I am SOOOO Mad!

Originally posted by Gareth Eckley "Comical. First of all, in the US, if you are a coach, you know that every kid on your team has signed a waiver of liability for you, the facility and the organization." I am confused, does this mean that as long as someone has signed a waiver, that you have NO responsibility to take ALL reasonable steps to ensure their safety ? Waiver or no waiver, if you are reckless and allow or do not stop dangerous behaviour, you will and deserve to be sued if someone in your care gets hurt. With the McDonalds case it is all about the temperature it was served at. There was no case if the coffee was only hot , not scalding hot.:mad: Well, then following that logic, knowing that eating in a car and not paying attention to traffic had caused many accidents, and occasion lethal ones, perhaps all companies that have a drive-through shuold be sued to stop them, because they support the dangerous behavior of eating while driving... and they do know that most people that purchase food in a drive through will start consuming it... pretty much as quickly as they can unpack it. You know, the potential harm of a traffic accident is much bigger then even a 3rd degree burn on a thigh or arm. What bugs me abouthe whole concept is that we are very wiling to accept much higher risks without giving them much thuoght (in spite of warnings about the danger of not paying attention to the road...) I just don't believe in the concept of, oh, I got hurt doing something that I shouldn't have been doing in the first place, but now that I hurt myself, I wanna sue the maker of a product that i hurt myself with, cause they didn't acount for what I might do, and failed to protect me. So, couple of people here say that as a maker or a seller of a product taht can be misused you'd be aware of people's use of it, and try to make it as safe as possible... So, can you please explain to me why it's such a problem that the coffe was served hotter than expected, and caused a burn... or even a few dozen of them... But the fact that people get into accidents eating in the car and not paying attention to the road much more often is a non issue? Why the double standard? Where do you draw the line? Is it okay that you bite into a burge, block yuor view o the road and get into an accident? But if the burger was hotter than you expected and, then you sue the burger maker for your crash? What if the burger was too cold and you gotticked offabout it and then got into an accident because you were too busy being ticked off and didn't notice a pedestrian on the road? I mean, you could argue the case that if the burger was done properly,you wouldn't have been ticked off, and therfore yur diminished capacity is the burger-makers fault. I don't agree that 80% of the burden belongs to McD. I'd say it's more like 10%. - When you get hot liquid from a restaurant, especialy coffe or tea, I expect them to be closeto boiling hot, and treatthem with that amount of caution. - Also, I expect to spill drinks when driving a car. Therefore, anything that would be even remotely uncomfortable (not to mention dagerous) doesnt' go in the car with me. So, the McD's fault amouts to, ouch, the coffe was hotter than i thought it would be. Damn, I took a risk, and ended up on the losing end this time. I was buyng coffee from them frequently, I'd know it's hotter than others, and treat it that way. I would never ina milion years blame McD for my taking a bad risk. Had i not taken that risk the coffe temperature would not matter. had the coffe been cooler, instead of a third degree bur, I'd have a second degree burn or a first, or just pants that look like I had peed myself and a smelly stain in my car. I just can't see how McDonalds gets the 80% of the blame. What might be more fair would to offer to cover the cost of medical treatment of a kind of a burn a 160 degree coffe would do vs. 180 degree coffe - or whatever the temperature differential is between the average with dive through's vs. mc Donalds.

A previous poster wrote... "As for the original issue, the Y (or any pool operator) regardless of litigation, would be irresponsible to allow a pool user to engage in conduct -- i.e., diving without supervision -- that could endanger another user. You may be willing to accept the risk; the kid you land on might have other ideas. It hardly seems fair or reasonable to ask a 17 year old lifeguard to make a judgement about your competence that may affect another user's safety. I would not want to use a facility that doesn't enforce basic safety rules." Last weekend at one of the Y's that won't let me dive off the blocks, in the 'family fun' pool next to the lap pool, I saw a 12 year old ram into another 12 year at the bottom of the water slide - one of several now in Y's in this area. For a second I was concerned that a serious injury had just been dealt. Is that activity, the rules of use for which we expect 17 year olds to make judgements, monitor and regulate, inherently safer than having a trained and conscientious adult use a starting block. To think so in my eyes would be ludicrous hypocrisy. AND, if we can't depend on the 17 year olds to make judgements about safety then why on God's green earth are we paying them at all?

God bless you Connie for posting the rant I didn't have time to type! (Although in the end I had time to read it!) I wonder if the woman had got a to go coffee (at 180degrees) from a small local diner and spilled it on her - would she have sued. The local diner would not have the deep pockets that McDonalds has. That does seem to be a prerequisite for a lawsuite - make sure there is deep pockets to pull the money from.

Originally posted by Guvnah From the original post: but none of the Y's where I swim will let me use the blocks - saying that a national Y policy prohibits anyone from using the blocks unless a team/club coach is on the deck. I think my wording is more accurate. Did you miss the part that said: "there is no Masters program in the county where I live, or in any of the immediately adjacent counties. (There are several age group programs.)" Admitedly, I oversimplified the "traffic laws". So let's be more accurate: 1) Can't do it at all except under appropriate times/conditions. 2) Appropriate times/conditions are during formal team/coached workouts. 3) There are no formal team/coached workouts for adults. But since Joe is an adult, 2 and 3, taken together, mean that: There are no appropriate times/conditions. But that's really beside the point. Even if the pool in question NEVER allows it, then that's the "traffic laws" that prevail there! Did you think somebody in this thread disagreed that these are the rules at his pool? The problem is that Joe needs to practice his starts. That's the main point! And, as several posters have noted, there are ways that the pool could address any safety/liability concerns it might have while allowing Joe to get the practice he needs.

Originally posted by Bob McAdams Did you miss the part that said: "there is no Masters program in the county where I live, or in any of the immediately adjacent counties. (There are several age group programs.)" Perhaps it's time to start a Masters program. Or find a non-YMCA pool.

Originally posted by aquageek Was the jury asleep for the fact that the WOMAN SPILLED IT ON HERSELF? Geek, please read the article that I linked to. You'll see that the jury did hold the plantiff responsible for the spill itself (and reduced McDonald's liability). And I hope you have checked out Phil's response, which is (I think) the position of those arguing with you. (There are numerous frivilous law suits that you can ridicule. We just think that the elected poster child is not such a case, once you look at the facts instead of reacting to the spin. If the case was the same as the urban legend, then I would agree with you.) SwimPastor may be onto something. Maybe someone can come up with a set of guidelines that your average high school teenager (with limited lifeguarding or swimming experience) could follow, that would allow them to decide whether the swimmer is an experienced master's swimmer, instead of an injury-prone yahoo. (Somehow, that cholesterol-drug commercial with the dude belly-flopping comes to mind. :) )

I did read the article and am shellshocked that a person in car with a cup of hot coffee between her legs is only given 20% of the blame. Why not sue the car manufacturere because the vehicle is not fit for consumption of hot coffee as it can teeter and totter? What about assumption of the risk? I agree this is an example of the worst, most silly suit out there. But, there are plenty of examples out there. There are people who sue when getting hit in the head with a baseball at a baseball game, people who sue when their kids don't make the sports team, etc. I once had a case where a fellow sued the golf course because another golfer hit him with a ball on an errant drive. It's out of control these days.

Originally posted by swimpastor I want to work on my starts, but none of the Y's where I swim will let me use the blocks - saying that a national Y policy prohibits anyone from using the blocks unless a team/club coach is on the deck. ... Yes, perhaps a coach would be valuable to me in this regard, but I'm not looking for a coach - I need and want a cooperative facility. The age groups' program schedules are not conducive to my schedule, and besides, the age group coaches already have enough on their hands during those times with lanes full of kids working their programs. I also am not excited about having to dodge those kids to do the work I need to do. Originally posted by aquageek First off, say three hail Mary's and absolve yourself of such venemous thoughts regarding Ys. Secondly, you do indeed live adjacent to counties with Masters programs where you can dive off blocks until you are defrocked for activity unbecoming a pastor. There are a ton of practice times around the greater Charlotte area. Send me a private note and we'll get you all happy again. It seems like swimpastor has three choices: arrange to swim during supervised age group workouts; arrange to have a coach on deck during his preferred swim slot; swim with one of the Masters programs in the greater Charlotte area. The wording of his post seems to indicate that options are available but he doesn't like them, which is different from having no options. I do sympathize completely, I have really limited opportunities to practice dives, and it shows.

Swim Pastor and Bob McAdams: I think its fine if a facility chooses to set aside a lane or two for practice diving and they can make it work without endangering other swimmers; I'd join it. But, based on my pool's experience with springboard diving, I'm skeptical that they can and I don't want to see the burden of making it work put on a lifeguard who also has to watch the rest of the pool. In any event, I wouldn't criticize a facility that doesn't choose to do that. I don't think there's any right (legal or moral) to *demand* that a Y (or any other facility) compromise a safety policy that's meant to protect all users and I don't think there's any legal or moral right to impose the risks that I'm willing to take on another user. "Liability" isn't the point -- the risk is real, liability or not. If the only reason to consider other people's safety is fear of lawsuits, lawsuits will be necessary. And, once again, I wouldn't want to use any facility that's lax about enforcing safety rules. To quote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Your freedom to swing your arm ends where my nose begins." That, I hope, is the last I have to say on this thread :).

Originally posted by Bob McAdams You seem to be forgetting that the starting blocks are in the deep end of the pool, but pool rules require that swimmers enter from the shallow end. Even if a swimmer is going off the blocks while another swimmer is entering the same lane, there's no danger because they are separated by the length of the pool. Not at my pool -- there's no "shallow" end and the bulkheads are opposite the blocks. We enter the pool at the starting block end. Besides, have you never seen a swimmer cross the lane lines? Why is it that a lifeguard (there was only one) can monitor each of these three areas of the pool to make sure nobody enters one of them who isn't supposed to, but can't monitor one lane where somebody is doing practice starts to make sure that anyone who enters the lane lets the other swimmer know he is there before he starts swimming laps? You forget that in my hypothetical the lifeguard was busy "explaining" to the Lipitor Dude why he couldn't dive. I would think that that would be a significant distraction. Anyway, it seems to me that a clueless swimmer getting in the way of someone diving off the block is a much more serious matter than a teenager swimming in the adults' lane. (I know I said my previous post was my last in this thread, but I couldn't stop myself :) )