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

The BBQ Pit
21

If you get a chance, rent Titanic some time, and ponder on the fact that, in the past, an ocean liner had a totally inadequate number of lifeboats.

Now ask yourself if a modern corporation, mindful of lawsuits, would ever do something like that.

Yes we have to put up with stupid warning labels, and inconvenient features in power equipment, etc.

But on the whole, the Western World is much safer than it was in the past - for idiots, and for smart people.

And yes, lawyers are partly responsible for this change. It makes me proud to be a lawyer.

22

For every shyster plaintiff’s personal injury attorney who will file a suit to get a few bucks out of a company, there is at least one insurance defense lawyer who will advise his clients to not pay for legitimate injuries so that the injured party will be forced to take a settlement for a fraction of what it should be just to pay bills.

Also, strict liability is not absolute liability. A plaintiff cannot recover simply because he was injured by a consumer product. He must show that the product was defective when it came from the manufacturer.

I can’t, off the top of my head, come up with any aspects of civil law that contain absolute liability. In the criminal arena, statutory rape is absolute liability. You have sex with someone underage, you are guilty, period (aside from various ‘close in age’ exemptions).

Lawyers don’t sue people. People sue people.

23

Besides, a good lawyer (and many do exist) is simply invaluable if you’re in a dire situation that needs his/her services. For example, when I needed a divorce from a husband who had taken to hitting me regularly.

Yes, lawyers are very expensive. A cheap lawyer, like a cheap engineer, is only more expensive, not less. My first, “cheaper” lawyer disappeared with $750, never to be heard from again. I shocked mine; when he told me his hourly rate, I observed that it was 2/3 of mine, which seemed quite fair.

I don’t think lawyers get much professional respect. Of course, I don’t think this one had been shocked speechless in quite that way before, either.

:smiley:

He did a terrific, if slow (not his fault, my ex’s) job, too. Then I shocked him again by paying him promptly the full amount due.

24

I kinda liked his rant… up until the lawyers came into it.

25

And I can even find you some lawyers who are engineers. (or, at least they were engineers.)

Tuckerfan, just be happy that the lawyers don’t win at these designs all the time. Remember the Ford Pinto? That defective design that could have been fixed but they decided not to? Certainly, with lawyers being what they are, the Ford Explorer is just a figment of my imagination, and it won’t prove to be a defective design that could have been fixed. So, “gotcha ya” to the not lawyers.

26

My father is a lawyer (not practicing law for years.) He got his undergrad degree in petroleum engineering, then law school. He eventually got a job as a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, which had him in contact with engineers quite a bit.

He always liked to say to them that the reason he liked the law rather than engineering was that you didn’t actually have to be right. You just had to convince the judge or jury that you were right.

27

Tuckerfan come back and get your whuppin’ :wink:

28

My husband lost two toes to a lawnmower when he was four (middle toes and part of his big toe). He had to have several surgeries throughout the years and has a steel pin inserted in his big toe. Of course, his parents didn’t sue as it was truly the fault of his dad for not watching his toddler, but it may very well be thanks to those who did sue that fewer kids will have to go through what my husband did.

But I still enjoyed the rant.

29

Except for the gratuitous lawyer-bashing, it’s a good rant.

30

IIRC, the Pinto decision was one where the lawyers, in conjunction with management, determined what the maximum cost was of settling death and injury suits, and determined that that was less than the cost of fixing the problem. Isn’t that true?

And how is the Ford Explorer “defective” exactly? Are we back on the “high center-of mass somehow being a design defect” issue here? Or are you thinking of the tires, perhaps?

And “gotcha ya”? What exactly is that supposed to mean? :confused:

31

Weird. I know four engineers who went to law school to become patent attorneys. I’ll have to let them know that they are no longer engineers.

Tibs.

32

Yes, we’re back to the high center of gravity, the narrow track, and a couple of issues that were resolved via the “death tires.” I can’t tell you if any one would make it defective, as Ford decided to give us all of them at once.

The point of referring to the Ford Pinto and the Ford Explorer, is to show that complaining about the constraints that lawyers seemingly place on modern products does not always mean that companies with defective products learn their lesson and stop producing defective products. It is easy to find examples were companies knowingly sell defective products. I don’t know to what extent discovery from Explorer trials has become public. I believe that Ford engineers identified what they considered to be safety problems and those problems were not fixed (or not fixed in a safe manner) due to reasons unrelated to safety. In the And how is the Ford Explorer “defective” exactly? Are we back on the “high center-of mass somehow being a design defect” issue here? Or are you thinking of the tires, perhaps? In the Pinto, the decision was a cost analysis that suggested the defect was safer than the fix. In the Explorer, it appeared to be a decision to not delay launch of the Exlporer.

Gotcha ya just makes Monday morning more surreal.

33

A kill switch activated by pressure on the seat? Most engineers would love to be able to implement something that elegant and cool. It’s got “nifty” written all over it!

34

This is the Pit. There is no such thing as “gratuitous” Lawyer bashing. Here you can bash anything you like, gratuity not required, from what I understand.

You want to debate the uses of lawyers, try GD.

You want opinions on the best lawyers, try IMHO.

You want to know what kinds of lawyers there are, perhaps hit GQ.

But if you want to bitch about lawyers (or anything else), this is the place to do it. Check the sign over the door as you came in.

Note: That doesn’t mean the lawyers have to like it.

Note secondus: But I do. :smiley:

35

Do I have to turn in my Ph.D. in engineering when I pass the bar? And what am I doing reading this thread instead of memorizing the four types of slander per se? (Three in Massachusetts).

36

IME, companies make seemingly-ridiculous and unnecessary modifications to products (and paper them with obvious warning labels) because juries – that’s your neighbors, guys – give people lots of money for doing the massively stupid.

I’m a defense trial lawyer. I represent companies, manufactuers, and businesses that get sued by people for stuff from the very serious to the absolutely laughable. And IME, the “absolutely laughable,” a-trained-monkey-wouldn’t-be-stupid-enough-to-do-that stuff is still worth some money. Why? Because when looking at the poor downtrodden individual, opposed by the seemingly invincible, made-of-money, faceless company, juries are inclined to give the guy some money – regardless of fault. Hey, it’s not their money, right? And they don’t think that they reap the results in higher taxes (if the entity sued is the state), higher product costs, stupid-ass labels, and “safety” features that no one with a functioning brain stem should possibly need.

And the fact that this is the place for bashing doesn’t mean the bashing may not be gratuitious, indefensible, and moronic. Though perhaps moronic is not unexpected from a person who claims to have enough sense to operate a riding mower but is apparently stupid enough to think lawyers actually design anything except arguments.

Lawyers provide a service. They don’t have anything to do with how products are designed, much less design the products themselves. Companies take litigation costs into account when designing things, but that’s the fault of the dumbasses who sue, and the even greater dumbasses who give them money.

The people who dry their hair in the bathtub, or put gasoline in their barbeque, or try to figure out why their gun isn’t firing by looking down the barrel – those aren’t lawyers. Those are you.

37

If you ask me, one of the chief culprits is joint and several liability.

I’m no lawyer, but as I understand it, if a company is found even partly liable for damages, they can wind up paying ALL of the damages if none of the other liable parties can. The ‘deep pockets’ theory. It’s this that causes plaintiff’s attorneys to file shotgun lawsuits that name everybody in sight with deep pockets when an accident happens.

The example of this that comes to mind was a case a few years ago in which a guy in a Piper Cub with a home-made camera mount tried to take off from a private airport. The guy owed the airport money, so the airport manager drove his pickup truck onto the runway to stop him. Now, a Piper cub is a tailwheel airplane, with very poor over-the-nose visibility when taxiing. So the pilot didn’t see the guy in the truck.

As the pilot reached flying speed and the tail lifted up and the nose came down, he finally saw the truck sitting on the runway. He cut the power and slammed on the brakes, but didn’t stop in time. The plane hit the truck, and the pilot’s head (there was no shoulder belt in the plane - which was built in 1946) hit the home-made camera mount and he suffered brain damage. The pilot sued.

As I recall, here’s how it broke down - first, the lawyers tried to sue Piper for making a tailwheel airplane. That failed, because there are good reasons for tailwheel airplanes, and it’s a standard construction practice. The lawyers also sued the airport manager, who was the real culprit here. And they sued Piper for not installing shoulder belts in the plane, even though when the plane was built shoulder belts were unheard of.

Oh, and they also sued the tire company, because some enterprising legal assistant managed to dig up a study that showed that the tread type on those tires was slightly less effective than other tread types.

In the end, the airport manager was found to be the main liable party in the accident. Piper was also found to be guilty, as I recall, even though the guy would never have suffered brain damage if he hadn’t installed his home-made, non-approved camera mount in front of his face.

Oh, and the tire company was found to be something like 2% liable, because if the treads had been slighty more efficient the impact energy might have been marginally lower, leading to (speculatively) slightly less injury to the pilot.

And in the end, the airport manager had no money, and either Piper was found not guilty or couldn’t pay because they were in bankruptcy (small airplane companies often are). So guess what? The TIRE company wound up on the hook for a couple of million bucks.

The way I see it, if the tire company was 2% liable, they should have paid 2% of the damages. If the other parties couldn’t pay, then the pilot is just out of luck. But forcing the tire company to pay the whole shot is simply wrong. It’s not much better than just holding a gun up to the nearest rich person and making them pay, because hey, the Pilot has a right to compensation, right?

38

I figure Tuckerfan was so upset about lawyers in general before mounting the mower that it upset his digestion, which when confronted with the jiggling caused while riding the mower led to severe flatulence, which caused the seat to bounce, which caused even more flatulence, which of course starved the motor of oxygen, causing the motor to stall, and also starved Tuckerfan’s brain of oxygen, causing him to misinterpret Shakespeare. Since this entire chain of events started with Tuckerfan being upset about lawyers, then obviously lawyers are the root of all evil.

39

Lawyers, are, apparently, a thin-skinned bunch. Wonder what would have happened if I used the phrase “ambulance chaser”? In fact, they’ve been so defensive in this thread that I’m beginning to think that some of them have guilty consciences.

Yeah, and common usage of the quote is to express distain for lawyers. So what if Will intended its use differently? It accurately expresses the distain for lawyers that many people feel. Besides, no where in my OP did I suggest that all lawyers were shysters, or that all product lawsuits were frivolous.

Princhester, you really damage your own argument there. You admit that Joe Public (in this example, and this example only) has injured himself due to his own stupidity and seeks a lawyer. The lawyer doesn’t look at Joe Public and say, “You’re a fucknut! Get the hell out of my office! You deserve exactly what you got for being so stupid!” No, the lawyer says, “You’re right! They were totally irresponsible in not telling you that using a drill to bore through your skull to see your brain could result in permanent damage!” One has to wonder if Joe Public could manage to successfully navigate his way through the legal system to the same jury award without a lawyer. I’m betting he couldn’t.

So do “hitmen,” telemarketers and used car salesmen. Just because someone wants you to do something, doesn’t mean you should.

Ya know who said that? Gerry Spence. Ya know what he does for a living? He’s a lawyer! When one of your own says there’s some bad apples running amok, what’s that tell you?

40

Sam Stone: Pure joint and several liability still exists in something like nine American jursidictions. Your complaint has been outdated for at least the last decade.

Tuckerfan:

The so what is that you stupidly attributed a wholly incorrect context to the words, then appealed to Shakespeare’s rhetorical authority as support for that sentiment. As Shakespeare might have put it, you’re a dumbass.

So let’s count the ignorant blanket statements then, shall we. I suggest you use your fingers to help keep track[list=1]
[li]Lawyers Are Not Engineers!!![]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.[]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.the lawyers are worried that the victims’ families will hire other lawyers to sue the piss out of the company that made the machine . . .[/list=1]#1 has been proven false by at least two posters to this thread, and you never even bothered to ask whether any of us agree with your assertions in #2-4, even though you attributed them to us. And at the same time, you utterly ignored the ignorance of every other category of person who made your lawnmower so darn safe, from the jurors who slapped the lawnmower industry around, to the legislators and judges who made the law, to the voters who put them in office, to the brain-dead half-wits who chopped off their own damn feet. Nope, it’s all the fault of the lawyers. Yeah, that’s gotta be it.[/li]
Can you see why we might reasonably conclude that you’re a mercury miner who lives in a house with flaking lead paint and has a $100 a week model airplane glue habit?