Whodathunkit?

[Harold Tuttle]

the carts at Kohls are more like a walker with a nylon bag

[De Selby]

Those are the same carts at every Kohls I've been to.

Front casters are the same as Wallyworld and your grocery store.  Rear wheels are pretty nice, actually.  A step up from most.

This suit is craptastic.  More proof that "social workers" are neither very social, nor do they work well.

So now your point turns on factual claims about a shopping cart you haven't seen, but a jury did and concluded wasn't safe?

I'd say they have a better idea than we do.  What we can identify is the legal standard, and so far as I see, no one is arguing that unsafe equipment should be provided for use by a store.  It's a bit silly to go on and disagree about the construction of cart we haven't seen.

[KD5NRH]

So now your point turns on factual claims about a shopping cart you haven't seen, but a jury did and concluded wasn't safe?

So now your point turns on the competence and impartiality of a jury we haven't met?

[Jamisjockey]

 

I'm not competent nor am I partial. 


I'm finding myself wholly in agreeance with SS here......



A healthy adult should be able to pick themselves off the floor, go yell at the manager, and maybe write kohls a nasty email about thier carts.
But we're not talking about a healthy adult.  We're talking about a 74 year old woman.  Who sustained injuries as a result of the fall.


Without the benefit of tort, a free society cannot exist. How else can private citizens hold coroporations accountable, especially when we ask government to stand back and get the hell out of private transactions between individuals and corporations? We ask for less goverment interferrence and regulation.  What then for the individual when they are wronged by the conglomorate?

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

I'm finding myself wholly in agreeance with SS here...... undecided




thats gonna leave  a mark.
if it makes you feel better i gotta agree too

[CNYCacher]

What do you want to bet this person is usually using a cane or walker? She put the cane in the cart than began using the cart for support. You see that all the time.

I doubt that cart was designed around supporting the weight of a person.

DING DING DING.  We have a winner!

If anyone can describe any other way in which a person falls down because their cart stopped, be my guest.  If you are pushing the cart and not leaning on the cart, then when it stops, you bump into it.

[AZRedhawk44]

A healthy adult should be able to pick themselves off the floor, go yell at the manager, and maybe write kohls a nasty email about thier carts.
But we're not talking about a healthy adult.  We're talking about a 74 year old woman.  Who sustained injuries as a result of the fall.

Carts are not substitutes for walkers.

Anyone dumb enough to try and use one for a support aid, deserves what's coming to them.  Including 74 year old retired social workers.  I guaran-fracking-tee you she was leaning on it.

You control YOURSELF, and then you put any extra motive power you have... into the cart.

If you can't control yourself, you get a walker, with the little tennis balls on the bottom, and a little basket in the front.  Not a shopping cart.

Heck, Kohl's even has the stupid electric fat-person carts like walmart has.  She could have responsibly gauged her capability with the cart and gotten onto the electric shopping cart.

The defense lawyer should be ashamed of himself for losing this case.

Just drove by a Kohl's last night... and I noticed there isn't a single cart-corral anywhere in the parking lot.  The carts are not stored outside the store, they are stored inside.

Kohl's does not intend for people to use the carts outside the store.  They are a means to gather purchases inside the store, and are not intended for parking lot use.  This is also evidenced by the fabric baskets, which will deteriorate from sun and water exposure.  I'd be interested to see if any warnings are printed on the handle of the cart.  "Don't lean on me."  Or perhaps "Don't take me outside the store."  Maybe I'll check next time I'm at Kohl's.

Y'all are forgetting the cardinal rule:  Stupid is as stupid does.  No matter what, it all HAS to boil down to personal responsibility.  Otherwise we're doomed as a society.

[AZRedhawk44]

All in all, I hope the end result is that Kohl's just does away with the carts entirely.

Most department stores don't have them at all.  Kohl's is just a department store that isn't attached to a shopping mall.  Which makes it one of the few I can stomach to shop at.

Then all the sue-happy ladybirds can bring their own walkers and such.

[De Selby]

Again, questions of fact here would be something the jury would have a lot better handle on - even if it's tough for you to imagine on the internet, a real life demonstration did convince 12 people that the cart caused someone to fall.

"Personal responsibility" does not mean other people cause you harm, and you pay for it.  If you want to invite people into your store, and provide them with equipment to make giving you their money easier, the equipment shouldn't cause them injury.

The only reason lawsuits have been cut down in other common law countries is the socialist safety net - tort reform works in those places because you get medicine from the .gov, and a paycheck if you're disabled.  Instituting the same rule in America would leave thousands of people (at minimum) injured because of someone else's behaviour, and without any means to pay for medicine or living expenses.

Edit to add:  slip and fall cases are notoriously difficult to win.  In fact, most personal injury cases are hard to win big at, because juries are mostly made up of people like AZRedhawk, who automatically blame the injured person for the injury.  That is a reality of American courts that gives me great pause before questioning a jury verdict.  The only thing approaching easy in that business is a car accident, and that's because liability is usually obvious.  Even then, recovering money for pain and any non-obvious injury (ie, broken bones) is difficult.