http://skeptoid.com is another good site to look at.

http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp

Steve is exactly right when he says that the tort system, with all its flaws, is the only real recourse for serious wrongs by multi-national corporations who don’t care. We alter that system at our peril. John Brunner, in his eerily prescient novel “The Sheep Look Up,” does a nice forecast of what happens when citizens believe that last option is meaningless.

To some extent, ‘urban legends’ fill the same niche.

First heard by me in reference to a supposed Saudi fighter pilot here for flight training in Texas in the ’70s.

I probably need to mention Saudis, much less fighter pilots, were less than popular at that time and place.

Interesting to see this chestnut repurposed.

I do not believe that we need a cap on awards to plaintiffs who have been injured by faulty products or by corporate bean counters who say that a little injury is okay. The real issue is the mass tort lawyers who pocket millions while obtaining pennies for their injured class. By capping their fees we would have a better system.

I think that the real problem with the tort game is that we have become desensitized to it and there is a certain amount of jealousy involved. Real case: A young retarded woman needs to use the bathroom at a Blockbuster Video. The manager refuses stating that the facilities are not for public use. The girl then urinates in her pants and a jury in Florida awards her $1.3 million. Is that fair? Of course not, but it’s the only way to hurt this company enough in order to make it change its policy.

The only question I have now is how many people are googling that story to see if it’s true. Thus I’ve made my point.

I think the error Williams made was to refer to society as “increasingly immoral”, as though that had any pertinence other than to poison the well when he makes his argument, which as quoted is actually nothing but further propaganda about “lawsuit abuse”. He’s right that we’re using the courts more, but wrong about why. I think Cole was mostly right about people not recognizing their own error but his post was mainly mocking other people without actually drawing any conclusion about what the predominance of urban legends suggests. I think you jumped to a conclusion that these stories were created to serve a specific agenda without looking into their origins, and I think the real question should be just what is going on in our society that makes people want these stories to be true?

I also think poster #5 is snotty and ill-informed, which isn’t really pertinent, but I am getting tired of his type of rudeness.

I think you are drawing a long bow based on one Urban Legend.

That story could of easily being concocted from:
i) an employer in a car company – irrespective of their position from experiances with customers;
ii)someone embellishing on a kernal of truth from a real event; or my favourite
iii)someone from outside America because Americans in general have a reputation (maybe unfairly) of being highly litigious with minimal sense of self responsibility (”ah! I’ve scorned myself with coffee. I’ll sue Starbucks”).