DRC1

My Feedback: (10)

We should be consered about this issue regardless of how stupid or silly this all sounds. After all, McDonalds had to pay out because somebody put coffee between there legs when driving and then spilled hot coffee on theirself...

Attorney's and Jury never fail to surprise...Rool the dice, the odds are better than Vegas, so welcome to the US civil court system.

DRC1

My Feedback: (10)

Now, if the AMA could prove that he was receiveing service from his girlfriend, then he would not have suffered any damages as he was still receiving such service from a third party...ROFLMAO...

I won a lawsuit from an insurance company failing to cover my claim thus I lost my drivers license as a result in the state of California. I won the lawsuit, but received no award because I continued to drive with out a license and never got pulled over. So I suffered no damages...Thruth be told, had I took the bus the award would have been set above $250K...prior case law supported it....Arrrggggg!!!!!

SPLIT S

Sad, just sad. I fell down, someone owes me something. They are model planes flying through the sky. Hell, there ie even a "crash and rebuild" section to RCU. Sometimes, @#$% happens, but there is always someone who wants something at the expense of someone else.

There is no common sense anymore, no respect, and no accountability for your own actions at all. Somtimes a fall is just a fall. I guess if her shoelaces were untied and she tripped on them she would sue the manufacturer of the laces, must be defective. Crap like this just makes me mad. We wonder why everyhting is so damned expensive, insurance costs so much and an aspirin at the hospital is twenty bucks. Low lifes like this, that's why.

804

My Feedback: (1)

I think you are correct.
But if a contest is held on AMA property, I would think they'd (we, as members, too) want some say on how safety is handled.
So, now we know of at least two spectator involved mishaps in a span of 4 years or so on AMA property.
Could be a total fluke that would never happen again.
But, then there is also a very near miss that happened at IRCHA last year at the night fly, also involving a spectator.

Seems to me some changes need to be made.

Arbo

It seems quite obvious the details of this case are not available, so there is a lot of grasping at straws going on around here.

Maybe there is fault, maybe there is not. Until details are available, it is all guesswork.

But I do agree that it seems most lawyers are not good or nice people... heck, that's the field most politicians come from, fwiw.

Red Scholefield

My Feedback: (9)

And they are the ones that couldn't make it with a law practice in the open market.

It has been established that one of the litigants is or was a modeler. It was also established the he and his wife traveled at least 250 miles to this event so they were not "casual spectators".

Silent-AV8R

This keeps coming up. Read this.

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm

http://www.slip-and-sue.com/the-famo...uit-revisited/

Silent-AV8R

And yet they do not get involved at all. The only requirement is to follow the Safety Code. AMA does not actively participtae in the operation of any contest that I am aware of at the IAC. Even ost NATS events are actually run by the respective SIGs.

AMA is tightening up their night flying rules. Hand held lights will no longer be allowed. They never really were but people stretched the safety code to use them.

psb667

A inexperienced heli pilot nailed himself with his own heli at the chatfield rc field last fall. I wonder if he sued.

DRC1

My Feedback: (10)

rivercityflyer

SEEMS TO ME THE PLANTIFF WOULD HAVE TO PROVE THE PILOT DONE THIS ON PURPOSE( WHICH WOULD BE PRACTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE). IT WAS JUST A ACCIDENT PROBABLY, WHICH THE PLANTIFF( BEING A MODELER)
KNOWS FULL WELL THE RISKS AT AIR SHOWS,CONTESTS,BALL GAMES OR WHATEVER.JUST MY 2 CENTS.

LUDS96

My Feedback: (23)

Struck in the shoulder and can't have sex? Hmmm

KidEpoxy

SplitS
hmm
so the person hit by a toy plane should be held accountable her action (being a target),
but the pilot that hit a person with their plane for some reason is not to be accountable for his action (hitting people)?

I disagree with your premise. The way I see it
If you hit someone with your toy airplane
you man up and take responsibility for your actions,
rather than saying its ok to hit folks with our planes
cause the folks we hit must be lowlifes if they dare to ask for us to take responsibility.

I guess according to some folks,
all it takes for any upstanding AMA members to become a low life
is for me to hit them with a plane and them wanting me to pay for the injuries I inflicted on them.

KidEpoxy

PSB
Was he injured?
Did AMA insurance pay out or did AMA fight paying it?


We've heard tales of guys getting Propped on the hand
and getting AMA insurance to pay the bills.
Even though it is OBVIOUS that the modelers in those situations were well aware of and assumed the risk of
playing with these dangerous maime&kill aerohazards we fly each weekend.
A modeler aware of hazards and assuming risk of the hobby injures himself, and the AMA pays without a lawsuit.
Yet we hear folks try to play the Assumed Risk card to avoid paying this time.
Kinda sounds like a double standard, we take care of ourselves and let the general populace bleed out in the street

mongo

My Feedback: (15)

that would be the difference in a liability policy, that covers what you might do, vs a general medical policy that covers the base costs of what happens to you.

Silent-AV8R

The AMA medical policy only covers the actual member. It is secondary to any other coverage you may have and primary if there is no other coverage. It does not cover other people, that is what the liability insurance covers.

Silent-AV8R

In the McDonalds case they did exactly that and decided that the woman was 20% liable.

smithcreek

My Feedback: (25)

The real question is "what was it about being struck by the glider that caused this loss of sexual appetite?" Most people would think that after the woman was violently struck by some strange man's long hard object the thought of conjugal relations even with her own husband is too traumatic, like Post Traumatic Stress. The second possibility, and the one I put my money on, is now that the woman has been poked by something longer than 3 inches Mr. Meeks "glider" just doesn't cut it.

Top_Gunn

My Feedback: (6)

And, after you read that stuff, read this to get the true story:

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

The trial bar keeps putting out some flatly wrong info about the McDonald's case. It really was just as nutty as people think.

GerKonig

Not a good point. Do the research. The idiot never got paid (burnt lap victim). The settlement was reversed on appeal:-) NOT PAID. Remember 80% of the awards get dismissed or reduced on appeal, particularly the crazy ones.

Gerry

mike31

My Feedback: (67)

Right on! When the rings go on the rest stops. Blood suckers is all I can think of.

RCKen

My Feedback: (9)

Ok gentlemen, the childless little jokes about sex need to stop right here and right now. Nowhere in the article did it refer to the "loss of sexual services". The wording of the article could refer to many different things, and yet this group wants to twist that into silly jokes about sex. RCU is a family friendly forum and if the members here can't refrain from making stupid locker rooms jokes about this situation I'll shut down this thread and we won't discuss it here. Several posts here have been totally out of line and have no place here. So let's discuss the incident and the lawsuit that resulted from it, and let's leave the silly jokes and comments about sex out.

Ken

KidEpoxy

Mongo & Silent
I'm aware of the two different protections offered by the same insurer.
We hear all the time about folks own medical insurance refusing to pay for XXX or YYY for some trumped up reason or other.
My point is how folks are trying to say the insurer shouldnt /doesnt have to pay when they can play the Assumed Risk card. Clearly, when there are two people that choose to expose themselves to a known risk, we just ignore the Assumed Risk excuse to not pay for one of them. To not have a double standard we should either play the Assumed Risk card to justify never paying out to anyone, or drop that hooey altogether.

Or, a better idea:
We should stop pretending to be an insurance company that claims not to be an insurance company.
Let Weschester do the fighting in court cause we are just simple landownin' toy plane folks that bought insurance,
so we dont look like chumps that fight our responsibility when we hit/maim/kill folks

Top_Gunn

My Feedback: (6)

And, for more on the propaganda about the McDonald's case, here's a FAQ about the recent movie (produced by a trial lawyer):

http://abnormaluse.com/2011/01/spill...ind-susan.html

The trial lawyers would have you believe that crazy claims never really work. They're lying. The aviation-related ones are as bad or worse than t he McDonald's case. My personal favorite was a suit against Piper by a guy who put a huge movie camera in the front seat of his Super Cub. This blocked his straight-ahead vision, of course, so, when taking off, he ran into a truck parked on the runway. This was supposed to be Piper's fault because they should have put a sign in the plane saying it shouldn't be flown when you couldn't see out the windshield. He won. Until a federal law was passed barring suits in cases involving very old planes, litigation shut down small plane manufacturing in the US for years, yet American lightplanes were the safest and easiest to fly in the world. The problem here is that when somebody gets hurt, their lawyer argues to a jury that the product could have been safer. Since all products ever made could be made safer, this amounts to telling the jury they should award damages just because somebody got hurt. That's not what the legal system is supposed to do. But juries like to give money to people. Hey, it's not their money.

So far as I know, there haven't been a lot of looney suits involving model aviation, though the one being discussed in this thread may come close: we don't really have enough detailed info to say.

Top_Gunn

My Feedback: (6)

What's our responsibility? It is not and never has been the law that you are liable to anyone your plane hits. You are liable only if you did something negligent. No liability insurer pays claims simply because someone was hurt: if they did, liability insurance would be prohibitively expensive.

Anyone arguing that this claim should be paid should point out what it was that the defendants did that was negligent. That would be hard to do on the basis of what we know. Maybe some or all of them were. But we have yet to see any evidence of that.