In reply to Marvin Shilmer, Rodbar writes:
"The loss of one incompetent doctor is not really a loss."
Uh-boy! Need anyone say more? Ever hear the term strawman?
Marvin Shilmer
Time for Tort Reform? Check this out...
by JWoods 116 Replies latest social current
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Elsewhere
> Since you obviously have knowledge of the case, woud you be so kind as to list which elements of the offense were not proved and what pertinent facts allowed you to arrive at this conclusion?
There was no offence.
Pertinent Facts:
- Parents/Children purchased an long hard bat for the purpose of propelling a hard leather bound ball in the direction of their son. (This is a basic principle at the core of the game of Baseball.)
- The hard leather bound ball that was traveling at a high rate of speed, as intended by the fact that the batter swung the bat with great force, in the direction of the son, as intended by the batter, struck the son in the head.
When one *intentionally* stands in the path of a hard object that was intentionally struck by a large bat, as agreed upon by all players, the only one's at fault are the players.
As far as I an tell all of the sports equipment functioned exactly as designed and intended.
This case is no different than if someone loaded a gun, pointed the gun at someone's head, pulled the trigger, and were then shocked to find that the bullet penetrated the person's head resulting in death.
*What? No one told me the bullet would penetrate the head!!! That wasn't in the manual!!!*
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beksbks
This always bubbles back up the stream to all the payers of medical insurance. It seems that there is a vast resistance on the part of the medical reformers, particularly on the left, to address this issue.
All the payers of health insurance do not pay for malpractice insurance. That would be the doc, and likely does increase medical costs. But the middleman, the health insurance companies are taking millions for providing what benefit?
Do you have examples of resistance by those on the left to tort reform? I would like to know who they are, who contributes to them, and consider thier reasoning.
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BurnTheShips
I am surprised the company's risk management people didn't require a warning on the product. Their insurers should have required before issuing a policy to cover this sort of litigation.
The Democrats are firmly in the camp of the trial lawyer's lobby. Politically, they represent them. They won't reform medical malpractice in a way that would reduce claims or awards. This would be a biting of the hand that feeds them.
BTS
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Marvin Shilmer
Elsewhere,
It only underscores the insanity to realize that stronger hitters can (and do!) transfer more force from bat to ball, which in turn increases the speed of the projectile. So what's next? "Coach Blah, blah, blah failed to label Johnny, disclosing to everyone that he can hit the ball hard enough to hurt my child"?
All this underscores my firm conviction that there is a moron around every corner waiting for a free ride. These folks are everywhere, including here.
Marvin Shilmer
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Robdar
see your need to flash stupidity is yet to be satisfied. Can you say the B word?
Competent primary care physicians are leaving their practice every day of the week because skyrocketing cost of insurance coverage runs them out of business.
Can I say the B word? Now why would I want to call you a bitch? Of course, if the shoe fits.....
Oh, business. Well, I work as a paralegal for an attorney who manages to pay his "skyrocketing costs of insurance coverage" and it hasn't run him out of business yet. Does he like to pay it? Does he cry like a little bitch because he has to pay for it? No, he doesn't. He knows it is for his own protection. And it keeps him mindful of his business and his clients. He's also grateful that he is a competent and sought after attorney who can afford to pay his premiums.
When competent contributors to society are rendered unable to contribute because of black-letter law, common law or jury awards, then the burden of proof is met that the insanity needs to stop. The same loons that hold a bat company responsible for someone getting hit with a projectile from that bat are kin to loons who make a refrigerator company pay an idiot for a back injury sustained while engaged in a foot race with a refrigerator strapped to his back.
Oh, BooHoo. Here's you a hanky, you delicate flower. Nice attempt at a diversion, strawman.
Go get a book. Learn how to read it.
The same can be said to you. Better yet, go get a book, and do your best to understand it.
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Marvin Shilmer
When we have to put sticky labels on a lawn mower warning people that it is dangerous to put their hands under the platform with the motor running, it is a sure sign a country has been overtaken by greedy lawyers and lazy freeloaders.
Marvin Shilmer
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JWoods
Another point to be made - even if this game had been played with a wooden bat, back in 1949, it would still have been entirely possible for the pitcher to be seriously injured or even killed by a ball strike.
We tend to moan constantly about America being a litigious society, but it seems that nobody really wants to do anything about it - especially when they get to be on the winning side of one of these lawsuits.
I had an aquintance whose wife was injured (not seriously, just bruised a little) in a new years day car accident. She was riding with her friend and neighbor and they were hit head on by a drunk driver. The wife discovered that it was worthless to sue the drunk (no insurance, no money) so guess what? Yup - sues her friend (who was no more at fault than the man in the moon)...ended up getting over $150,000 and collecting it. No big deal, right? The friend had insurance!
BTW, Beks - my point on liberal vs. conservative affinity for liability lawsuits stems in part from the seeming inability for the Democratic authors of the various bills (all of them, matter of fact) for health care reform to even address some kind of tort regulation or reform.
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Marvin Shilmer
Incredibly, Roddar the paralegal writes"
"Oh, business. Well, I work as a paralegal for an attorney who manages to pay his "skyrocketing costs of insurance coverage" and it hasn't run him out of business yet. Does he like to pay it? Does he cry like a little bitch because he has to pay for it? No, he doesn't. He knows it is for his own protection. And it keeps him mindful of his business and his clients. He's also grateful that he is a competent and sought after attorney who can afford to pay his premiums."
And who, precisely, said anything about insurance costs that DID NOT and/or HAVE NOT ran a person out of business? Who precisely has said anything of the sort? Who?
You just can't seem to get enough of your own shit piled up to satisfy your appetite. By all means, please keep entertaining your readership.
When you learn what a strawman is, please do share.
Marvin Shilmer
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beksbks
Wow, here's an article from 2006 about the dangers of metal bats. I don't understand why youth leagues would argue against changing to wooden bats. It must be that the increased speed is significant. Hardly seems worth it to me, as a mother. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/sports/baseball/16bats.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print July 16, 2006
Metal Bats Are an Issue of Life and Death
By IRA BERKOW
On a July night three years ago, a line drive rocketed off a metal bat and smashed into the left temple of Brandon Patch, an 18-year-old American Legion pitcher in Montana. Within hours, he was dead.
In April 2005, a line drive off a metal bat slammed into the temple of Bill Kalant, a 16-year-old high school pitcher in suburban Chicago. The ball traveled “with laserlike speed,” said Skip Sullivan, Kalant’s coach at Oak Lawn High School. Kalant was rushed to a hospital adjoining the field, where an emergency-room doctor told his parents, “He is on the cliff of death.” He made it through after being in a coma for two weeks and having brain surgery. He has had to learn how to brush his teeth again, how to tie his shoes again, how to walk again.
At a Police Athletic League game last month in Wayne, N.J., a line drive off a metal bat struck the chest of Steven Domalewski, 12, knocking him down and stopping his heart for a few minutes. He was revived on the field and taken to a hospital, where he was put in a medically induced coma, placed on a feeding tube and hooked to electrodes to stimulate his brain. He is still in a coma.
Brandon Patch lived with his parents, Duane and Deb, in Miles City, Mont., a small cowboy town where he played for a team called the Mavericks. The Patches run a Web site dedicated to Brandon, forever11.com, and are part of a national crusade to eliminate aluminum bats in amateur baseball in favor of wood bats, which they and many others consider to be less dangerous. They have, however, met with stiff resistance from bat manufacturers and officials of amateur leagues.
At home in Oak Lawn, Ill., Tony Kalant, Bill’s father, said he believed that his son would not have sustained his life-threatening injury if a wood bat had been used. “He would have reacted quicker,” Kalant said. “Like this, the ball was hit so hard and came so fast, he didn’t have a chance.”
In Trenton, Assemblyman Patrick J. Diegnan Jr., a Democrat from Middlesex County, introduced a bill last month to prohibit the use of metal bats in youth and high school baseball leagues. “It’s time to do away with the hollow ping and the increased risk of injury aluminum bats brought to New Jersey ballfields,” Diegnan said in a statement. He added that a ball traveled about 20 miles an hour faster off a metal bat than off a wood bat because of what is generally referred to as the “trampoline effect.”
The conflict over the use of metal versus wood began almost from the inception of the use of aluminum bats in the early 1970’s to cut the cost of replacing broken wood bats. The controversy took an odd turn last month: The Mavericks forfeited four games as part of a home-and-away series with the Bozeman Bucks of their Eastern Montana Class AA American Legion conference because Bozeman refused to play with wood.
“Ever since Brandon’s death, we only play games with wood bats, because it’s safer — I feel there’s no question about that — and out of respect for Brandon and his parents,” said Matt Phillips, the Mavericks’ coach.
He was speaking in the clubhouse at Denton Field, the Mavericks’ home ballpark. The clubhouse, named Patch’s Corner, was built with donations from the community and from supporters around the country. A memorial stone and a photo of the left-handed Patch following through on a pitch are at the entrance.
The other five teams in the conference, as well as all other American Legion teams in the state, play with aluminum bats when Miles City is not involved. They have respected the Miles City position in games against the Mavericks. In the past two years, in the eight games Bozeman and Miles City played, Bozeman used wood bats. Bozeman is again at the top end of the league standings, Miles City at the lower rung.
“At the conference meeting in December, all the teams, including Bozeman, agreed again to play us only with wood bats,” Phillips said. “Then on Friday, three days before we were supposed to play them, Mitch Messer, their coach, calls and says they have decided to play with aluminum bats. I said we aren’t going to play with aluminum bats and that we’d have to forfeit the games. He said: ‘We’re a metal-bat team, and we don’t want to do anything to jeopardize our season. I mean no disrespect to your team or to Brandon Patch’s family, but that’s our decision.’ ”
Deb Patch said: “It really is a slap in our face. It totally is.”
Her husband, Duane, growing emotional, said, “The reason we are trying to get metal bats out of baseball is that we don’t want any parent to go through what my wife and I went through on that July 25.”
Messer did not return several telephone calls seeking comment.
“Mitch is a first-year coach with us, and it was generally decided to go this route,” said Ron Edwards, a spokesman for the Bozeman Bucks’ board of directors. “Every one of the other 5,500 Legion teams in the country play with metal bats. We decided to go with the majority.”
But a handful of Legion teams around the country play with only wood bats, and the Bozeman decision drew heated responses.
Andrew Hinkelman, a sports columnist for The Bozeman Daily Chronicle, wrote, “After almost three years of every Miles City opponent abiding by the Mavericks’ request to not use aluminum bats, the Bucks became the first team to dishonor themselves by insisting that metal is better.” He added that the Bucks’ decision was “a disheartening display of classless, unsportsmanlike behavior that is in violation of the spirit of athletics.”
Josh Samuelson, the sports editor of The Miles City Star, wrote a column with similar sentiments regarding Bozeman and its coach. He received an e-mail message from Kay Bugger, the mother of a current Bucks player and of another player who was on the team in 2003. She gave permission by telephone for her message to be published again: “Your article is right on the money, and most of the parents in Bozeman agree with you!”
She added, “Messer is showing complete disrespect for the situation.”
A year ago, the Patches were among those who petitioned the Montana Legislature to ban aluminum bats. The ban was rejected in a close decision, but Gov. Brian Schweitzer issued a statement urging teams to take up wood bats. “We have a responsibility to protect our young people in their sports endeavors,” he said.
Some campaigns have succeeded. Next year, all North Dakota high school games will be played with wood bats. A number of other high school, amateur and college conferences, including the New York Collegiate Baseball League and the Great Lakes Valley Conference, have gone back to wood. The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association briefly banned metal bats for high school playoff games, but the rule was later abandoned. The professional minor and major leagues use wood bats.
Manufacturers take the position that, given the some 20 million baseball players in the United States, metal bats do not cause any more injuries than wood bats. Others, like Jim Quinlan, the national program coordinator for American Legion Baseball, say that wood bats can also be dangerous. One example he used was of a teenager in Utah who was killed by a ball off a wood bat in batting practice.
Last month, Erik Davis, a Stanford junior, was pitching in the high-end amateur Cape Cod League, which uses wood bats. Davis was hit in the face with a batted ball. He had reconstructive surgery to repair damage to his right eye.
Between 1991 and 2001, 17 players were killed by batted balls, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Eight involved metal bats and two involved wood bats. In seven instances, the kind of bat was not documented.
Steve Keener, the president and chief executive of Little League International, which uses metal bats, said that injuries from batted balls had decreased over the years. He said the ratio of weight to length in youth bats had been adjusted so that the velocity of a ball from the bat was about equivalent to that of a wood bat. Similar bats are used in some other amateur settings.
In 2001, a proposal before the New York City Council to ban metal bats in youth leagues failed to pass. That was after testimony in the Youth Services Committee by Jack MacKay Jr., a former metal bat engineer for Hillerich & Bradsby, which makes Louisville Slugger bats. He told the committee that metal bats posed “unnecessary danger.”
Freddy Ricci, a Staten Island resident whose 14-year-old son Anthony’s teeth were knocked out by a line drive in 2001, told the committee that nothing could compare to “sitting in an emergency room, with your son, with teeth getting knocked out, blood drenched to his underwear.” He added, “So all of the statistics that you have, they don’t mean a thing to me.”
With other testimony from bat companies, the committee decided that metal bats did not pose any greater danger than wood bats.
Aluminum bats are lighter to swing than wood ones, and the ball flies off faster. The so-called sweet spot, in the meat of the barrel, is greater because the bat is more hollow. The bat manufacturer Easton advertises its new Stealth bat with technology that encourages “the most efficient energy transfer from handle to barrel for maximum ‘whip’ for a quicker bat and more power through the hitting zone,” according to the company’s Web site. The bat sells for $299. Wood bats sell for around $50.
Young players generally seem to prefer hitting with metal bats. “There’s so much more pop to them,” said Pat Regan, shortstop for the Mavericks and the only current player who had been a teammate of Brandon Patch. “You hit longer balls. If you hit the ball on the handle with a wood bat, it’s a groundout to short. If you hit it on the handle with a metal, it can be a double. But metal bats should be outlawed. It puts lives in danger.”
Scott Kvernum of Williston, N.D., was in the stands at Denton Field as his son’s team played recently against Miles City.
“We’re a home-run-hitting team with metal bats, but with the wood bats we don’t have nearly the same pop,” he said. “It takes a big, strong man to poke one out with a wood bat. That’s why I’d like to see us playing here with metal bats.”
His son, Devin, is a catcher. How would he feel if his son were a pitcher? “With metal bats?” he said. “Oh God, I’d be leery.”