Quote:
Originally Posted by thecoalman
Certainly they have, I can only assume I've been around a lot longer than yourself and can remember when every playground had the big sliding board. I can also remember when the local swimming pool had a not only a diving board but a high dive <gasp>.
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Oh no, I'm well aware that playgrounds have changed from metal to synthetic materials. I remember them myself in the early to mid 80's. What I'm saying is that the opinion piece doesn't link "frivolous lawsuits" to that material change, not that there hasn't been one. The rest of my post acknowledges that there was a change, so I'll just assume you responded to this without first reading the entire post. It happens.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thecoalman
I think the definition of frivolous varies quite widely between what a lawyer thinks and you're average person thinks. We'll take the diving board for example which is inherently dangerous, if little Johnny is a klutz and climbs the high dive and slips off and breaks his neck because he's a klutz is that negligence? Certainly not, now if he climbs the ladder and the railing falls off while he's climbing that is negligence.
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A "frivolous" suit is one without legal merit.
If he sues, it would make it to trial only if there's a dispute of fact. For instance, Johnny could allege in his complaint something was defective with the diving board and the organization/person that owned the diving board could deny in its answer that there were was no such defect. That's a dispute of fact, and, again, there needs to be one to get to trial.
Moreover, Pennsylvania is a "fact-pleading" state, so the lawyer would have to plead specific facts in his complaint to support his allegation of a defective diving board. If there are no facts, then the suit would be tossed well before trial. The lawyer only gets paid if he recovers in this situation, so there's no reason he would take the case in the first place if there wasn't an honest dispute here.
If the lawsuit truly had merit, for instance, there might be a genuine dispute of fact concerning the condition of the diving board, then that's not a frivolous lawsuit. "Inherently dangerous" or not, I think diving boards should at least be kept in good condition. If I were injured in a diving board accident, I would at least investigate to ascertain whether a defective diving board was the cause. And if was, then there's absolutely no reason I shouldn't be able to recover from whoever either manufactured, installed, or maintained the diving board.
We could grant immunity to local governments and municipalities with diving boards in their swimming pools, but I think there would be an outrage if someone was injured by a faultily maintained diving board and the local government couldn't be held liable even though it was clearly at fault.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thecoalman
The issue is since we have a few klutzy Johnnies in the world that do not belong on the high dive in the first place we punish everyone and not have a high dive at all and in a lot cases no dive.
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Organizations and people that fail to properly maintain their diving boards deserve to lose lawsuits. I think the real culprit is the insurance companies, who jack up their rates on all diving boards because a few bad apples didn't maintain theirs properly. This rate-increase prices out a lot of organizations who can't afford the insurance. Insurance company reform is where the real action is.
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If this is really a big concern for people, then we could just pass insurance company reform in this area.
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