Man rescued from submerged car sues dive team.

[dmoore19]

The guy is alive. He got rescued. He is ahead of the game IMO. Most of the places around here have volunteer fire and rescue. If I was a volunteer and opened myself to law suits I would be an idiot. I would hang it up and not have a second thought about it.

On another note, there had been flash flood warnings for hours if not a day or 2 before this happened. I have not sympathy for his position and consider him an ingrate and a leech.

 

[tridacna]

That is the problem with this country. Too many people don't want to take responsibility for their own actions. It's easier to blame someone else or some outside force than to own up to their own stupidity. Of course it doesn't help matters any when you have radio advertisements such as 411 Pain or 1800 Ask Gary playing all day and night. Not to mention all of the lawyer ads on TV advertising about all these class action lawsuits. People want to get rich quick and unfortunately they are too dumb to realize that the only people making money in these situations are the lawyers.

The problem with this statement is that those same people who "WANT to take responsibility for their own actions" are the FIRST lined up at the lawyer's door when something happens to them. I have yet to see someone of any political ilk refuse to sue when the almighty $ beckons. They then become indignant about how things ought to be made safer in this great country to protect us from evil corporations. It's incredible. Money talks, BS walks.

 

[Mike]

We're not talking about Good Samaritan protection here. He was a trained public service diver. At least in the hypothetical I gave. A doctor misses something because he doesn't follow established procedure and its called malpractice. You have no problem seeing a lawsuit there. But a professional rescuer does the same thing and you get in a huff about a suit.

Yes, you are correct.

Looking at what is wrong in the medical field, the high cost of health care, the ridiculous cover your ass mentality that hospitals and doctors have to adhere to through protection of extortion of medical malpractice insurance is a symptom of the problem of frivolous lawsuits in this country.

Attorneys all admit there are too many of them in this country and they all either have to compete for the small pie of acceptable wrongs needing to be righted, or they generate a larger pie by ambulance chasing through creation of TV commercials educating 'victims' that they are victims and the pay off is how they can get them large sums of money if they just call now.

73% of voters say lawyers benefit the most from lawsuits; only 4% say victims do.

America’s civil justice system is the world’s most expensive in the world

Tort costs were $838 per U.S. citizen in 2008, meaning a family of four paid a “litigation tax” of $3,352 for the U.S. civil justice system, a cost driven up due to increased costs from lawsuits and other liability expenses that force businesses to raise the price of products and services.

The cost of the U.S. tort liability system as a percentage of GDP is more than double the average cost of any other industrialized nation.

You may not agree with minor points of this, but the overall truth to the matter is in America there is a problem with our society in regard to lawsuits, that's undeniable.

There is no denying that lawsuits serve a purpose in our society. When someone has been undeniably wronged and justice must be served then a lawsuit can be viewed as justifiable. Nobody has a problem with the 20% of lawsuits that fit that criteria, its the 80% of the rest that are on the fringe or just out right obvious money grabs that are the problem. People like yourself use an argument that the 80% are not a problem as long as along with the collateral damage you protect the ability to still be able to litigate the reasonable 20%. People like the rest of us want the legitimate 20% to remain, but we want the ridiculous 80% of unjustified, unreasonable lawsuits to be reduced.

 

[nimoh]

What you are saying is easier said than done. As I mentioned above, when having multiple cars to search and very few divers on scene (large county), we have to search and move on. Now the way we searched the vehicles, the only way a diver would have missed (in my experience) was if he was in the trunk or curled up under the dash (child size). We asked owners of the vehicle before hand if they saw anyone or was traveling with anyone. If nothing or no one is found, then we wait for conditions to get better and then start towing the cars out.

There was no indication in the story that there were multiple cars, or that the guy was in the trunk. But yes, I agree there are many other factors that can complicate things which is why I said that there is not enough information to know if the rescuers were negligent...and I doubt that they were.

 

[AfterDark]

Has no good deed goes unpunished been mentioned yet?

 

[kwinter]

You may not agree with minor points of this, but the overall truth to the matter is in America there is a problem with our society in regard to lawsuits, that's undeniable.

Nope, I agree with all of it. Does that surprise you? When someone is truly wronged, there needs to be recourse through a lawsuit. Frivolous suits are the bane of our legal system. I am strongly in favor of "loser pays" to get rid of this ridiculous burden we all end up bearing. But I refuse to judge the validity of a claim based on one side of a story or the limited facts in a news report (especially Fox News). My entire hypothetical was intended to wake people up to the fact that there MIGHT be a valid claim.

There is no denying that lawsuits serve a purpose in our society. When someone has been undeniably wronged and justice must be served then a lawsuit can be viewed as justifiable. Nobody has a problem with the 20% of lawsuits that fit that criteria, its the 80% of the rest that are on the fringe or just out right obvious money grabs that are the problem. People like yourself use an argument that the 80% are not a problem as long as along with the collateral damage you protect the ability to still be able to litigate the reasonable 20%. People like the rest of us want the legitimate 20% to remain, but we want the ridiculous 80% of unjustified, unreasonable lawsuits to be reduced.

I doubt your stats. I think the legitimate ones are probably less than 20%.

 

[KevWind]

He is a Illegal in the US according to Fox News. ICE need to come in deported back to his home country. He very unthankful for someone saving his life if he going to sue the Dive Team.

Whoa !!!! Check out the actual Gretchen Carlson interview, it becomes readily apparent she interesting braying agenda nonsense as opposed to finding fact.

The Real Story With Gretchen Carlson | Fox News

First it is absurd for any us to be making conclusions or statements without actual facts of evidence. It's doubly absurd to make a false statements as if fact ......It has not yet actually been established as fact weather Ortiz is documented or not . Not to mention it is also irrelevant under US law.

In point of fact Fox News Gretchen Carlson only establish that.
A. She is capable of interrupting and cutting off any answer to her questions if she doesn't like where the answer is heading.
B. She is willing to slip in an accusation " that the lawyer told her during break he THOUGHT Ortiz might be undocumented" then end the interview before allowing the lawyer to respond .

Sorry that kind of agenda driven, cherry picked, out of context , soap box pandering being called "news" is not only despicable, it is in fact much more of symptom of what is wrong with the country than frivolous law suits .

 

[tridacna]

The only redeeming thing about this thread is that it is NOT in the pub! By now, the post count would be above 1,000 with political mudslinging all over. Wait...mudslinging already happening! That Fox "interview" was fabulous. Hard to imagine why "our viewers want to know" about whether he is a citizen or not. His lawyer explained that under CO law, he was obligated to file as he did. but Greta is only interested in scoring points from the "undocumented alien scumsucker suing his heroic life savers". Problem is that the facts would not make this interesting at all. The lawyer's mistake was agreeing to be on the show. Not much upside for him or his client. Especially on Fox.

 

[dmoore19]

Ah yes, the evil Fox. The source of all things evil and dastardly in the US at this point in time.

 

[tridacna]

Ah yes, the evil Fox. The source of all things evil and dastardly in the US at this point in time.

I agree.