Some civil negligence cases are easier to prove than others. A lawyer doesn’t always have to work very hard to win:
Counsel: Immediately after you hit [my client's] trailer with your car, what did you do?
Defendant: I woke up.
One case that looks like it will produce considerable challenges to be overcome is that of Melanie Shaker. Walking home after an evening out in Chicago she fell into a rage with her husband and decided to kick him with some force. She launched the attack but then lost her balance and fell through the front window of a high street beauty salon, suffering significant injuries. She is now suing the owner of that shop for having a window insufficiently strong to “prevent injuries from those coming into contact with it, including pedestrians” and, the writ says, from “intoxicated pedestrians”.
When the shopkeepers were telephoned to be told that someone had broken their shop window they would have regarded that as bad news but they would have been more surprised by the worse news that they were being sued. The attempt to blame the shop is reminiscent of an old Woody Allen joke about a man who sues after his knuckles were badly bruised from being repeatedly hit by another man’s cheekbones.
Ms Shaker is suing the company that owns the retail building, the owners of the land, and the people who run the shop’s business – claiming $50,000 against each party. She argues that the pavement outside the shop was “frequently travelled by intoxicated persons” and the failure to use toughened glass was in violation of local law. She is also suing the hospital where she was treated after the accident, claiming that while she was there $6,000 worth of jewellery she had been wearing and her phone were stolen.
Even where “unbreakable” glass is used in windows, it doesn’t always prevent human suffering. In 1993, a shocking accident occurred at a large law firm in Toronto in which a senior lawyer died. At a meeting to welcome new trainees and in front of a roomful of lawyers, the senior partner decided to demonstrate the resistant strength of the floor-to-ceiling windows on the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre where his firm was based. He had carried out the demonstration on earlier occasions. He told all the people in the room the window was unbreakable and threw himself against it with considerable force. He bounced back. He then did exactly the same thing again but this time his proof failed and he smashed through the window.
Gary Slapper is Professor of Law at The Open University.
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Full article: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/columnists/article7124445.ece
