A new Museum
This takes the cake -- from
Yahoo/NYPost:
Nader's House of Horrors
His two presidential plans had put the project on hold, but Ralph Nader says an architectural firm is now "putting final touches on the plans" for his dream of a lifetime: a museum in his hometown of Winsted, Conn.
This won't be just any museum, mind you.
It will be — yes — a celebration of tort law.
You know, like the case that won $2.9 million for the woman who spilled a hot cup of McDonald's coffee in her lap.
Or the fellow who convinced a jury he deserved $3.6 million when he got falling-down drunk and lost an arm to an oncoming subway train.
Or the restaurant worker who developed a phobia about propane after surviving an explosion caused by a gas leak. No physical injuries, mind you, just a bad case of the willies — worth a whopping $3.8 million from the local gas company, a jury said.
Or the Illinois man who won $1.5 million when he electrocuted himself in the subway by urinating on the third rail — because there were no signs in his native Korean warning that such activity might be dangerous. (Columnist John Leo suggested that perhaps such signs will be available at the museum gift shop.)
The museum will feature products that have been pulled off the market because of such lawsuits. (No word if visitors will be issued air bags to protect them from any lingering danger.)
It also will have a courtroom in which famous tort lawsuits will be re-enacted (see above).
Exhibits are being designed by the same company that has done work for the Harry S Truman Library and the Walt Disney Boyhood Home.
Somehow we doubt that they'll include the millions of people who now pay sky-high rates for health and auto insurance, thanks to product-damage cases.
Or the millions unable to get adequate medical care because physicians have fled states where the constant threat of tort litigation has driven their malpractice insurance premiums to unaffordable levels.
Perhaps there'll be a hall of fame for lawyers who have become gazillionaires by pocketing the lion's share of such verdicts and settlements, usually at their clients' expense. (One such tort lawyer, John Edwards, was even nominated by the Democrats — naturally — for vice president.)
So far, says Nader, he's raised half of the $4 million needed to open the museum — adding that he expects the rest to come from the trial-lawyer industry.
If they don't ante up — after all the money Ralph Nader has helped put in their pockets over the last 40 years — it would be a monstrous case of ingratitude.
Is it just me or isn't this just horribly wrong.
Talk about bad taste and hubris...
Posted by DaveH at June 4, 2005 11:39 AM