Milestone, Sort of
Last week in the race around New England colleges I missed a milestone of sorts - Coyote Blog crossed over 5 million visits. I say "of sorts" because with feed readers, many readers of the blog do not hit the visit counter. In fact, with over 2,000 feed subscribers who check this feed each day, that equates to about 3/4 million visits a year that don't hit the counter.
Nevertheless, all these numbers, however flawed, are far higher than I ever thought I would reach here (way back on September 29, 2004). Thanks for the support.
PS- Here was that first scintillating post 6-1/2 years ago:
This blog will often touch on the insanity that is the current American tort system. I don’t think there is any greater threat to capitalism, due process, or democracy than the growing power of the litigation bar.
Via Overlawyered.com, which should be an essential part of your daily blog browsing, comes this story. Apparently, after being sued by Okaloosa County for making defective police cars, Ford refused to sell the county any more of this type car. The County sued again, this time to force Ford to sell it more cars of the type it is suing Ford for being defective:
One of Morris’ attorneys, Don Barrett, has said the sheriff firmly believes the Police Interceptors are defective but he wants to buy new ones to replace aging cars because seeking other vehicles would be more costly.
lol. Unfortunately, in the service business, it is legally more difficult to exclude customers from the premises. We have several well-known customers who come to our campgrounds (plus Wal-mart and any other private retail establishment) desperately hoping to slip and fall and sue. In a future post, I will tell the story of a Florida campground that is being sued by a visitor for sexual dysfunction after the visitor allegedly stepped on a nail in their facility.
AnoNY:
Wish I could count on your meter, just add one visit for every article for me! Congrats and keep it coming...
April 5, 2011, 12:59 pmTed Rado:
The whole tort system is a mathematically provable ripoff. Every activity has a certain chance of resulting in a mistake or accident. This can be predicted by studying the historical data (the insurance industry is based on this concept). Thus, every year,in accordance with these probabilities, there will be a certain number of cases for the tort lawyers. Hence, they have a guaranteed supply of ambulance chases to look forward to.
The whole thing could be eliminated by having an accident compensation fund, paid for by a small fee on every purchase. People who suffer from the product or service would be paid out of this fund at a predetermined rate. No lawyers required. For example, a fee of a few cents per polio shot would pay for the few that get polio from receiving the vaccine. Basically, each industry would be self-insured.
This sort of thing has been proposed before, but is resisted tooth and nail by the lawyers. They have a statistically guaranteed income. All they have to do is wait for the inevitable accident. What a bunch of immoral scumbags!
April 6, 2011, 10:12 am