Harehunter

Tales from the lab:

 

"The researchers were bored

with their room and their board,

so they bored a pit in the floor,

filled the pit with boards,

and roasted a boar on a spit."

 

 

If sauerkraut doesn't appeal to you, rotkraut is IMHO far tastier.

 

I won't repeat this here.

Forgive my failing memory, but what species of spider is the origin of the Spiderweb logo?

—Alorael, I suspect you are right. Considering the large number of people who fly, experience severe turbulence, and suffer no long term ill-effects, the risk would be miniscule. Just wondering though, if this scenario fits the description of a justifiable suit with little chance of success.

 

My son-in-law is an Air Traffic Controller, and he explained to me that even one violation of safety standards could mean losing their job and their certification. Even breaking the separation rule of two miles (I think that is right) by 100 yards is grounds for termination; therefore they try to keep their planes 2.5 miles apart.

Here is an interesting example. A woman is suing an airline because the turbulence experienced on that flight caused her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). On just that much information, can you tell if her case has merit, or is it frivolous?

 

Here is the story.

 

Upon hearing her live interview, I learned a few things. It was on a short flight from College Station, Tx to Houston; about a two hour drive. That means she was on a small, commuter plane, on a flight of expected duration of 20 minutes or so. There were thunderstorms in the area, not uncommon, so turbulence would have been a problem. I've been in a puddle-hopper during a storm, and it is not an experience I would recommend. To make things worse, the weather caused air traffic to be backed up, making the flight take almost two hours. Is it reasonable that the plaintiff could have suffered from PTSD under those circumstances? Or is this suit baseless, and thereby frivolous?

 

I am no psychologist, but what she described as her symptoms sounded like PTSD to me. That indicates to me that she does have a basis to sue for damages. Of course, if I were a juror on the case, I would be required to listen to the opinions of her doctor, and the medical advisors for the defense. The part of this case that I cannot figure out is - What liability does the airline company bear? What should they have done to prevent this injury?

 

Once in the air, the pilots have to fly the course given them from air traffic controllers, or risk a mid-air collision; very bad. They do request alterations to avoid areas of the worst turbulence, but there is no way to avoid it all. And once again, the pilots have to take their instructions to land from the ATC's. I can see no liability on their part. Should the airline have cancelled the flight? Only one person, of fewer than 100, suffered this injury. And there was no way of telling that this woman was susceptible to PTSD from such a circumstance. What did the airline do to willfully cause this injury?

 

Nothing that I can see. But clearly there has been an injury. If negligence cannot be found on the part of the defendant, do they still bear a liability for damages? I really don't know, but I would love to hear it explained to me, sitting in the jury box.

—Alorael, again you astutely hit upon the fine line between cases; a legitimate suit that loses, and a frivolous suit that has no merit. In the first case, loser-pays is a bad option. The loser-pays rule should only be applied if a case is presented that has no merit. According to this Legal Opinion Letter , the Texas tort reform act does not adhere strictly to the loser-pays option. If I understand the article correctly, it is up to the determination of the judge if such recompense is warranted. This is as it should be; don't punish the loss of a valid complainant, just make sure the claim is valid before bringing the suit.

I have to agree with you on this one. This country does not have pre-requisites to the right of free speech; not military service, not land ownership, not actually serving on a jury (we have to appear when summoned, but there are many formulas that can be used to virtually guarantee you won't be picked), and not voting. The right to protest is protected by the 1st amendment, unconditionally.

Thank you Alorael for the research I did not have time to do; I've been in 'crisis mode' all last week.

As you pointed out, at least with some products, there are a large number of law suits that should not have been filed. In most states, the cost of defending against frivolous lawsuits is borne by the defendant. This year, Texas passed a tort reform bill whereby the loser pays. This is intended to make litigation attorneys perform their due diligence, so that those only those complaints that are legitimate can be filed. This has the added benefit of reducing the court docket so that those legitimate cases can be tried sooner. It also reduces the expenses paid to defense attorneys, which is why more businesses are moving to the Lone Star State. And by the number of cars with out-of-state dealership stickers and Texas plates, so are a lot of other people.

I can hear the buzzing now about how such legislation hurts the common man, and denies him his 'right' to sue. I will state again, not all lawsuits are frivolous, but too many are. They clog the courts, preventing legitimate complaints from being heard in a timely fashion, they are expensive to the the taxpayers, and they dissuade companies from expanding and creating more jobs. Tort law is much too valuable to be abused to the point that it defeats its own purpose.

I stand corrected.
The company was Keller Ladders, which is now owned by a different corporation, and the lawsuit in question was over 20 years ago. My information came from one of the engineers who had direct knowledge of the case. However, being in the middle of a major systems implementation at that time, no further details were given.

To Student of Trinity: I must resist looking at your signature line; it triggers a thought that I must not express.

Now that was not an image I needed in my brain as I start to eat lunch!

I don't know. Probably for the same reason they awarded 1 million dollars to the gal who put a cup of hot coffee between her legs and got burned when it spilled. A company goes through a great deal of expense doing everything it can too comply with regulations and to avert the liability of poor product quality, and it gains them nothing.

I could not agree with you more. The company I work for does engineering and construction work. For us, safety is a full time deal; not just while on the job, not just on the construction site, but everyone, every where, all the time. We are rated by OSHA and by the Houston Business Roundtable with the highest of safety awards. Our employees are trained from day one, that we will not tolerate any unsafe act. In the field, any one of our employees, from the project manager to the least skilled pipe-fitters helper can pull out his Stop-Work card and halt any operation he sees as unsafe. We have earned contracts because of our safety record, and our safety department has won jobs just to consult on safety. Even home office people, like me, are inculcated in this 24x7x365 safety culture.

In the case I was talking about, it was an individual, who on his own responsibility chose not to read the safety manual packaged and shipped with the ladder, nor did he read the safety stickers prominently displayed in both English and Spanish, as required by OSHA regulations. But when he chose to do what was plainly marked as unsafe, fell and became injured, he sought to sue the manufacturer for damages which he had suffered. And the jury found in his favor!

 

Had the ladder broken under his weight, or had failed in some other fashion, assuming that it was being used properly and safely, yes the manufacturer would have been at fault. Again, tort law set to good purpose. But to sue because of one's own bad choices? I don't know about anyone else here, but I was taught at an early age to accept responsibility for my own choices.

If it was the employer who required the man to do something that was dangerous, a danger made pointedly clear by the manufacturer, who was more at fault for the injury?

Here in the States, we have an agency called the Occupational Safety and Health Agency (OSHA) whose job it is to ensure that safety procedures are trained and enforced. In your example, it is clearly the fault of the employer, and it is he that could not only be sued in civil tort law, but also fined and potentially tried in criminal court. The manufacturer did what it was required to do; required by that same agency OSHA. And having no presence on site, it had no control over the working conditions.

Even if the employer had made no demand on the employee to do an unsafe act (which would have been an act of gross negligence), he would still be liable of at least simple negligence for not properly training the employee, or not supervising him adequately.

Like I said, Tort law has its place to protect society.

Especially when the software is being developed by one of its major competitors. Vitualbox was developed by Sun; you know, the people who came out with OpenOffice, a directly competitive !!!freeware!!! product to MS Office. Now Sun is owned by Oracle, another major rival to MS SQLServer. No love lost there. I'll try it on a machine I don't care that much about.

I understood that. I was trying to say that the US is just as constrained with trying to effect any changes with regard to the trade imbalance. Then a couple of side thoughts hit me. I need to better filter those out, at least on these forums. It serves me well as a DBA to think in parallel threads, but it only seems to cause me trouble here.

I had not heard of that critter. I am downloading it now and will give it a try. I'll post as soon as I have some info. Thanks.

 

--edit

 

Interesting! Windows XP doesn't like installing it. It complains about "Windows Logo testing to verify its compatibility with Windows XP"

I find your phrasing highly intriguing. I would say that while it makes sense, on the surface, that raising tariffs on chinese imports in order to try to encourage domestic job growth, there are probably hidden consequences there. The theory goes that by raising the cost of goods imported from China, it would make the cost of domestic labor competitive.

I doubt it would have any effect in that direction, because it is not just the cost of hiring people, that motivates off-shoring of jobs, but the cost of complying with the regulations of the various agencies, as well as the liability of being sued for practically anything. Sarbanes-Oxley essentially doubled the cost of company audits in manpower costs alone. I don't say Sarb-Ox wasn't necessary in the eve of Enron, but it does have its cost.

A manufacturing company I had worked for got sued because someone had stood on the top rung of a ladder, fell and was injured. Never mind that there were warning stickers galore on that ladder telling people not to do that, the plaintive still won!

Tort law is important and serves an extremely valuable service to our country, but like so many other things, it has been horridly abused.

I see what you mean. I just had not paid that close attention to it. I've tried turning up the mouse tracking parameter in the Windows 3.1 setup, but to no good effect.

 

There are tunable parameters in the DOSBox.conf file. I'll do some research on those. You might do the same. This setup of Windows may be stretching the limits in DOSBox.

You have to click your mouse into the DOSBox environment. Once there you have too scroll around to find your mouse cursor. It won't be where you clicked, it will be where you left it last when you left DOSBox, or in some default location. Once your mouse is in the DOSBox, you cannot move it outside the Box. You have to Alt-Tab to an application in your XP environment to get out.

 

I hope this makes sense.

WASD or JIKL? I can see that WASD would be great for lefties, bt JIKL makes more sense for righties.
Actually, since unix vi (an editor) uses hjkl (Left,Down,Up, Right), it might make more sense to use it.

My apologies. I only reposted here because of the previous complaint about there being no jokes here. I shan't do it again. As to the volume of puns, of all the ones that occur to me,I only post one in ten. (No, I'm not going to say it.)

Since it seems to be offending more people than the number who seem to enjoy them, at your behest I shall refrain.

Left pinky on the shift, left ring finger for the W. Even the Q is hit with the left ring finger. About the only reason I use the right shift key is to get those pesky symbols on the 1 - 6 keys and that peculiar little key to the left of 1.

But I never said I wasn't a bit odd. I'm certainly not even.

I just looked in all my files on this and I can't find Cloud of Blades in the spell lists at all. I keep going around in circles...
Wait...
I think I've just been hit with a Summon Pi spell.

I just looked in all my files on this and I can't find Cloud of Blades in the spell lists at all. I keep going around in circles...
Wait...
I think I've just been hit with a Summon Pi spell.