[Unclenick]

Not using your magnum would be stupid if it's what you have and are good at using. I'm just making the point that reducing the loads in it probably won't gurantee you any brownie points in court.

An attorney friend of mine has great fun arguing both sides of the McDonalds thing. To those who dismiss the suit as totally abusrd, he asks: "Really? Do you realize the coffee didn't simply burn her? Do you realize it ran down into her lap and actually melted her genetalia? When you get skin hot enough it melts like wax. Do you really expect someone to sell you cofee hot enough to melt flesh?"

To those who think that last bit of information justifies the suit, he asks: "Really? Do you think its reasonable to expect that someone whose been on this planet for 85 years doesn't know that hot liquid will injur you? Knowing this, wasn't she assuming the risk and flagrantly violating basic, common sense safety measures?"

Another absurd suit I mentioned from an article on absurd suits was a guy who sued the phone company because a car hit the phone booth he was talking in. My friend said he was familiar with that case. Did I realize that the victim saw the car coming but the phonebooth door stuck and he couldn't get it open? Did I realize that eleven complaints had been filed with the phone company about people getting stuck in that booth in the five months preceding the accident and they still hadn't fixed it. Did I realize that in the decade preceding the accident the phone company had replaced five other phone booths at that same location that had also been smashed into by cars, so they knew it was a dangerous spot and kept rebuilding there anyway?

Must have been profitable booth location up to that point. Attorneys can offer up all kinds of ways of looking at things.

Nick