Posted on 10/10/2005 12:18:00 PM PDT by Graybeard58
A drunken freshman at the University of Kansas thwarts the school's smoking ban by crawling out on the ledge outside of his dormitory, where he lights up, takes a drag and falls seven stories to his death. As much as most people would see this as a cleansing of the gene pool, the trial lawyers see this as another opportunity to exploit tragedy for personal enrichment.
The teenager's family has sued the school, claiming it should have done more to protect their son from his own stupidity. The lawsuit naturally doesn't detail what precautionary steps should have been taken, nor does it point out his blood-alcohol level was 0.16 -- twice the intoxication standard in Kansas -- at the time of his autopsy.
As it is, common sense dictates there are many better places to smoke on a college campus than narrow seventh-story ledges. The school provides written warnings to all students that they face disciplinary action and fines if they take the screens off their windows and go out on the ledges. Since the fatality, the school has posted stickers on all windows reiterating its ledge policy. The university even thought about welding the screens to the window casings, but the fire code would not permit it.
This lawsuit seems destined for an out-of-court settlement that will make a University of Kansas education more expensive while encouraging trial lawyers to continue to sue on the flimsiest possible grounds in hopes of getting their one-third cut, plus expenses, of judicial extortion. Dubious cases such as this cry out for tort-law reforms requiring losers of lawsuits to pay both sides' legal costs.
yep. them stickers ought to do it.
Give me a break, the school could have closed the windows and received a waiver from the fire code. They will for certain now. But I would not give the student's family one penny in a lawsuit. He was negligent, not the school or the dorm.
Looks like the Surgeon General is going to have to modify the warning label to include Decelleration Trauma and Concrete Poisoning.
Hotboxing chronic in the Women's & Lesbian Studies prof's car sounds better.
"yep. them stickers ought to do it"
People that are too stupid for basic survival skills are too stupid to read/understand/or comply with a sticker.
Or, as a another Freeper put it "Evolution stops when stupidity ceases to be fatal"
PS, I know you were not being sarcastic, stickers, like band-aids, fix everything :)
Maybe if they had designated smoking areas, including heated, ventilated shelters for wintertime, drunken and sober students wouldn't be motivated to crawl out on their ledge for a cigarette.
The fire code requirement for two ways of escape out of any bedroom is nearly universal.
I have been hung out of higher windows with a higher BA. I just don't have the autopsy report to prove it.
The little man on my shoulder told me it was pretty high. The Little Man on my shoulder has been trying to kill me for years. I think I have out lived him.
This would interfere with the "Groupthink Project."
Am I really the first to say "Smoking kills" on this thread? lol
I am the first to say being born leads to death? We start to die the minute we are born. Some just go sooner than later.
I dropped out of college and went into the Army at 19. So they are not kids if they are old enough to be soliders or marines. They might be stupid, hell I have been stupid all my life and I am almost 50.
Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. And I have been both at different times.
"If you are going to be STUPID, you gotta be TOUGH!"
I'm no fan of universities, but I hope they can sue the family for wasting valuable resources on such a frivvy case.
Sorry, you midunderstood - I wasn't taking up for the idiot kid, I was merely trying to humiliate you for being 48 and still acting like a kid.......;^)
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