The five wackiest warning labels of 2016 have just been announced as part of the Center for America’s 19th annual Wacky Warning Labels™ Contest. They are:

— “For Accessory Use Only. Not to Be Used as a Battle Device.” A label on a toy Star Wars light saber. Submitted by Susannah Peate, Carmel, Indiana.

— “Blades are sharp.” A label on a common utility knife. Submitted by Debbie Kronstain, Bentleyville, Ohio.

— “In California, do not release outdoors or near electric power lines as it may cause power outages.” A label on a helium party balloon. Submitted by Connor Byrne, Walled Lake, Michigan.

— “Do not hold over people.” A label on a glass coffee pot. Submitted by Connor Dial, Tyrone, Georgia.

–– “Cycling can be dangerous. Bicycle products should be installed and serviced by a professional mechanic…Failure to heed any of these warnings may result in serious injury or death.” A label on a bicycle bell. Submitted by Bill Childs, Austin, Texas.

We find these silly warning labels on products sold throughout America because, in this era of excessive litigation, labels must do more than protect consumers from possible injuries, they have to protect product makers from frivolous lawsuits.

Tune in to John Stossel’s show on FOX Business News Friday, June 17 at 9:00 PM EDT to see which labels earn the three cash prizes. The winners are selected by Stossel’s studio audience, and the grand prize winner receives $1,000!

A Colorado-based retailer of travel goods is one of the latest businesses to be sued over its website under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and a federal judge’s recent summary judgment against the company is sending shock waves across the Internet.

Colorado Bag’n Baggage has been ordered to change its website and pay $4,000 to a blind man who sued them under the ADA arguing they didn’t provide special tools like screen-reading software to help the man use the website. Judge Bryan F. Foster granted summary judgment to the plaintiff in March – reportedly the first time a court has done so in this type of case — and also ordered the business to pay the plaintiff’s legal fees which are expected to exceed $100,000.

Businesses, schools and other organizations that don’t construct their websites in a way that makes it possible for the blind, deaf and others with disabilities to use them are becoming more vulnerable to expensive lawsuits. Defendants have been arguing that a lack of clarity on how and if their websites must comply with the ADA means the lawsuits should be dismissed or delayed, but judges are increasingly willing to let the cases proceed.

The problem for website owners is that the ADA is not clear on which websites must comply with the law.  Does Title III of the ADA, which applies to places of public accommodations, apply to a business with a website that doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar store? And does it apply to non-businesses, as well? Remember, the ADA was enacted in 1990, years before the Internet became a daily part of American life.

The Department of Justice has forced website owners to wait for clarification on those critical questions as it writes formal regulations. Despite promising regulations on Title III web accessibility in 2010, the DOJ has said it doesn’t plan to publish them until 2018 according to Amanda Robert writing for Forbes.

In the meantime, it’s not just businesses that are being sued.  Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were sued in federal court by the National Association of the Deaf last year for not providing captions and other aids for its online programming. The judge in those cases rejected arguments by the universities that the court should dismiss or stay the case while the DOJ works on its regulations.

In her decision, Judge Katherine Robertson stated: “there is no reason that this case and the administrative process cannot proceed simultaneously on separate tracks. Should DOJ issue either set of proposed rules while this case is still pending, the parties can bring them to the attention of the court so that the court can have the benefit of whatever aid they may offer.”

Seriously?!

Imagine going to a baseball game and not knowing if a batter will be called out after three, four or five strikes. Or going to a football game and not knowing if a holding penalty would result in a 10-yard or 20-yard penalty. Forcing businesses and other entities to defend themselves in court against ADA lawsuits when the federal government hasn’t established rules for them to play by is the kind of thing that is leading the public to lose faith in the justice system.

When you have such diverse defendants as Harvard and a travel goods retailer crying foul, something is terribly wrong. In the meantime, the only ones who are thriving on this uncertainly, of course, are the plaintiff attorneys and their clients.

Why has the DOJ delayed providing the needed rules and allowed the situation to get so bad?  Is it indifference? As Walter Olson says on Overlawyered.com: “More likely, it shows that even an administration that has launched many audacious and super-costly initiatives in regulation has figured out that this one is so audacious and super-costly that it should be – well, not dropped, but left as a problem for a successor administration.”

Please read more at EpicTimes.com.

Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

According to a nationwide survey of doctors conducted by Gallup, as much as one quarter of all the money spent on health care in the United States can be attributed to defensive medicine.

Defensive medicine happens when doctors order tests not to diagnose a medical problem but to protect themselves from lawsuits. So, when doctors say 25% of the money Americans spend on health care is spent on tests that are only needed because of litigation concerns, we should pay attention.

Bioscience Valuation, a Heath care economics firm, reports that all of that spending on defensive medicine amounted to $487 billion in the United States in 2015.  That’s billion with a B.  It’s no surprise that the dean of one of the largest medical schools in the country once said that the most expensive tool a physician uses is a pen…because of all the unneeded tests they order.

Unfortunately, Congress hasn’t provided a remedy to this problem. The Affordable Care Act did nothing to address defensive medicine.

Over the past 20-25 years, many states have attempted to reduce medical malpractice insurance rates doctors pay by enacting various tort reform measures, but these reforms have had little impact on the primary reason physicians practice wasteful defensive medicine: the constant fear that they can be sued for virtually any reason.

It’s time for a new approach.

Five states are leading the way by developing legislation that would create a new patient compensation system.  Florida, Georgia, Maine, Montana and Tennessee are considering a proposal that would create a no-blame administrative model and eliminate the broken medical malpractice litigation system which has been scaring physicians into practicing defensive medicine.

Under the proposal, an injured patient would file a claim with a panel of health care experts instead of filing a lawsuit which takes years to litigate with uncertain outcomes. If the panel of health care experts determine that a patients suffered a medical injury, the patient would be fairly, appropriately and quickly compensated. The principle is very similar to the one used to create the workers’ compensation systems used successfully throughout the United States for the past one hundred years.

With no need to fear lawsuits, doctors would no longer need to practice defensive medicine.  Health care costs would start to decrease as would health insurance premiums.

At the same time, patients would fare better, too.  Surveys have found that the vast number of injuries resulting from medical negligence go uncompensated. Many victims simply don’t want to drag their doctor into court to litigate a bad outcome. Despite all of the lawsuits that are filed, the adversarial system actually discourages many people from getting the justice – and the compensation – they deserve.

It’s time to try a new patient compensation system based on an administrative model that puts the patient first and removes the blame that doctors fear can ruin their reputation. A nonpartisan group based in Georgia called Patients for Fair Compensation is leading the charge for this sensible plan, and it’s working with leaders in the five states mentioned above.

Any significant reform like this is going to have opponents, and as could be expected, plaintiffs’ lawyers who make millions off the current system are leading the fight against it. However, America simply can’t afford to keep a system that is bad for doctors, bad for victims and and bad for taxpayers.

Please read more at EpicTimes.com

Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A six-figure jury verdict awarded to a woman who walked into a ladder while texting on her cell phone could be the new poster child for the dysfunction happening in America’s courts today.

If only the woman had listened to one of the myriad of public service announcements imploring cell phone users that when it comes to texting, “It can wait!”

Perhaps then our court system would not have been required to impanel a jury to hear this ridiculous case. But no, DeToya Moody of Georgia walked into a ladder that was clearly visible to everyone around her – and which even had the familiar orange warning cones around it.

So, of course, she did what too many Americans do these days. She sued.  She may have missed or ignored the type of public service announcements mentioned above, but she likely hasn’t missed the countless ads for personal injury lawyers that seem to air nonstop on television today.

A summary of the case was recently published in a Georgia legal publication. As you can read there, the woman hit her head on the bright orange ladder of a bucket-truck lift that had been lowered across a sidewalk by a crew doing some work in the area. She hit her head because her eyes were glued to her cell phone.

In court, the jury had to decide how much responsibility the woman had for her injury considering the fact that she wasn’t looking where she was going.  Surprisingly, the jury wound up saying she was only 8 percent responsible and awarded her one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.

It’s a wonder that the jury didn’t assign a portion of the blame to the cell phone service provider, too. Certainly, if she hadn’t had the ability to conveniently send and receive texts while she was walking, she wouldn’t have walked into the ladder. Or how about the cell phone manufacturer? No cell phone, no distraction, and the woman avoids the ladder.

The list of those who are potentially responsible for the woman’s injury — other than the woman herself — could go on and on, but we wouldn’t want to put any ideas into the head of the lawyer who sued on behalf of Ms. Moody.

Speaking of the lawyer, he is quoted as saying he had “no idea where the 8 percent figure came from.” Join the club, counselor.

As if that wasn’t enough, the jury even awarded his client more than he requested, too. In fact, it was 7 times more than the cost of her medical expenses!  All for walking into something that was in plain sight.

Jury verdicts like this are distressing because there seems to be no rhyme or reason to them. Why didn’t the jury award the woman a million dollars? Or ten million dollars? The courts have become a type of lottery. Pull the lever on a lawsuit and see how much you can win.

In the meantime, those who are sued have to ante up thousands of dollars to defend themselves, even if they’ve done nothing wrong. If they lose, they have to bite the bullet and pay up, or they roll the dice – we might as well stick with the gambling theme – and appeal the verdict to a higher court.

So that’s the point we’ve reached in America. A system of jackpot justice that seems to determine prizes based on where a lawsuit is filed and what kind of jury a plaintiff is “lucky” enough to draw.

Unfortunately, for anyone who’s looking for personal responsibility in the court system today, the odds seem stacked against you.

Please read more at EpicTimes.com