Something I Very Randomly Discovered....

My blog is linked on a random website. I do not know how or why or when it got there, but, three words:

I. LOVE. IT.

Said website.

(The bottom left corner, under the heading 'blogs')

Frivilous Lawsuits!?!

Taken from today's Sun-Times:

A man who drank five margaritas before arriving at a Connecticut train station, boarding the wrong train and then injuring his ankle as he tried to jump off, has sued Amtrak for not taking sufficient steps to prevent a man who had drunk five margaritas from getting on the wrong train and trying to jump off.

Moral Objection

So, as you know, I love having ads on my blog and I love, love, love it when my readers click them.  The ads come off the content from my posts.

Well, I posted about Henry (my Honda, the man in my life) and all of these ads came up like 'injured in an auto accident - you deserve cash!'   I DO NOT endorse these ads (or the idea that every time in life something bad happens to us there's a cash value reward we deserve - but that's a story for another day).  

I have a huge moral objection to these ambulance chasers - do NOT give them business.  Unless, of course, you are using one to sue another ambulance chaser directly - that kind of fighting fire with fire would be acceptable in my book.  

An Emily-style Joke

My poor attorney friend Rachel from dance class was hit by a car while walking down the street in our neighborhood! And I thought I had bad car luck! Not sure if you read this Rachel - but I, as well as all of Visceral Dance Studio, hope you get well soon! It's no fun not carpoolin'! I have no one to review the dance with on the way home this way.

Bad joke inspired by said event:

What do you call hitting an attorney with a car?

Cutting out the middle man.

Bad Parent!

Ok, since this topic is about a rather, ahem, litigious individual, I'm going to speak very vaguely. In fact, this blog is not about a specific individual. This blog is completely and totally hypothetical.

Let's say, hypothetically speaking, there was a woman who left her two year old daughter in her running car to step away for four minutes to donate some money to charity and was then ticketed by the police for child endangerment. She was put in handcuffs and given a potentially large fine.

Now, let's get one thing straight before anyone goes crazy on me....do I think she was being an irresponsible parent? Do I think she was disregarding her child's safety? No and no. She claims she was taking a 'calculated risk' - which is probably the case. She claims the car was never out of her sight and therefore she felt everything would be all right.

There have definitely been times when I have taken similar calculated risks. Like, if I take out the garbage and leave my apt door unlocked because I don't want to take the extra five seconds to lock and then unlock the door. The door is always within my sight and it seems like a reasonable calculation - although my mother would say something at this moment about what good would it do to be able to SEE as the burglar entering the door as I'm 50 feet away from it, etc. - probably the same amount of good it would do for this hypothetical mother to SEE the carjacker drive away with her car and hypothetical 2 year-old daughter.

Here's what I do know - if the police were able to approach the car (and possibly go unnoticed to the mother), so would a carjacker. Again - do I think this was bad parenting on her part? No, not necessarily. But, this situation COULD have had much worse consequences than a citation.

She fought the ticket and she will not have to pay the fine - I think this, too, is ok. Here's where all my beefs come in. Getting let off the hook for the fine was apparently NOT enough for this overgrown baby. It should, in theory, end here. However, she would like an apology from the police and she's REALLY upset she's not getting it.

This is where I come in and say that I would like a million dollars - but sometimes in life, gasp, we don't always get what we want. I don't think necessarily think the police were wrong. Maybe a little excessive. Granted, this is all very subjective. So I think the police dropping the charges but not apologizing is a reasonable compromise that this woman SHOULD be happy with.

However, this obviously isn't the case. She is filing a lawsuit against the police. Because they won't apologize. Really? How much money is said apology worth to her? Right now, 'an unspecified amount'. Second, when this said citation incident took place - it had never crossed my radar. This might now sound like much, but I probably taken in more daily news than 95% of Americans, seeing that I work at a newspaper and watch MSNBC more than any other channel. She is trying to claim she was 'publicly humiliated'. Funny, since I hadn't heard of her until she agreed to do interviews for various large-scale media outlets. She may have been humiliated - but she's bringing the 'public' aspect completely on herself.

To me, this whole situation begs the question - what kind of example is she setting for her daughters? When you don't initially get EXACTLY what you want, throw a very public tantrum until you do? Never hesistate to seek profit off someone you disagree with?

Even if she does sincerely feel she was wronged by someone - in life, sometimes we are wronged and do not get anything to make up for it. And, sometimes, more often than not, we should know when to stand up, brush ourselves off, be adults and move on with our lives. There are going to be times when this woman's elementary school daughters are wronged - bullies may take their school supplies, someone may cut them in line, etc. And they're not going to get one damn thing for it and they're going to have to live with it. We don't always get the apologies we want. Sometimes, things are taken from us and we don't get them back. It's life. Love it or leave it.

Also, what else gets me is this woman is pimping out a charity for her benefit. She got out of her car to put money in a salvation army drop-bin - fine, ok, nice, wonderful - but if she had gotten out of her car for the same period of time and walked the same distance away from the car to buy a pack of cigarettes - she'd be paying the fucking $2500, no two ways about it.

The fine was dropped. She needs to get over it. I regret that I am even giving this very 'non-news' news item attention. This is yet another example of the fact that even though we may age into adulthood, some people never really grow up. If this lawsuit goes through, it is yet another example of all that is wrong with our legal system - even if one does experience 'suffering' - who out there decided there should be a price tag on it, and who out there decides exactly WHAT that price should be? All I really know is that there have been times I have felt upset or offended by people or incidents - and I did not seek any financial restitution from it.

My final thought on this ridiculous situation - this woman spoke of how this "ruined her entire family's Christmas". Yes, I'm sure it may have put a damper on somethings. However, as I stated earlier - if the police were able to approach the vehicle, a carjacker would have been able to as well. And had a carjacker gotten in the car and driven away with her daughter - then she'd really have something to cry about. That ruined Christmas would make this ruined Christmas seem like two weeks in the Dominican Republic.