Yeah yeah the 567,096th thread about stupid lawsuits, sue me.
What the hell is up with these shotgun lawsuits. Seriously what the fuck does Shell have to do with this? Anheuser-Busch Inc?
Someone is responsible, but even blind person (can I still say blind?) could see the above had nothing to do with it.
This country is devolving into a litigious quagmire of insanity.
Lawyers like to say “we don’t sue people, our clients do”
Lawyers also seem to live on the same planet as marketers where the everyday notions of “rational” and “plausible” are concerned. “Desperate” and “insane” seem not to enter their frames of context.
Lawyers need to learn to say NO.
I just don’t understand why things like that don’t get thrown out in 3 seconds. Who the fuck even gives these ridiculous requests consideration?
There’s a problem, but it’s not with the lawyers, more with the system I’d say.
And what, Sir, would you define as the system other than lawyers? From the local through Federal level, most elected officials are lawyers, and as such, the handbasket in which our legal system finds itself, along with the greatly increasing temperature, need thank only the lawyers.
While I’ll grant that there are some professionals who behave in a righteous manner, and would not burden the time of the court with such unworthy action, they are the 10% who bear the scourge together with the remaining 90.
They gave out unlimited free tickets, creating a potential fire hazard in the process. Yes, there can be a basis.
Did I miss something? Is the club being overcrowded Shell’s fault? I would assume that if there were too many people it was the responsibilty of the club to turn people away.
“Never sue poor people. They don’t have any money.” Steve Dallas.
No they didn’t. The Derderian Brothers did, presumably without Shell’s knowledge. The only stake that Shell had in it was that they were the franchise for the station, but they had no control over whatever special promotions the owners were running.
You never know what will come out in the course of the lawsuit.
For example, I just filed suit against my client’s former employer. The problem was that there were 4 related entities – A, B, C, and D – all of whom might be responsible. I’m pretty sure that A, B, and C are the proper defendants. But there is a reasonable chance that it’s really A, B, and D. The last thing I need is to leave D out and then discover – after the statute of limitations has run – that D was the proper defendant.
As far as the RI nightclub lawsuit goes, I would speculate that given that a judge approved adding those defendants, there must be some basis to believe that there’s a reasonable possibility that they might be liable. But I would just be speculating. Of course, without knowing the details, we’re all kind of speculating.
So does D get to sue you if he’s not the proper defendant for legal fees, plus damages? Maybe mental anguish and pain and suffering?
Prolly not. But once I get the necessary papers to figure out who doesn’t belong, I’ll drop them from the suit pronto.
For what it’s worth, there’s no mental anguish involved, since the defendants are interrelated corporations. It’s just a matter of be contacted by the company attorney (who is representing B, C, and D).
But I do concede that, in theory, the system can cause inconvenience that later turns out to be unwarranted.
Interestingly, we were warned this at college. “Avoid getting into libel or malicious falsehood suits with the very rich or the very poor.”
Because the very poor have nothing to lose financially, and get legal aid for certain cases.
Well that seems more than fair to the company that has to shell out $500,000 in legal fees to prove they’re not involved. 
:rolleyes:
BWHAHAHAHAHAH. I could be the poster girl for mental anguish in a corporate suit. I work it IT. We had eight years of email on backup tape. It was subpeona’d - but not all of it - only message from or to certain people containing certain words. It was my job to restore and sort through ten years of e-mail, working 70 hour weeks for two months. Salaried. No overtime dollars for me, but a ton of dollars spent on equipment to support the effort.
They didn’t find anything and dropped the suit.
I’ve seen people loose jobs and companies shut down because of lawsuits - some of them were valid lawsuits and the companies should have been punished (hey, I worked for an HMO), some companies and their employees were innocent victims caught in the cross fire.
Well, in my case it’s more like an hour or two of time. But I do concede that in our system, there is the possibility of innocent defendants shelling out lots of money. Just ask OJ Simpson. 
I concede that there’s a lot of unfairness in the system. There are a lot of people who have been legitimately wronged who can’t obtain a remedy and a lot of innocent defendants who end up paying a lot in legal fees, win or lose.
By the way, you might check to see if your computer work was properly exempted from overtime under state and federal law. If not, you may have a claim for back wages, liquidated damages and attorneys fees.
So rather than do some homework and sue only the responsible parties, you’ll sue 'em all, let the courts sort it out?
Asshole lawyers like you are part of the problem.
Dangerosa: I would have written some fancy Perl scripts or, failing that, grep command lines to parse through all of that text. Was that somehow not an option for you?
If I’m not mistaken, you need to actually name them in a suit in order to depose them and get them to turn over documents that are relevant.
I could be wrong though.
Brutus:
When you look at an accident from the outside, it is next to impossible to find out which precise legal entity is responsible. Modern day corporations may have delegated and shifted responsibilities around in a way that is not nearly as transparant as one would like to. Furthermore, very often there are several contributing factors. Think of a work-accident because a machine breaks down: is the responsible party the employer, the maintenance company, the company that made the machine? You can only find it out in the course of the suit.
This applies even if it is a clear-cut case of negligence. Hence if a lawyer tries to pursue the legitimate claim of his client, he should take care that he doesn not leave out a possible culprit.
Lots of non-lawyers have no experience with real-life cases and waltz into discussions with assumptions of perfect knowledge. They forget that they mostly either learn of a case afterwards, when the whole thing has become clear (including the outcome), or from a newspaper report that states things as fact that are in reality still very much unclear. I can assure you that most lawyers would be very happy if they could find out the responsible party before going to trial: it would make life much easier if you only would have to concentrate on one party.
Besides, if a company within a conglomorate has to pay thousands of dollars solely to make clear that another company of the conglomerate should be part of the suit instead of them, they are being ripped of by their own lawyers and should seek for other counsel.