Milking It

Ah, lawsuits America is famous for:

Judge Robert Bork, one of the fathers of the modern judicial conservative movement whose nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate, is seeking $1,000,000 in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages, after he slipped and fell at the Yale Club of New York City. Judge Bork was scheduled to give a speech at the club, but he fell when mounting the dais, and injured his head and left leg. He alleges that the Yale Club is liable for the $1m plus punitive damages because they “wantonly, willfully, and recklessly” failed to provide staging which he could climb safely.

Ironically:

Judge Bork has been a leading advocate of restricting plaintiffs’ ability to recover through tort law. In a 2002 article published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy–the official journal of the Federalist Society–Bork argued that frivolous claims and excessive punitive damage awards have caused the Constitution to evolve into a document which would allow Congress to enact tort reforms that would have been unconstitutional at the framing…

It is sad that he has been injured, but it is even sadder that he wants Yale to pay $1 million punitive damages for something this silly.

I wonder – lets say I go to America next year. I ‘accidentally’ trip and fall in, say, the Hilton Hotel.

Will I go to America broke, will I leave America as a millionaire?

Sweet.

So that’s what the American Dream is all about!