operating his Gizmo. He sees a lawyer to further his goal in that respect.

Step Two: A jury decides that Joe deserves damages because they feel sorry for him.

Step Three: Gizmo Corporation decides they want to try to avoid future lawsuits and so redesign their Gizmo to be idiot proof. They ask their lawyers to assist.

Step Four: Tuckerfan steps in and decides that the only group who did not make any of the previous key decisions (namely the lawyers) are to blame.

Step Five: Princhester decides to tell Tuckerfan to fuck off. And that’s one decision I’m happy to take responsibility for, as a lawyer.

19

Anthracite: “Strict liability” is pretty much a misnomer when it comes to products liability. There are three categories of product defects: manufacturing defects, design defects, and warning defects. Of the three, only true manufacturing defects (e.g., poisonous coffee, broken brakes, etc.) are subject to true strict liability. In such cases, the plaintiff need not prove the manufacturer or retailer was negligent, i.e., that they should have caught the problem but did not.

Tuckerfan is whining about design problems, which are strict liability in name only. In design defect cases, the plaintiff has to prove a feasible alternative design that would have prevented the injury–and “feasible” includes cost and marketing considerations. It is, for all intents and purposes, a negligence standard, and the same thing applies to warning defects.

20

I’ve served on three juries, and I have my degree and my E.I.T. - working on my P.E. Does that mean I get an auto-walk after I finish that? I’ll be so disappointed. Being on a regular jury (e.g. not a grand jury) is actually fun. I don’t know why folks think they have to make ridiculous excuses to get ‘out’ of it.