mitch912

I work for a fortune 500 company and frequently deal with product liability issues from the technical aspect, in support of our legal folks. I can say without reservation that American companies are constantly targeted with suits based on irresponsibility and plain fraud.

Over the past 10 years I cannot recall a single suit where there was true liability. Where true liability exists, our company deals with the problem quickly and fairly. Most are simply people looking for someone to blame for their own misfortunes, whether they resulted from their own negligence or just bad luck. We have created a mentality where every misfortune must be somebody's fault, and that the unfortunate is somehow entitled to compensation.

There were a number of cases where the lawyers failed to do even minimal due diligence and were stuck with nut cases for clients. Years ago we stopped one line of suits by going after the lawyers $ - when the judge threw the case out, we filed for sanctions against the law firm and our company was awarded a rather large amount - because the lawyer should have known his clients were scam artists, with a lengthy trail of 14 liability suits through 4 states If other companies would take this approach, a lot of these frivolous cases would stop.

I am currently involved in 2 cases where people were simply unfortunate, through absolutely no one's fault - bad things sometimes happen to good people, but the lawyers have promised them they can make them rich. In neither case is there is any known, or even any suspected medical link between their condition, but the lawyers have dangled the $ in front of them. These we will fight with everything we have.

Where true liability exists, the company should pay, but we must somehow retrain our society to take responsibility for our own actions.

Just as I move toward retirement, and will have time catch every show ! Looking forward to building some of the most difficult projects - lowboy and highboy. Well, at least I have a number of the videos.

Norm, thanks for many years of enjoyment and learning.

Carey Mitchell