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From: ix21@sdccs6.UUCP (David Whiteman)
Newsgroups: net.auto
Subject: Re: Who is Liable?!
Message-ID: <1445@sdccs6.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 29-Apr-84 07:28:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdccs6.1445
Posted: Sun Apr 29 07:28:00 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 30-Apr-84 00:42:11 EDT
References: <131@oliven.UUCP>
Organization: UCSD Medical School
Lines: 32

I wanted to put my 2 cents into this subject before someone yells
that this discussion should be moved to net.legal.

From a newspaper article I read suggesting that they are too many
lawyers and too much litigation which pushes up auto insurance
premiums. This is a true incident.

A man with a suspended license, no insurance, and a brake line he
knew to be in need of immediate repair, was speeding home from a
party when he illegally passed another vehicle.  When a police car
began giving chase, the driver sped up.  (He would later testify
that his accelerator pedal stuck.)  Careening along at eighty miles
per hour, without brakes, he approached a set of flashing red lights
and saw  an oncoming train.  With police lights flashing behind him
and railroad-crossing lights flashing in front, he closed his eyes.
The train sent his car hurtling through the air.  A man was in a
phone booth nearby.  The car went flying into the phone booth,
shattering the man's leg. which would later be amputated.  The
driver suffered a cut on his forehead.  Far from losin HIS legs, he
used them to run from the scene of the accident.  He turned himself
in an hour later.  He was uninsured and owned no appreciable assets.

Guess who was held liable.  The speeding driver? The policeman or
the police department?  The train company?

No the telephone company was ordered by the jury to pay damages
($216,761).  A dangerous place, the jury felt, to locate a phone
booth.

I really wish I could place a -) in my article, but this is a true
story.