Wes Skiles' Widow Looking For 25 Million from Lamartek

[The Chairman]

I think the key here is that the family lost the suit. That shows it was frivolous from the start.

This is a non sequitur. A flawed suit does not mean it was frivolous. A failed suit does not mean it was frivolous. You may disagree with the predicates of a suit. You may disagree with the evidence presented. That doesn't make it frivolous. In reality, most frivolous law suits never get to trail.

 

[Wookie]

This is a non sequitur. A flawed suit does not mean it was frivolous. A failed suit does not mean it was frivolous. You may disagree with the predicates of a suit. You may disagree with the evidence presented. That doesn't make it frivolous. In reality, most frivolous law suits never get to trail.

How would you characterize the SLAPP suit against SB, you, and others to be named when we figure out who they are? I would characterize it as frivolous, meaning without merit (the allegations were observations, not conjecture), but the woman who brought it felt grievously harmed.

 

[diver42]

This is a non sequitur. A flawed suit does not mean it was frivolous. A failed suit does not mean it was frivolous. You may disagree with the predicates of a suit. You may disagree with the evidence presented. That doesn't make it frivolous. In reality, most frivolous law suits never get to trail.

Oh, is that the only non-sequitur?

 

[The Chairman]

How would you characterize the SLAPP suit against SB,

I am actually protected by law from that sort of suit. Didn't stop them from suing me and it was not dismissed as frivolous as much as I would have liked it to be.

Oh, is that the only non-sequitur?

It was the most egregious. If anyone couldn't figure that one out, then why try with the others?

 

[boulderjohn]

Losing a suit does not in any way mean the case was frivolous.

I mentioned a lawsuit I undertook not long ago. When we started it, we were pretty sure we would prevail (the defendant's admission of guilt was in the police report), and the attorney gave me a ballpark figure of what he thought we might get. (This was not a huge suit by any means--I was mostly looking to recover medical costs and lost income.) We of course asked for a figure well above that as a starting point. To our surprise, the defendant's attorney came back with a preliminary offer higher than the amount where we had hoped to settle. They were clearly afraid of getting hammered by a jury. After a couple more counter offers, we had to make a decision. The offer was already more than expected, and if we did go to trial, I could possibly get a lot more.

Or I could lose.

Juries are unpredictable. Even though things looked open and shut, the attorney said there is always a roll of the dice with a jury, and it is possible that some one influential member of the jury with some sort of deep-seated bias could upset the whole deal. I accepted the offer rather than go to trial.

My case was thus far, far from frivolous, but a rogue jury could have made me a loser.

If you want to see a large number of perfect examples, look at the large number of people who have recently been freed from jail after showing they were wrongly convicted by a jury of their peers.

 

[Rhone Man]

If you asked me for my best guess based on the jurisdictions that I know, I would say that maybe 2% of lawsuits that are filed are what be technically termed frivolous in that they have no legitimate expectation of success. Over 90% of claims are settled prior to trial, but very, very few truly frivolous claims go all the way to trial for obvious reasons. I'd guess by the time you get to trial it is around 0.1%. And of that 0.1% the vast majority involve a claimant who is representing themself and has no lawyer.

 

[diver42]

In case it wasn't clear, the whole post was tongue-in-cheek.

As I understand it, all of those things could have contributed or not, depending on what ultimately caused the accident. So you have to wonder why the family would sue after the medical examiner said that the rebreather didn't have a dangerous design flaw. That makes no sense. Once the family knew that the rebreather itself was not to blame, I don't see why they would sue. Though I have to ask, how did the medical examiner know this?

And weren't Mrs. Skiles and her children and her lawyers knowledgable enough to examine the rebreather on their own to figure out that it didn't have a dangerous design flaw? You would think any competent family member or attorney for a diver would be able to do this. They should have assumed that the company wasn't hiding anything, because companies never do. That much we have learned from history.

Frankly, it's just weird that the family would even want to know whether the manufacturer itself knew of any dangerous flaws with the unit. I understand that they could only learn this information by suing (and examining the company's internal communications and asking the company questions about its design and testing); but what a waste. After all, it turned out that nothing was wrong. So why did they want to investigate in the first place?

I think the key here is that the family lost the suit. That shows it was frivolous from the start.

 

[The Chairman]

It really wasn't. It suggested complete cluelessness rather than humor.

 

[diver42]

In case it wasn't clear, the whole post was tongue-in-cheek.

It really wasn't. It suggested complete cluelessness rather than humor.

It's interesting that you know whether I was writing tongue-in-cheek. That's an acute skill you have.
Read back just a few posts, and see what I was arguing. For instance:

Not all bad ideas are dumb ideas. And not all losing cases are frivolous. All of the bad facts might have been true—drugs, lack of certification, etc.—and the rebreather could still have been dangerously faulty as a result of a design defect. It sounds like that wasn't true. But isn't that only obvious now, with the benefit of hindsight—and all the investigation that was actually done as part of the case?

So I had written this:

And not all losing cases are frivolous.

And after that, you wrote this:

A failed suit does not mean it was frivolous.

I don't think it's very nice to fail to see the sarcasm because you failed to read the earlier posts, and then to call me clueless. But I guess everybody is entitled to their opinion.

 

[gcarter]

It's interesting that you know whether I was writing tongue-in-cheek. That's an acute skill you have.
Read back just a few posts, and see what I was arguing. For instance:



So I had written this:

And after that, you wrote this:


I don't think it's very nice to fail to see the sarcasm because you failed to read the earlier posts, and then to call me clueless. But I guess everybody is entitled to their opinion.

He didn't say it wasn't tongue in cheek, he said it wasn't clear. Reread your own leadin to the post he responded to.

And for the record, I agree it wasn't clear and just looked like a clueless response.