Shipper griped about securement, threatened to remove the load..

Werner is appealing that and they will win..the lady was 100% at fault even according to tx dps..she came across the highway and caused the accident..the accident occurred near Odessa but the woman apparently went jury shopping in harris county.(Houston)..

 

I don't have tic took but I saw it on some of the national news shows
This was probably before your time .. but pretty sure it was mid 80's some soccer mom sued the daylights out of McDonald's because she went thru the drive up and got a coffee and it spilled on her leg and burnt her she cashed in big time I mean real big .. so after she won McDonald's lowered the temp of their coffee and put warning labels on the containers and put the spill proof lids on their coffee containers
If I remember right her defense was she didn't know the coffee was hot ? ... WHAT IN THE EVER LIVING F.....

 

Yeah she was a real brain child..

 

While I agree that the 4 wheeler driver was 100% at fault I'm not convinced Warner will win. Oh they might get damages reduced sure, but they never should have gotten that judgement anyway.

 

Do a quick search for "shipper responsible for crash". The first 10 results will be law firms explaining exactly how the law holds shippers legally liable for cargo related accidents.

Even if the shipper had nothing to do with the accident, the plaintiff will try and include as many defendants as possible. Beyond looking for deep pockets they're looking for discovery and depositions. The more rocks they look under, the more likely they are to find something.

In the Werner case, a big part of the closing argument was the trainee wasn't allowed to use the CB. That is not in any way shape or form related to the accident, but it supports the idea that the trainee "wasn't qualified". Little details like that can make huge differences.


Even if the shipper is ultimately held harmless, they still have to defend themselves which takes time and money that could be better spent. Qnd who knows what will be found during that defense? If you have time, take a dive into the Willis case from the mid 90s. Unsecured freight killed a family and it resulted in decades of lawsuits and federal corruption probes that were completely unrelated. Once the first string was pulled the entire sweater falls apart. It's like the drug dealer getting pulled over for their license plate light being out - a simple thing leads to big trouble. So why court disaster?

Moving away from accident liability, the shipper also risks liability for damaged goods.

At its most basic, a damage claim gets worked out between the shipper and the carrier. The carrier is going to try and claim the damage was caused by loading, the shipper will claim the driver is a fault. Eventually it gets worked out, but it takes time - call it ten hours of the shippers time. So even if the carrier pays for all the damage costs, the shipper is still out $200, minimum. Or just under half of a typical TONU fee. And that's assuming it stays out of the courts. A five minute hissy fit and an hour pulling the load back off can still leave the shipper money ahead.

Now let's look at a more complicated area - the purchase contract between Builder Bob and Lumber Larry.

Bob agrees to buy W wood from Larry at price P. Larry agrees to deliver said wood with a defect rate of less than 5%. If the defect rate goes over 5%, then Bob only has to pay 98% of P, which will kill Larry's margin. When this load shipped, Larry has fulfilled 90% the contract and is at a 4% defect rate, half off which came from 1 poorly secured load. Larry knows that he needs to be perfect down the stretch in order to fulfill the contract terms. Larry wants to fulfill the contract so he makes a profit, but hopefully can secure another contract. Failing with Bob could impact the viability of his business.

Say Larry ultimately doesn't meet the defect rate - besides losing his profit he might get sued.

Say Bob is a bad builder and doesn't meet his own customer's requirements. Bob can sue Larry claiming that the defective wood caused his own default. It didn't, but Bob can make the claim and have a decent chance of making it stick.

Bob also doesn't necessarily need to win the lawsuit to achieve his aims. Sometimes just filing suit will will work.
What we know the Ascension, ThedaCare court battle over employees
The hospital sued, not because they thought they could win, but in hopes they could get a temporary restraining order. The hospital needed to have a certain number of qualified staff not just in the building but also on call. That TRO gave them a couple of days to rearrange staffing so their accreditation wouldn't be risked.

In a more personal case, there was a student who had a run in with a gym teacher. Nothing serious, neither was right, both were at fault. This student had a "history" and was well on the road to expulsion on different issues. By filing a lawsuit against the district, the district was effectively blocked from taking disciplinary actions and was forced to pay for the kid to go to the neighboring high-school (with his disciplinary record sealed) while the case proceeded. The plantiffs dragged their feet until the punk graduated and got into college. At which point they dropped the lawsuit. It probably cost them $30-50,000 to bring and maintain the lawsuit - significantly less than what it would have cost them to send him to boarding school for two years.

 

Thats not a fully fair reading of it, she was 79 year old that accidentally spilled some coffee cause *as a passenger in a NON-MOVING CAR* she was adding creamer/sugar and it slipped since the cups those days were garbage*, but she also suffered 3rd degree burns on her pelvic region and was hospitalized for 8 days...

She initially sued for 20k, to cover the medical bills, are you serious that you wouldnt at minimum want to recover medical costs for skin grafts on your member?



Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants - Wikipedia

Edit: Corrected my misstatement about the lids sucking, they did but wasnt the cause. And added editorial on burning your crotch

 

Ok Thank you for correcting me ..
Still.my point is She got a F...ton.of money because she spilled hot coffee on her self
How about everytime I bust my knuckles I call my lawyer and file a lawsuit on Snap-on because it was their tool that cause my injury when it slipped off the bolt or nut..
Feel free to enlighten me the differences !

 

The main difference? That McDonalds specifically was told at least twice by the local health department for selling coffee too hot. McDonalds ignored the health department because it sold more coffee. And let's not compare it with skinned knuckles. She had to get skin grafts as she got 3rd degree burns. You know, the kind of burns one gets when they are caught in a fire. This wasn't some minor discomfort here.

 

If you cant see the difference between a company selling liquid that will frequently be at 5-10 degrees under boiling and almost inevitably inches from peoples crotches versus using wrenches in your shop, im pretty sure theres absolutely nothing i can say that will convince you youre wrong.

A more apt analogy would be if say you bought a scissors and along with the packing peanuts, the company policy was to sprinkle razor blades in the box.

The reason she won was because mcdonalds showed a marked callousness and indeed malice towards their customers, their own legal team said it was a policy that needed changing because in the last 10 years they had over 800 suits brought against them for bodily harm from a drink... a drink they could have just fixed the temperature on. It wasnt in their interests to have it that hot, they just didnt want to have to fix (retrofit) all the machines, and it was not only ongoing, they didnt bother to fix the problem even on a equipment replacement basis for a decade. Their defense was "coffee is hot" her case was "literally no one can drink boiling water without severe injury"

Its a matter of degree (s).

 

If you were fully tarped already how did he see how you secured the load???