KidEpoxy

I seem to recall a bunch of folks round here saying AMA dont fight insurance claims,
that AMA insurance is really great stuff.
Would it be safe to say that AMA IS going to fight this claim?

I mean, heck, we have already heard in this thread that most are settled without the court system,
yet here we are hearing about this claim having to get all lawsuited up rather than just paying what was claimed.

How are we to interpret that as anything other than AMA fighting against the big number claimed against it?

jerrya

My Feedback: (4)

They're obviously a couple of members of the moocher class, looking for all the freebies they can have at someone elses expense.

Silent-AV8R

You seem to miss the point that they are not fighting a claim, they must respond to a lawsuit. Not the same thing. Anyone who is sued has to defend themselves or face summary judgment. Are you saying that any time the AMA is sued it should just allow default judgment?

AmishWarlord

My Feedback: (5)

P-51B is right. I should know better than to jump to conclusions without all the facts. We don’t know the whole story. I don't see why reporters can't give you both sides of the story. It's just like that McDonalds coffee. That happened in 1992. I just learned the facts about it just now in a post on RCU almost 20 years later. Why didn't they give these facts out when the story broke or after the lawsuit was settled. I always thought it was a silly woman that got 3 million for spilling coffee on herself going to work.


These are made up stories not the real story which we don't have the facts on.


Story one,

A man and his wife are the AMA field flying their glider. A new inexperienced guy is there with his first glider. He's setting up a huge 160" $3,500 hot liner with a 28" prop for it's maiden flight. He's told by the lady's husband that it's against AMA policy to fly an untested plane during an event. Ol' money bags blows it off and his buddies including the contest director cover for him saying he's OK to fly and has been flying a 2 meter Spirit for a couple of weeks. The huge glider is launched and veers left. The inexperienced pilot doesn’t use any rudder which is on the left stick and instead tries to control the plane using only the right stick. He never even cuts power to the prop. The plane careens into the pits hitting the lady at full force. The prop strikes her in the neck breaking her clavicle and then pushes her off her feet over another plane on the ground breaking her arm and wrist as she falls. The pilot then say's "Sorry" and with out another word packs up and leaves.


Story two,

Husband and wife are watching an event. At the far end of the airfield they are asked to stand back in the spectator area behind the fence. They walk down to the other end of the runway and wonder into the pit area. They walk over to the runway itself just as a 2 meter glider is landing. I gust of wind blows across the runway and before the pilot can compensate, it hits the lady who is standing a step on the runway. The glider was doing 8 mph when it hit her doing absolutely no damage to her or the plane. She then took two steps back and stepped on another glider and fell over it. She was afraid the pilot would ask her to pay for the glider so she instead quickly went into a faux rage. Claiming that she was hurt, that the other plane made her fall back on the second one. She said she would sue the people hosting the contest and demanded to know the pilots name that had hit her. She then laid down in the pit area and screamed at her husband to call for an ambulance. Later she told her lawyer to stop working on the other five pending lawsuits "1 Suing because automatic door closed on her arm" "2 suing because fell over sign in store stating that the floor was wet" "3 suing pet store because goldfish died" "4 suing next door neighbor because American flag makes too much noise" "5 suing movie theater because they didn't warn her that Ninja Assassin was a bloody movie" and concentrate on this one.

So it's the reporters job to find out this information. We have been let down by this empty story. Might have well have said, "Woman sues AMA and RC pilot over model mishap"

Silent-AV8R

I did find out that it happened during a local club's soaring contest and that apparently there were also physical injuries involved. But the point is a good one, that we most often do not have all the facts, but that never stops us from leaping to conclusions! [&:]

KidEpoxy

Silent
Do you have Sport blocked, or just ignoring what he types?


So now we are to believe ama DOES fight everything?
Most things? ... some things?
Cause what you just said dont seem to fit in with the folks saying AMA doesnt fight anything.
Looks to me like you are very much in disagreement with those folks.


Now, if you just want to disagree with me regardless of what I say
(such disagreeing that unfortunately is very popular in certain circles)
then go to post7 and tell me what I said that you disagree with.

DadsToysBG

My Feedback: (35)

Lets see, we as the AMA are self insured up to a point, the husband seems to be a AMA member. So the wife is suing the AMA (her husband) and he is suing the AMA (himself). Very strange.
Just thought I'd add this. Maybe I could sue the AMA for lack of consortium because I fly to much on week-ends. which means I have go to to bed early. On the other hand maybe my wife a case for no consortium. Dennis

fly24-7

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Glad to see that someone brought the facts of the McDonald's case to the table. Most everyone I know cites that case as the poster child for what's wrong with the legal system and none of them have ever had the facts straight. The citation is about 98% correct as I heard the same facts from a McDonald's corporate employee herself at a seminar many years back.

As for this case, obviously, many facts have yet to be brought to light. As for what is known, it's not uncommon for all parties that are in any way related to an incident to be brought into a lawsuit. The strategy is simple. 1) The more parties you bring in, the more pockets you can work to extract money from. 2) Get the defendants pointing the finger at each other so the defendant not only has to deal with the plaintiff but the other defendants. 3) If you make a strategical error in handling your case against one defendant, you can regroup and perfect the case against the others.

In most cases, when you have a personal injury situation like this, there's always the desire to first approach it as a claim before filing a lawsuit. Lawsuits are expensive and most personal injury attorneys take cases on contingency. They value a case and in the end, they want to make money on it. They're looking for the settlement/judgment to be at least equal to the billable hours they put into it. Therefore, if they can get a settlement by only having to write a few letters, they make a killing. It starts to get expensive for them when they file the suit. So in this case, maybe they couldn't get a settlement from the insurance carriers of the AMA and/or the pilot. Neither the AMA or the pilot are in the drivers seats. It's the insurance carriers as they're financially on the hook, assuming the AMA and pilot notified their insurers, as I'd expect they did.

Loss of consortium and companionship is a damage that standard protocol on personal injury lawsuits. It's low hanging fruit. "Because of my spouse's injury, they haven't been the same since..." Not a surprise to see this one.

Assuming the AMA ran the event by the book and the pilot did not do anything that was willfully negligent in the operation of the glider, the plaintiff stands to get little more than her out-of-pocket expenses related to the injury covered. That's the point of insurance. Accidents happen and people are reimbursed for the costs necessary to be made "whole" again. Since it's ended up as a lawsuit, the injured party obviously thinks what she needs to be made "whole" again is a sum greater than what the insurance folks think she's entitled to. If the insurance companies have decent lawyers, she won't get a penny more than what she's entitled to for her injury.

If she willfully disregarded notices or instructions that related to her safety while at the event, then she'd be entitled to zero. This could be the case as well and a reason to duke it out in court....

RBean

I'm a lawyer and years ago I talked with the Plaintiff's lawyer who tried the McDonalds case. Just about every thing you have heard about the case in the media and through the Tort Reform advocates is WRONG. Usual propaganda. Pick and choose the "facts" you report and ignore the rest.

Tampaflyer

My Feedback: (42)

we'll if she sues , the then guys airplane that she tripped on should sue her for damages, and mental anquish and loss of consortium for those nights he has to spend building a replacement.

Silent-AV8R

This event was not run by the AMA. It was run by a local soaring group. The only involvement of the AMA was that it took place on the AMA facility. The event was run by the outside group. They hold contests there fairly frequently. The woman is the wife of a person who was very likely flying in the contest as he is a local person who flies in these events.

pmerritt

My Feedback: (118)

FAKEFAKEFAKEFAKE!!!! We ALL know that if a man is addicted to this RC Airplane hobby, his "consortium" went out the window the first tube of CAhe opened! Ithink there is some fine print on the back of the AMAapplication that says something to the effect:

I ______________ (name) do agree that if I so much as touch a piece of balsa, CA, Monokote, or any item which resembles a propeller, I Ihereby relinquish all rights and privileges to sex, affection, petting, fondling,meals, clean underwear orhaving the appropriate key toknown residence of thecurrentassignedspouse until death do you part!

Iguess we shall see how good this AMA insurance is?

HAPPYCONSORTIUMLESSFLYING!

Warbirdguy

LMAO Pmerritt

After what Ive been through with lawyers the last 2 years, I have NO faith at all in the justice system, courts, or any other law affiliated organizations. Its not about whats right or wrong any more, its about how much you can pay a lawyer to make as much as they can for themselves and if your a good little boy and stay calm and dont make waves, you might get to share in some of it. BS The person hurt in this suit, and I use the term "hurt" loosely, will most likely not see much out of it at all, but the team of lawyers that will be representing, will make enough for a condo on the beach in Malibu and an European vaction for his whole family. Its a game that they all play.

My way of justice is this, Make Killing legal for 1 day a year. That will end alot of this BS.

Warbirdguy

Silent-AV8R

In the Old West there was apparnetly a viable defense for homicide. It was simply proving that the person "needed killing"!

Red Scholefield

My Feedback: (9)

From the newspaper article linked in post 1 "According to the suit, Ruth E. Meek of Kendall County, Ill., " . . . . closest point in Kendall County IL, the SE corner, is 250 miles from Muncie. Her husband was hardly a local person . . . Whether he was a paiticipant in the meet or not has not been established. If Mr. Meek was in fact "local" then his claim of loss of his wife's services and consortium due to the incident seems a bit strange with her 250 miles away.

Signoir

Do we as spectators assume any responsibility when we attend events that could cause injuries?
(football, hockey, baseball, RC events, etc…)

Freddy!

This whole story sounds to me like how our crooked govenment operates.

Warbirdguy

Amen to that Freddy. Sigh!

I think it will probably end up with AMA lawyers making a token offer of settlement just to keep it out of court. So they will win the suit anyways. Just depends on how much they want to screw AMA out of. I need to send AMA the name of the lawyer my Insurance hired to protect them against me when I made a claim on my unisured motorist coverage LOL That SOB is just that...an SOB!

WBG

Syssa Aircraft

The part that is interesting is where the suit says Miller "did not have much experience" in flying model planes, and that the AMA "was negligent when it allowed Mr. Miler to fly his aircraft near spectators."

What gives with this??? How is the AMA supposed to know how good of pilot anyone is???

I guess you can say anything you want in a suit...and whether you win or not is a different story.

Silent-AV8R

The AMA had nothing to do with this contest. It was run by a local soaring group that puts on a soaring contest series around the Midwest each summer. This was not the first time they had run contests at the Muncie facility. But the AMA had nothing to do with it beyond providing the place.

jeffEE

My Feedback: (5)

Oct. 9th 2010. Does it really take that long to get a lawsuit started?

pmerritt

My Feedback: (118)

They needed time to come up with a really crooked ambulance chaser that would handle their case.That snakeneeded time to see where the deep pockets were so he knew who to sue. He realized that the pilot's home ownersinsuranceis the priority coverage and that AMA is secondary. That old hag will get a settlement of some kind. It's cheaper for the insurance companies to pay off a bogus claim than to spend years and 10x the fees to fight and maybe win.

You can't prevent ANYONE from suing ANYONE. It's all about how much it takes to get this crap off the desk top. No wonder our insurances cost so damned much. Where theheck is tort reform limiting scam claims like these? Hell, thewife's old pfart husbandprobably couldn't get wood if you held a brand new Saito 200R3 in front of him with a paid in full sticker on it! She probably needs some after run oil in her carb from all the time it hasn't been run. (was that subtle enough?)

Let's see how long this rant stays on the thread. Sorry guys. Had to get it off my chest. Now where did I stash that new 200R3?

Top_Gunn

My Feedback: (6)

Several posts in this thread have mentioned the McDonald's hot coffee case. If anyone is interested in what the facts of that case really were, here's a useful place to start:

http://abnormaluse.com/2011/01/stell...ot-coffee.html

Recently, the trial bar has been putting out some false information about this case; in particular, they have claimed that McDonald's coffee was much hotter than normal, which it was not.

Jacques B Gros

" While I agree with your thoughts, don't under estimate what a court will or will not do. Remember the infamous McDonald's hot coffee spill and the large settlement. The woman was holding a hot cup of coffee between her legs while driving and the court found fault with McDonalds. What a crock."

In Brazil we say that "from a woman's womb and the head of a judge nobody knows what is coming out"...

Sentinel

My Feedback: (221)

If those people doing the suing have good Lawyers they will sue the Flier, AMA, the Sailplane Mfg, plus the Transmitter Mfg.

My brother-n-law is a Lawyer!