I saw a package, frozen something-or-other by some company-or-other, that actually said, “caution: this product may be hot after heating.”
There are just so many things wrong with that statement…
Do spelling mistakes negate a legal disclaimer?
“May be?” May be hot after heating? Does it have some super high-tech, sci-fi, space-age heat resistant packaging but so badly designed that it only sometimes works? So that the product might be hot and might not be after “heating?”
Then there is the more disturbing and even more obvious silliness of this warning’s being there at all. It’s like, “Gee! You think?” Why not put a warning there saying, “caution, package may fall to floor if released from your grip?” I mean, really…
Took me a while to understand this category of legal disclaimer (like coffee cups that say “contents may be hot” — duh?). It’s what I call “lawyer footprints.” It means there was a law suit at some point and the company lost and this statement of obviousness is to prevent that same law suit from occurring again. “Well, you should have warned the consumer that the product might actually get hot when heated. You will therefore pay out 10 zillion dollars.”
Problems with that:
First, if the person is actually literate enough to read a warning, and aware enough to notice a warning is there to be read, it is doubtful he needs the warning!
Secondly, if the person can not read, or can not read the language the warning is presented in, is he eligible for repeating that law suit anyway?
Thirdly, if the person fails to notice the notice, how can be still be responsible under its implied terms? Does not the barista have to have his customer sign a disclosure certifying his understanding that the contents might hot, before actually handing over the cup of perhaps-hot-whatever? (Really! Is a passive warning of that sort actually enough to prevent this imagined liability?)
Fourthly — most importantly — that fine or settlement the company pays out ends up getting added to the company’s cost of doing business and is passed on to the consumer as a general rise in prices. Meaning that everyone who patronizes that company’s product(s) or service(s) just paid out his own money to the person who sued. It’s not a penalty to the company at all, except possibly in terms of “face” or reputation, and only for a short time. Maybe stock will take a hit for a few days, but then it will resurge. Depending on what PR statements the company makes following the settlement, their stock might even go up(1)(2).
So… the Lawyer Foot Prints that you see on packages, devices, gadgets, coffee cups, wet floors, software end-user “agreements”… well, everywhere, really point to a system that has become so self-serving, so predatory and abusive, so far outside of the very concept of “justice” that one can only shake one’s head at it all and either grimace or smile, depending on one’s personal mood at the moment.
How to fix this? That’s a tough one. But if “bringing about a frivolous lawsuit” were itself a crime, that might help; it might also have ugly repercussions. It sounds right, though. The problem here would be getting a legal definition for “frivolous.”
The real “fix” (maybe) is to stop treating the consumer like an idiot to be protected from his own compulsions — compulsions the advertising industry instilled in the first place — and to stop making “somebody, anybody else” responsible for what are clearly “just accidents”(3) or inattention on the consumer’s part. This is a big part of how the medical care in America spiraled down the rabbit hole over the last 50 years: run-away law suits. Why does medical care cost so much today? That’s why. A hospital buys a widget that for normal consumer uses costs $x but for medical uses costs 100x that much. Why? Because the manufacturer might get sued over its design, manufacture, appropriateness of use or the number of sunspots that day, so the manufacturer has to put aside Big Cash for a massive liability at any moment. Hospitals, doctors, nurses, janitors, salesmen, manufacturers, Big Pharma… all have to include in their cost of doing business the funds to allow for what are often ridiculous lawsuits.
Sometimes these suits are justified, sometimes they are not but take place anyway.
Lawyer footprints. Destroying the fabric of the “justice system,” and enabling 10s (100s? More?) of thousands of “lawyers” to grab money in ways that are simply not “just.” Every time a silly lawsuit (not a valid one — there are plenty of valid ones) is awarded, your cost of living just went up for no purpose and some lawyer got a big pay check for doing so, while also harming that particular industry in significant ways.
Maybe another step toward correcting the problems with the American “justice” system is to put a cap on how much lawyers can make (even corporate lawyers). Let’s face it, $400 an hour ($1000? More?) is inherently antithetical to the concept of “Justice wears a blind fold.” It means, as is commonly said, the Rich get one form of “justice” and the Poor get another.(4) The very symbolism behind the blind fold, openly thwarted. Even encouraged. Lawyers openly acting in violation of the oaths they took on joining a state’s Bar Association.
She wears a blind fold for a reason! Dig?
A lawyer is supposed to serve the Law, and, even more so, the citizens subject to that law. If the “state” maintains laws, and the servants of the law can make massive amounts of money doing so, then the law becomes an industry instead of “the fiber that binds together a society.” Anyone engaged in law as a business for profit (rather than just a reasonable income) is in violation of the very concept of Law and Justice.
You can not serve the Law in the sense that statement is usually made; you must serve the People whom the Law is itself supposed to serve.
So… I suggest if being a lawyer of any type produced no more than a nice middle-middle-class income there would be fewer lawyers, and that might solve the problem right there. Then again it might not.
Just some thoughts. Probably not fully worked out. No statements aimed at anybody in particular. The characters in this posting are fictional and any resemblance to real persons living or otherwise is in your imagination. The author is probably delusional and off his meds. This webpage may be hot after heating. Some politician somewhere approves this message, or doesn’t. Scrolling this page downward too fast might cause your eyes to become amused. In the event of unconsciousness, take an aspirin and then immediately take a nap. Your mileage has already varied. Gravity is sometimes not your friend, and in no way is the author responsible for gravity running amuck on this planet. Water may be wet. Darkness may occur in the absence of light. All of these disclaimers may or may not apply. Tuesdays usually follow Mondays.
(1) Thinking of how Tylenol handled the poisoning thing back in the 70’s, which wasn’t their fault in any way what so ever, but folks / media blamed them for it anyway, and is why now all packages are “tamper proof” or “tamper resistant” — which they aren’t, really — again that’s just more lawyer footprints.
(2) You want the ultimate in law suit fiascos? Look up the “Pinto exploding gas tank” law suit. What a joke that turned out to be. What an insult to the legal system, to the citizens of the nation, to Pinto owners all over the world. What an insult to lawyers everywhere (as it made them all look utterly self-serving), and that judge? Well… I’ll leave that one as “an exercise for the student” as the saying goes.
(3) Thinking of the McDonalds coffee law suit, here. Customer drops coffee on herself and wins a substantial amount of money over it — yes, that’s grossly over simplified and probably not a fair summary, but it is accurate enough for my point at the moment.
(4) The movie “The Judge” (2014, Robert Duvall and Robert Downey Jr) opens on a very interesting statement by a lawyer who says (approximately), “of course all my clients are guilty; the innocent can’t afford me.”