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Topic: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous? (Read 16821 times)

Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

I was really shocked at the recent case of a television personality who having been followed was filmed through her hotel room keyhole and caught naked when changing. How in goodness sake can a court award $55,000,000 dollars? These events are ridiculous and there have been other massive cases but this sticks in the gullet.
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #1
Will you never tire of crocheting? :)
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
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Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #2
Sewing? Yeah, that's a pain in the ass. I did laundry and discovered that the button fell off a pair of pants. So I tried to sew it back on, but had difficulty getting the thread through the needle eye. I wonder if they sell prethreaded needles and you just need to tie the right color thread to the end?
“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #3
I always check the keyhole before undressing. :left: :right:

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #4
Sewing ➜ ➜ ➜
The start and end to every story is the same. But what comes in between you have yourself to blame.

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #5

Sewing ➜ ➜ ➜

It actually took me a while to understand what the OP was saying. I thought there was a wardrobe malfunction on a pair of pants or something so that the television personality had to go and change clothes. :right:

Edit: in any case, Oak linked to a story about this

Told ya so!
Quote
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai warned consumers that free mobile video streaming might be found in violation of the agency’s new rules and that a national broadband tax could soon pop up on consumers’ Internet bills.
Net Neutrality… Sure.

(Not sure what it has to do with net neutrality, though. Wrong link, one assumes.)

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #6
Mr. Howie will be the cause of the UK becoming a republic.

Everyday he butchers the Queen's English.

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #7
The lady will never see the $55 million. Even if Marriott has to pay $27 million, which is unlikely, her attorneys will get about 40% of it.
Quote
(T)he Nashville Marriott and the company that operates it responsible for a little less than $27 million. But Andrews won’t get that amount either.

The hotel’s legal team has not yet announced their plans, but Sanders says they will ask Davidson County Circuit Court Judge Hamilton Gayden to do one of three things — overturn the whole judgment, ask for a new trial or request a reduction in damages. “It’s very rare for a judge to overturn a case like this,” says Sanders. “He’d have to believe that the jury had lost its mind.”

Many legal experts predict that the case will end in a settlement before it goes to appeals court. “If I’m the defendant, I’d make my settlement push now, because the farther this case goes, the stronger the position of Andrews becomes,” says Sanders, noting that it’s unlikely that an appellate court that wasn’t present for the original proceedings would overturn the judgment.

And...
Quote
Sanders, who practices in the same county in which this case took place, was surprised at the judgment. “Davidson County juries have a reputation for being parsimonious,” he says. “I’m shocked at the amount. There have been people who have been killed because of negligence who’ve gotten a lot less than this.”

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #8
Yes, I mistyped and know that but try and answer the point but not being born in the ex-colonies equally not brained into being thought perfect.

On a lesser infantile remark Colonel we are as much chance of being a Republic as you have of being a democracy. Years ago a person got a ten figure sum for her McDonald's coffee being too hot.

Now smart mouths explain the suing stupidity levels!
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #9
I always check the keyhole before undressing. :left: :right:

Not me. If they really wanna see that bad, they can have it. :left:
“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #10
That quote isn't mine.

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #11
How in goodness sake can a court award $55,000,000 dollars?


So it's okay to give out personal info and be a creeper? Because this seems justified. The amount is based on what the company could pay but that wasn't awarded. The bigger the company the bigger the dollar amount. That big number has got plenty of attention and I'm not upset about that. She'll be lucky to get a tenth of that when it's all over and maybe the hotel will follow their own policy next time.

Plenty of examples, like your old crutch the McDonald's coffee lady, to make this point with and you picked one that doesn't really work. Nice.

Anything else you want to add to this thread? This is going so well. :)

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #12
America it's damn ridiculous. Either at suing or sewing, it doesn't matter.
A matter of attitude.

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #13
That quote isn't mine.

Sure isn't. That was weird, fixed now.
“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal


Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #15
Always the same ensbb3 when there is no sensible answer.......
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #16

That quote isn't mine.

Sure isn't. That was weird, fixed now.

You know Barulheira that, in America, you could make midnight raccoon to pay you ... many many millions just for that.
Don't accept his gentle and educated excuses, suit him for the big bucks. That's the real American entrepeneurship style. :)

Rjowie's thread touches the point about the schizophrenic American society and the way a rotten system of justice generates no justice but social conflict.
A matter of attitude.

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #17
Years ago a person got a ten figure sum for her McDonald's coffee being too hot.

That never happened so far as I can determine. You should have provided a citation. What I found was a case where a woman sought $2,700,000 but didn't get it.

Quote
Liebeck didn’t actually get anywhere near that amount of money, at least as far as public record goes. The judge in the case reduced the punitive damages to $480,000, bringing the total judgement down to $640,000. Both sides appealed the decision, but their appeals were never heard as they agreed to an undisclosed settlement during mediation, thought to have been under $600,000.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/07/truth-infamous-mcdonalds-hot-coffee-incident/

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #18
That never happened so far as I can determine. You should have provided a citation. What I found was a case where a woman sought $2,700,000 but didn't get it.

The famous case (which you're also referring to) is this one.

The jury damages included $160,000[3] to cover medical expenses and compensatory damages and $2.7 million in punitive damages. The trial judge reduced the final verdict to $640,000, and the parties settled for a confidential amount before an appeal was decided.


This blog post seeks to set the record straight on some false beliefs regarding the coffee case.

I have to say warning that coffee is hot sounds a lot like warning that peanut butter contains peanuts. It's interesting (sad?) that people apparently add spurious details like that the woman was driving (which she wasn't), but you have to wonder how this made it to court at all.

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #19
It's interesting (sad?) that people apparently add spurious details like that the woman was driving (which she wasn't), but you have to wonder how this made it to court at all.


Why would it being heard be a problem tho? Even knowing the outcome wasn't the same as what passed into urban legend we don't know all the how's and why's enough to pass any kind of judgement. These corporations play the villains in other threads. Well except the Apple vs FBI one. Suddenly Apple is some kind of hero now. So maybe this has more to do with how it's covered than any real issues at all? Couldn't that be why it's as common as it is? People never hear the outcomes and assume that ridiculous thing happened.

Always the same ensbb3 when there is no sensible answer.

You may wanna get checked out, sir. Looks like you had a mild stroke with this one.

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #20
I -of course- agree with Howie on this one: A girl was filmed being naked! How could that happen? :)

She wants millions of dollars, because she was filmed? And she thinks the hotel should "protect" her from every miscreant and pervert…? (Where -in the contract for providing accommodations- does that clause appear?) The hotel got scammed, she got stalked…
Prosecute the stalker and the scammer.

I see no reason to blame the hotel.

And I'd add (even though I've not seen her naked) that the monetary value she places upon her "privacy" is not likely realistic!
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #21
Why would it being heard be a problem tho?

Spurious cases should be thrown out because otherwise the defendant has to waste time and money. Just about the only way in which I can construe 90°C coffee as too hot, for example, is if they offered to make new coffee because it's been sitting out for a while but the customer rejected the offer. You might then call this misleading because you wouldn't expect coffee to be kept at a freshly brewed temperature, but rather at 80°C or so (which isn't much cooler…). Another way in which McDonald's might be called negligent is if they used horrible plastic cups that can easily spill coffee when you squeeze them a little too tight or something. So I suppose it's a bit of a question of phrasing as well. For example, if you use a certain type of cup, the coffee shouldn't be more than 60°C (which can still cause third-degree burns!). But the idea of coffee being served at 90°C in and of itself is normally not negligent, but expected of fresh coffee.

Unfortunately I can't seem to find the actual case files online (findlaw.com seems to be broken), but this link is useful because it quotes a lot. It does allege that the "container … had design defects", but it doesn't specify in which way.

I see no reason to blame the hotel.

I can't be bothered to read up on it, but just because someone was scammed doesn't mean they weren't (somewhat) negligent in what they could've done to avoid being scammed. I think that in the relevant American legal language you could, for example, say that the scammer is 90% guilty and the hotel 10%.

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #22
And another point on the hotel. There has to be a limit as to what one can expect from such a business. Are they going to have people on every floor for example to walk about? The whole sum is utterly scandalous and there will be a very robust challenge and rightly so.
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #23
Spurious cases should be thrown out because otherwise the defendant has to waste time and money.


Naturally I agree. Especially in cases regarding individual's. But these are corporate cases. I'm sure there's enough evidence to support what the OP suggests but has failed to articulate. I'd even agree to an extent because of experience, tho, I reject the conclusions drawn from the OP's case and subsequent brain fart.

There's reasons you'd keep liability insurance and workman's compensation, but also adopt policies that reduce your liability in given circumstances. This is part of business. In the OP's case, that someone was able to find out she was staying at the hotel, and what room, then book the room beside her is directly due to negligence that by law the hotel is responsible for. The lady was after all under the impression that wasn't a thing that could happen. Turns out the lady is a mild celebrity too and 20m people have seen her naked, websites have monetized it and she's been forced to explain it wasn't intentional on tv. So may be the emotional consequences are extreme. Not like people stalking and killing celebs is a thing either, right? These are the clients the hotel serves so are liable regardless of the extreme. Just like McDonald's serves 70yo ladies and 5yo toddlers so I'd expect them to have policies that reduce their liability in service of those clients. like sturdy enough containers for a hot beverage. Sure it has passed into lore 22yrs later as a case of stupid shit that happens everyone knows coffee is hot. Some of it is based on inaccurate information and, like you, I can see where liability could of been a thing if the container was at fault. So I disagree this corporate case wasn't worth hearing. And anyways now we get to see how these things are remembered, with nothing more than they settled as a ruling. In the OP's case we have a ruling by jury that supposedly could understand the emotional distress (probably mostly women). And they awarded more money than existed. But... it can be seen as a result of the extreme circumstances. So I'm not convinced this fits the case the OP is making. Personally I wouldn't care. I lack the modesty needed to worry who sees my junk. May be why my immediate judgments might not be relevant here like turns out in the McDonald's case. 

There's plenty wrong with law firms advertising to sue corporations as well as corporations suing every time they want to bend laws to their will. And how these things are remembered has got to have a baring on how common private lawsuits are as well. Getting to that may work towards an answer of why it is as it is. Something the OP suggests he's after - but wouldn't hear any of. So far we've looked at two extreme examples spanning 22years from *different States.

*(Oh let's not get into that.)

Re: Isn't sewing for ridiculous amounts damn ridiculous?

Reply #24
There has to be a limit as to what one can expect from such a business.

I'd agree. But then you jump straight to ridiculous. How about start with not giving out personal information about guests? Had this guy found out she was there by roaming the halls and simply asked to be booked in a specific room for reasons unknown the hotel's liability would be nill.