The woman and her lawyer in this story exhibit the type of thinking that makes me so frustrated with my fellow Americans.
AP via Yahoo! News:
A woman whose sister died in the Sept. 11 attacks filed a lawsuit over last week's steam pipe eruption in Manhattan, saying that the explosion brought back horrible memories. Francine Dorf's lawsuit accuses Consolidated Edison of negligence, saying the utility didn't properly maintain the pipe that ruptured outside her office and sent a geyser of steam, mud and asbestos-tainted debris over the neighborhood near Grand Central Terminal.Some thoughts:
"I thought a building was going to collapse," said Dorf. Dorf suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and "a legacy of fear" from the 2001 attacks. He said the lawsuit is intended to force Con Ed to improve maintenance of its infrastructure.
• Shit happens. Shit happens all the time. Shit happens to everyone. Shit happens all the time to everyone. Deal with it.
• Guess what, honey. We're all stressed out. There aren't enough lawyers in the country to sue all the people that stress me out.
• They're called anti-depressants. Try some. Or call Tom Cruise.
• New York is old. New York is big. Yup, New York is old and big. You can't rip up every steam pipe, water main, subway tunnel, and/or sewer just because they're old. Unless you want us all to pay 150% in income taxes. We fix things when they break. That's how we do things in cities that have been around for centuries.
• Just because a pipe breaks in one place, doesn't mean you rip up the street for blocks. You fix the break and move on. Lest someone sue you because they are stressed out by the noise of the construction or longer commuting time.
• I'm sure that most of the hundreds of thousands of workers in the vicinity could claim the same PTSD. Should they all sue? What if 100,000 people each brought a $100M lawsuit? Should they put Con Ed into bankruptcy?
• Who really caused her stress? Why doesn't she go over to Saudi Arabia and sue the estates of men who commandeered the flights that hit the WTC? Oh yeah, because those people probably don't have pots to piss in. And they'd laugh your ass out of their country — that is, if they didn't shoot you first for being so stupid.
• If you are in such constant fear of living in New York City, effing move!
This woman is a douche bag, but not douchey enough to be considered for my Douche Bag of the Week post this Friday. I already have a doozy for that one in the pipeline!
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4 comments:
When all is said and done, the history books will refer to this portion of American history as "The Age of Insanity." And I don't mean it in a sitcom, lighthearted theme song by Roberta Flack sort of way.
Oy vey.
Wow. Did it take a Sherpa to get you up on that soapbox?
I totally agree with you, btw. Someone sees a chance to make a little coin off ConEd and it's off to the races.
Also, PTSD is curable. At most ConEd should pay for her Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and not a penny more.
I'm on your side. I am really tired of living in a society where "it" has to be someone else's fault and therefore they should pay you a bucket of money, because you never developed any coping skills. Yeesh! Like you say, sometimes shit just happens.
While I fundamentally support ones right to access the legal system if they feel their rights have been abridged somehow, and I normally would have a bias toward the plaintiff in those cases, but in this case....GIVE ME A BREAK!
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