Pure Idiocy - The American Tort System

[Asher]

Originally posted by Berzerker
but to blame the manufacturer approaches silliness.

I blame the designer, not the manufacturer.

To design a gun where you have to remove the safety to disarm it (and make it even more safe) is approaching the point of silliness.

[Tuberski]

You did read where this case took place right?

In Texas, they probably wouldn't have been found liable, but this is San Francisco.

ACK!

[David Floyd]

And if I was drunk, talking on the cell phone, masturbating and ogling the girls out my side window it wouldn't matter.

Ford designed a ****ty-ass gas tank and pays the price when an idiot hits someone driving a Ford pickup. The fact is that engineers need to make a product as safe as possible. Saving a few bucks by making you take off the safety more than necessary is an idiotic design fix. The gun company should pay the price when their cheapness comes around and bites them in the ass.

Yes, but the scenario is different. In the car example, one can rear end another vehicle even while following every imaginable method of safe, defensive driving. Some things are just unavoidable. And some things aren't. You can't predict, when you're designing a gun, what every idiot will do, and design safety features to accomodate all those idiots. There is plenty of safety literature out there, to say nothing of common sense, for people to know not to point a gun, loaded or unloaded at anyone else, ever, even if it is just while maintaining the firearm.

Furthermore, there is another difference. There are federal regulations for the design and manufacture of gasoline tanks, and virtually every other aspect of automobile design. How much you wanna bet some of those regulations were violated? But you know how many regulations were violated by the gun manufacturer? None that I'm aware of, and if there were, then I'll be more than happy to back down my argument.

[Asher]

Originally posted by David Floyd
Yes, but the scenario is different. In the car example, one can rear end another vehicle even while following every imaginable method of safe, defensive driving.

Untrue -- if you rear-end you clearly weren't keeping a safe following distance. I think that's against the law too.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Berzerker
C'mon, the babysitter was trying to unload the thing with his finger on the trigger and pointing it at the kid!!!
Sure, if the thing could be unloaded with the safety on this might not have happened (I'm assuming the babysitter wouldn't have clicked the safety off and pulled the trigger with the chamber still loaded), but to blame the manufacturer approaches silliness.

No it doesn't

Let me tell you about where my girlfriend works

She's a medical physicist at a hospital in Montreal. She spends a lot of her day around machines designed to irradiate cancer patients.

To turn on any of the machines there are 6 sets of interlocks which prevent her from accidentally getting dosed by some idiot, despite the fact that the only people with access to the control room have undergone at least 3 years of training as radiological technicians.

Compare this with guns sold to the general public.

Now imagine that the designer of the machine made the design such that my girlfriend had to engage all 6 interlocks to reposition one of the machines and some idiot turned on the thing (despite the fact that she could be seen via video monitor. Is the manufacturer responsible? Hell yes.

[David Floyd]

Tub,

If this manufacturer had made the gun idiot proof, the kid wouldn't have been paralyzed.

You are handing out blame and responsibility where it doesn't belong. Without the idiot violating gun safety procedures, this wouldn't have happened. If he'd accidentally flipped the safety from on to off, there would still be people out there wanting to hold the manufacturer liable for not including trigger locks, or handprint signatures, or something else to make it even more idiot proof.

I will say this, though - you build me an idiot proof anything, and I'll find you an idiot to defeat it.

Cars are designed to be in accidents because people are ****wits and get into accidents.

True, but the level of incompetence required to accidentally rear end someone, and the level of incompetence required to accidentally shoot someone are on two entirely different planes of idiocy.

[KrazyHorse]

Partially,by the way. The idiot is also partially responsible.

[David Floyd]

Untrue -- if you rear-end you clearly weren't keeping a safe following distance. I think that's against the law too.

While that's the law, it isn't necessarily the reality. People can slam on their brakes suddenly on the highway, they can pull out in front of you and slam on their brakes, you can get rear-ended by someone and pushed into someone else, etc., etc., etc. There are numerous ways to rear end someone without being all that idiotic.

KH,

Now imagine that the designer of the machine made the design such that my girlfriend had to engage all 6 interlocks to reposition one of the machines and some idiot turned on the thing (despite the fact that she could be seen via video monitor. Is the manufacturer responsible? Hell yes.

I would imagine there are federal safety regulations regarding the manufacture of machines that emit radiation, not to mention the whole set of regulations that go with working in a facility receiving federal funding. You are again comparing apples and oranges.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by David Floyd


Yes, but the scenario is different. In the car example, one can rear end another vehicle even while following every imaginable method of safe, defensive driving. Some things are just unavoidable. And some things aren't. You can't predict, when you're designing a gun, what every idiot will do, and design safety features to accomodate all those idiots. There is plenty of safety literature out there, to say nothing of common sense, for people to know not to point a gun, loaded or unloaded at anyone else, ever, even if it is just while maintaining the firearm.

Furthermore, there is another difference. There are federal regulations for the design and manufacture of gasoline tanks, and virtually every other aspect of automobile design. How much you wanna bet some of those regulations were violated? But you know how many regulations were violated by the gun manufacturer? None that I'm aware of, and if there were, then I'll be more than happy to back down my argument.

Umm, according to this article:

Bryco Arms Files for Bankruptcy
7/14/2003


Bryco Arms, the Costa Mesa, Calif., gunmaker that was recently found liable in an unintentional shooting, has filed for bankruptcy and may shut down its operations, the Daily Pilot reported July 8.

Bryco Arms, which makes low-price handguns, sought bankruptcy protection more than a month ago. "Theoretically, they could put together a plan and reorganize," said Ned Nashban, Bryco's bankruptcy lawyer. "It's too early to tell."

A few months ago, an Oakland, Calif., jury found Bryco Arms 10 percent liable and three gun distributors 35 percent liable in the 1994 unintentional shooting of Brandon Maxfield. A friend of Maxfield's shot him in the jaw as he was trying to unload a 38-caliber Bryco handgun.

The company's guns had a reputation for jamming.

Richard Ruggieri, who represented Maxfield, said Bryco's bankruptcy should serve as a warning for all gun manufacturers that produce flawed weapons. He said Bryco allocated minimal resources to test their guns to ensure safe operation.

"If anything forces them out of business, it's their arrogant failure to consult an engineer," Ruggieri said. "It's beyond irresponsible. It's parasitic."


Oops. Read the bolded parts.

ACK!

[David Floyd]

I'm not sure how the article adds anything new to the discussion. Could they have designed it differently? Sure, probably so, although I'll defer to the experts. Does/should that make them liable for idiots? No, I don't think so.

[Asher]

Well, we think so.

[KrazyHorse]

DF: the fact is that the gun manufacturer could have easily designed a gun which is like many (most?) guns in that it can be unloaded with the safety on. They decided to be cheap and their product killed somebody. Doesn't matter that there was an idiot in between the manufacture and the death; if they'd done one simple thing which seems to me to be pretty damn obvious the kid wouldn't have gotten shot by the idiot.

If I were an engineer I would never put something as foolhardy as that into my design. Engineers have public responsibility above and beyond the letter of the law as members of a profession entrusted with the safety of manufactured products. The law doesn't have to say "must be able to be unloaded with safety on" for the engineer to be held liable.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by David Floyd
I would imagine there are federal safety regulations regarding the manufacture of machines that emit radiation, not to mention the whole set of regulations that go with working in a facility receiving federal funding. You are again comparing apples and oranges.

No I'm not.

As far as I know there are no federal or provincial regulations mandating the specific design and safety requirements of the machines. There are certainly none that mandate what precautions must be built in to prevent that type of accident.

That is what civil courts are for.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by David Floyd
I'm not sure how the article adds anything new to the discussion. Could they have designed it differently? Sure, probably so, although I'll defer to the experts. Does/should that make them liable for idiots? No, I don't think so.

This is a company that makes Saturday night specials. They can crank out 6000 cheap guns a day.

Yet, they don't have a design engineer? No expert in gun design?

They are also only 10% liable, which isn't too harsh.

Read more here.

ACK!

[David Floyd]

They decided to be cheap and their product killed somebody.

Again, WRONG. The product performed EXACTLY to specs. The babysitter killed someone, first by picking up a gun, which he obviously knew little about, then by pointing it at a person, which even basic common sense should tell you not to do, and then, finally, by pulling the trigger.

The law doesn't have to say "must be able to be unloaded with safety on" for the engineer to be held liable.

And that's part of the problem I have. The design was not illegal, and the design was not even unsafe. To be unsafe, the design would have to cause the gun either a)to go off by itself, or b)not to perform to specs in some other way resulting in actual or potential harm. Neither was the case. The gun did not go off by itself, nor did it fail to perform as every other gun performs.