Danbury faces lawsuit for waking sleeping student

[MJS]

This raises a point that occurs to me a lot when I see these 'horror story' stories about some hare-brained/greedo lawsuit someone has launched because of something s/he did to bugger things up. We frequently mutter darkly about how degenerate and corrupt our culture has become and so on, but do we actually know what the success rate of these kinds of suits is? In what percentage of cases the presiding judge does just that—tosses the suit and says harsh things to the plaintiffs? That seems critical to me: there are always going to be scam artists around, probably quite a small % of the poplulation; the problem is not what they try to do, but how often they succeed. This isn't a rhetorical point, really; it's a real question—does anyone have a sense of how often such lawsuits yield $$ for the plaintiff? Grydth—any observations about this question? Anyone else?

If I had to wager a guess, I'd say that there are most settlements than cases getting tossed out, which is sad IMHO. I mean, I"m no doctor, but I find it VERY hard to believe that this kid has permanent hearing loss because of this. The kid would stand a better chance of hearing loss by sitting in the front row at a rock concert, as far as I'm concerned.

Of course, you always have to love how people are so quick to sue and blame someone else. This kid falls asleep in class, the teacher wakes him, and theres a law suit?? Talk about a screwed up world.

 

[MJS]

My understanding (from the trenches) is the district usually settles for about $10-15K, just to avoid the bad press.

Whats sad, is the message that this sends. People are worried about bad press. Well, by awarding money, it says that its ok to screw off in class, because if anything happens to you, you can just sue. I don't know whats worse..the bad press or the message from the suit.

 

[little_miss_fracus]

I never fall asleep in class, i can't, too much talking. I mean i've seen people do it it's just that i can't do it. Pretty stupid to miss the class, i get most of what i need from what the teachers say. The books don't make a lot of sense to me so i dont read them unless i have to.