Petty Lawsuits
Uploaded by j_hegarty on Nov 15, 2000
Are we Sueing for a Purpose?People today are not sueing to rectify matters. There is no purpose in lawsuits today. I believe everyone is out to get an easy buck through the judicial system. It is almost inevitable if people spill hot coffee on themselves that they will win a lawsuit against the company that served them that coffee. People believe that nothing is their fault and that someone (the defendant) should pay. The problem with the judicial system today is that people are sueing all the time and winning in court with ridiculous cases.
Take this case in North Carolina for instance. A Dallas couple is sueing Kmart for $23 million dollars because some Kmart employees harassed and accused the Dallas couple of going through their garbage. The employees were fired and the Dallas couple sued for $23 million. Fortunately the couple didn’t receive all that money, there is a state law capping punitive damages which forced the judge to reduce it to $250 thousand dollars.
The plaintiffs feel that they have been mistreated and that Kmart should reconcile with them by paying them off. The couple states at the end of court that “they believe us. That the most important thing, they believe us.” Obviously that is not the most important thing to them for they are trying to appeal the state law which caps their $23 million. And if that’s not greedy enough, the week before the jury awarded them $18,985 in compensatory damages. So the couple was awarded $268,985 for being accused over something as petty as going through a stores trash.
Anyone can differentiate one fraudulent case from another. I understand that the Dallas couple is trying to clear their name from shame. But trying to appeal the already huge sum of money and going for more shows just how greedy these people really are. They got what they wanted, for the people to believe them. Everyone believes them now, and on top of that, they were awarded a nice some of money.
There are people out there who really do deserve some kind of compensation for negligence, harassment, or anything else that might have gone wrong. For example, a Gastonia man who already has enough appeal to pity has yet another problem to deal with. He is a paraplegic who awoke to find a rat eating at his leg to the bone. Due to...