SummitPost.org

Oh no, here comes my tort reform rant. Tort is much more impactful on our lives than just our climbing gear could possibly reflect. Liability caps are a must regarding all products and industries. A universal cap must be established for a human life as cold as that sounds. For a human leg. For a human hand. For a human back. Etc. Yes, let the dude make his plastic biners. Reputation and common sense is what sells good gear. Dude makes a bad product, people die and get hurt, he obviously won't last long based on reputation and credibility alone. There is no such thing as a perfect world. Americans need to come to grip with that reality, terrorism and every other which way. Making folks remove their shoes in the airport is going to far for example. When it comes to health care, grandma can't get multiple hip replacements on the gov dole while at the same time the gov is trying to save infants with chronic diseases. We simply don't have the resources to make a perfect world. I am all for trying to minimize the insurance industry, but that goes hand in hand with capping lawyers as well. When every billboard, tv ad and phone book advertisement in your town is leased by a liability lawyer.....I would say your local economy is a little lopsided in re-distributing wealth from those who produce to those who do not. I personally would never consider manufacturing any device that relied on someone competent to use it properly or risk injury. I am glad there are those out there willing to work for such margins minus legal/insurance costs. In the end, we the consumer-society pay for it all anyway.

I own a shiney Rack and a clean Rope therefore I am an expert climber....Right!

Three points first off:

1. Wow, there is a LOT of misinformation about products liability from the posters on this site.

2. MikeTX and Fortmental are the only two thus far who get it.

3. Everyone hates lawyers until they need one.

Contrary to Dow's assertion, lawsuits are not designed nor intended to redistribute wealth. But I'll give Dow the benefit of the doubt and assume that maybe that's not exactly what he meant. Lawsuits are to award damages to injured based upon proof of those damages. That's it.

Occasionally, but very infrequently, punitive damages are awarded, but usually only in circumstances were it's proven that a party engaged in really egregious acts, and so the intent of the punitives is just what they sound like, to punish that party. A good example of cases where those have been awarded are things like auto cases, where the company had internal records verifying that they knew they had a defective product, they that people were going to get injured but made a cost benefit analysis and decided that it would be cheaper to pay parties injured by their knowningly unsafe product rather than to recall the product.

Also Dow, p.i. lawyers have ads everywhere because that portion of the market is very competitive and most cases result in very low damages or are too expensive to litigate, so those attorneys need a high volume of cases to stay afloat. Again, no redistribution of wealth.

For the record, there are three primary grounds for products liability cases:

1. defective design
2. defective manufacturing
3. failure to warn

The failure to warn cases are the reason you see labels on seemingly everything. Manufacturers simply stick a label warning against every conceivable improper use because it's way, way cheaper than having to litigate that issue after the fact. It doesn't mean they're getting sued left and right. It just means trying being proactive.

Finally, while everyone knows that climbing is a dangerous sport. But if you place an alien as your first piece, slip, have the stem detach from the head (as had happened) recently and you ground and get messed up (incur a bunch of medical bills, lose wages as a result being unable to work, etc.), you should be able to sue the manufacturer. Because of the nature of the activity a jury will probably find that you assumed some of the risk and possibly reduce your award accordingly, but you never would have suffered those injuries but for that defective product.

Climber cranking out gear in their garage are businessmen just like everyone else. If they don't want to risk getting sued, they should be in a different business.

So Fatdad, cite a case, any case, where damages were awarded due to climbing equipment/product failure as a result of any lawsuit.

Case in point...

A "Climbing" specific helmet would be the first product that would not live up to what most would expect it to.

Show me any Climbing Helmet that specifies, regardless of UIAA or any other CE Cert, that it will keep you safe from 10lb+ projectile falling at terminal speed and then impacting it.

If that in fact occurs, should the manu be held liable?

Or if a 300lb individuals takes a 40 footer on a 13cm BD CE/UIAA Cert'd Express screw and it bends in half then pulls sending that person to the deck resulting in major injuries.

Or a 250 lb individual takes a 20 footer on a WC #3 Zero CE rated @ 6Kn and it blows apart after being placed in a horizontal situ..

There are hundreds of other scenarios that will in fact result in eq failure.

Should any manu be held liable for any of these cases?

squishy wrote:Stupid should hurt, you should not be rewarded for it...

^^^This iz korrekt.


And lawsuits like the McDonald's coffee one are eliminating one of the few ways we have to keep teh stoopid from spreading.

Let's step into the wayback machine, shall we? Caveman Grok walks over to a sleeping wooly mammoth (Zlog's pet) and starts poking it with a stick. Wooly mammoth wakes up and gores Grok with its 5' long tusks.

Does Grok limp back to Zlog's cave and get all up in his grille for not warning him that he shouldn't poke a sleeping wooly mammoth with a stick? Does Grok get to take Zlog's food/woman/fire, etc. due to this "lack of warning about unintended uses"?

No, Grok quietly goes to lay down and die from internal bleeding in his own cave, thereby helping to remove some of teh stoopid from the human gene pool!


They call them the Darwin Awards for a reason, people...

MikeTX wrote:y'all just don't get it. we're talking about manufacturers who knowingly lie about their products and conceal their known dangers from the buying public.

Please be specific of any Climbing Manu that has practiced this.

The Chief wrote:So Fatdad, cite a case, any case, where damages were awarded due to climbing equipment/product failure as a result of any lawsuit.

First, this is a complete non sequitur to my post.

Second, I'm not personally aware of anything. Most if not all of the discussion that's taken place has been hypothetical. It's all the doomsayers that have been crying about lawsuits that haven't even taken place.

fatdad wrote: Most if not all of the discussion that's taken place has been hypothetical. It's all the doomsayers that have been crying about lawsuits that haven't even taken place.

Thank YOU!

This has been my point all along.

Climb at your own risk and be prepared for the worst, regardless of the amount or quality of gear you own/have.

The best piece of gear in your arsenal, your Brain and the common sense that resides within it. USE IT!

butitsadryheat wrote:

fatdad wrote:Three points first off:

1. Wow, there is a LOT of misinformation about products liability from the posters on this site.

2. MikeTX and Fortmental are the only two thus far who get it.

3. Everyone hates lawyers until they need one.

what, are you a lawyer or somethin'?


I think just the threat of lawsuits has driven costs for many things up (out of court settlements, etc). I think some form of loser pays would help avoid frivolous crap, although there lies the rub. "Frivolous" is so subjective, we'd need lawyers to determine what it means, and there we go again!

The loser pays is called the English rule. I'll illustrate the big problem with those cases with the classic Ford Pinto example: someone rear ends your Pinto, it bursts into flames and you get really badly burned. Now you're looking at suing one of the world's largest corporations, who would be happy to bury you in paper, jack up their claimed legal expenses. And you, out of work lying in a hospital bed will 1) have to find a good attorney who is capable of litigating the claim; and 2) willing to work for free on this case for a good three or four years, knowing that if you lose, both s/he and you will be potentially on the hook for a good $2-3 million in legal fees.

Does that sound like a situation you would advocate for others? Is that a fair proposal, when you're real purpose seems to give a huge break to a very wealthy corp. that has manufactured and made lots of money off a really dangerous product.

The Chief wrote:

fatdad wrote: Most if not all of the discussion that's taken place has been hypothetical. It's all the doomsayers that have been crying about lawsuits that haven't even taken place.

Thank YOU!

This has been my point all along.

Climb at your own risk and be prepared for the worst, regardless of the amount or quality of gear you own/have.

The best piece of gear in your arsenal, your Brain and the common sense that resides within it. USE IT!

Maybe I missed where you were coming from originally, but I totally agree with you on that point. Your smarts and experience are by FAR your best protection. Period.

My only point is if a product is clearly defective (not one that fails because of poor placement, a huge impact, etc.), you should be able to sue the manufacturer. Deciding who contributed more to the accident when you're talking about climbers and their gear will likely be really tricky, but on a theoretical level, manufacturers of climbing gear should be no different than others.

There have been two cases of this in the last couple of years that many climbers are aware of. I am hesitant to call them out by name here for fear of being sued for libel or some such thing, but if y'all rub a few neurons together you'll figure it out.

They fall into the insufficient product testing category, product fails when used as advertised, etc.

ksolem wrote:There have been two cases of this in the last couple of years that many climbers are aware of. I am hesitant to call them out by name here for fear of being sued for libel or some such thing, but if y'all rub a few neurons together you'll figure it out.

They fall into the insufficient product testing category, product fails when used as advertised, etc.

I believe that hey were recalled prior to any "public" malfunctions?

Thus, they CTA's.

Actually in both cases multiple public malfunctions drew attention to the problems.

Gear broke when it should not have.