The ambulance chasers lose at last

 

I was pleased to read that a manifestly unjust court verdict has finally been overturned by the Texas Supreme Court.

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Werner Enterprises, reversing a $100 million jury verdict against the motor carrier upheld by an appellate court in a 2014 fatal crash in which a pickup truck lost control on a slick interstate, traveled across the highway median and collided with a Werner tractor traveling on the opposite stretch of road.

. . .

“This awful accident happened because an out-of-control vehicle suddenly skidded across a wide median and struck the defendant’s truck, before he had time to react, as he drove below the speed limit in his proper lane of traffic,” the court wrote. “That singular and robustly explanatory fact fully explains why the accident happened and who is responsible for the resulting injuries. Because no further explanation is reasonably necessary to substantially explain the origins of this accident or to assign responsibility for the plaintiffs’ injuries, the rule of ‘proximate causation’ does not permit a fact finder to search for other, subordinate actors in the causal chain and assign liability to them.”

The high court said that nothing the Werner driver, Shiraz Ali, did or didn’t do contributed to the pickup truck hitting ice, losing control, veering into the median and entering oncoming traffic on an interstate highway.

However Ali was driving, the presence of his 18-wheeler in its proper lane of traffic on the other side of Interstate 20 at the precise moment the pickup truck lost control is just the kind of “happenstance of place and time” that cannot reasonably be considered a substantial factor in causing injuries to the plaintiffs.

There's more at the link.

I've long been angered by the "sue-at-all-costs" approach by so-called "ambulance-chasers":  lawyers who'll hunt down anyone who might conceivably have any case of any kind against another after an accident, then sue on their behalf for often ridiculous sums in damages, hoping that the defendant will settle rather than go to the trouble and expense of an often long-drawn-out trial.  They're an entire sub-culture in the legal "industry".  During our recent travels, both my wife and I commented on the huge number of billboards in economically depressed areas through which we traveled, advertising the services of lawyers to sue anybody whom they could persuade you had "wronged" or "harmed" or "damaged" you.  It appeared to be the major economic activity in those areas, if one judged only by the billboards alongside the roads.

This case is a classic example.  The truck was doing everything legally, traveling in its lane at a lawful speed, and nowhere near traffic coming the other way:  yet the ambulance-chasers tried (and, at first, succeeded) to paint it, its driver and its owner as guilty parties, responsible for the accident and subsequent injuries and expenses.  That they succeeded in a lower court is a black mark against that court, which really should have known better.  Fortunately, in this case, a higher court was able to put a stop to that nonsense:  but how many times does that happen?  How many times can the defendant not afford to take the case to an appeal, and is therefore forced to bear the costs of a settlement?

Shakespeare's prescription for lawyers might have been in jest, but it sometimes seems more than appropriate in the light of how they conduct themselves . . .

Peter

"The nature of the enemy"

 

HMS Defiant warns us that our fundamentalist enemies in the Middle East and elsewhere are very likely to take advantage of public celebrations to attack those attending.

The deranged lunatics who make up the foot soldiers of the enemy invasion do not need to turn to guns and mass shootings in order to slaughter thousands of innocent people who are out enjoying the 4th of July, they merely have to get behind the wheel of a big SUV or a truck and drive endlessly through an unwary and completely unprotected crowd so this year, protect yourselves and your families.

If you line a parade route as I did for so many years, make sure the barricades preventing vehicle access are meaningful and placed with care and attention to detail by a man who KNOWS that they are the only thing that will stop a maniac from driving into a peaceful crowd looking the wrong way.*

Make sure that you have a safe haven selected for you and your family and that you can get to it safely when the entire crowd bursts into panic and flight. Be ready to deal with avoiding trampling and keeping safe from the panicked crowd.

Know that the enemy we have in the middle east is one that really and truly does like to strike back on days that are already memorialized in one way or another and they will take days like the 4th of July in a heartbeat over even attacking on 9/11 or Christmas or New Years and take note that none of them are holidays in their religion. 

Evil doesn't take holidays.

There's more at the link.

He's absolutely right, of course.  We've all seen such attacks in Europe, and a few that came close in our own country (although, thanks be to God, most of what we've seen here has been smaller-scale and/or less motivated).  There are a lot of raw, humiliated, angry people in the fundamentalist Islamic community right now, furious that Israel has destroyed their compatriots in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, and outraged that the USA has supported Israel in its efforts.  As far as they're concerned, we all share the guilt for such actions, and they're entitled to seek revenge against us.

Bear in mind, too, that a firearm is often far from the most useful response.  Sometimes it can help defend one's life and loved ones, but if a wannabe terrorist martyr is barreling towards a crowd in a heavy truck, gunfire is unlikely to stop him before he runs right over you.  By all means carry a gun - I do, almost all the time - but having a head on a swivel, constantly evaluating the situation around you, looking for potential choke points and escape routes, and watching for suspicious behavior, will do more to save you in most situations than pulling out a gun and starting shooting.  That's even more true when you consider that, if such a situation goes down, the authorities - and many other armed civilians such as yourself - are highly likely to regard anyone waving a gun around as part of the problem, not the solution.  They may start shooting at you on general principles (i.e. the modified Golden Rule:  "Do unto others before they have a chance to do unto you, only do it first").  There are seldom happy endings to that.

Fair warning, folks.

Peter

Was the Idaho shooter just another victim of trans derangement syndrome?

 

All his social media accounts have been "mysteriously" wiped clean by a person or persons unknown . . . but not before someone retrieved and saved his Instagram account.  Example:

There have been so many of these . . . somebody gets a trans bee in their bonnet, and proceeds to turn homicidal.  Was the Idaho shooter just another one of them?  You be the judge - because the official line is, at this point, deafening silence.

Peter

The fun - and pain - of fact-checking and research

 

During our recent perambulations around parts of the Civil War South, my wife and I enjoyed new scenery, new restaurants (hey, gotta sample the local cuisine to get the local "flavor"!), and new people.  We also were reminded - forcibly - that our bodies are older than they were when we last did this sort of thing, and quite a bit more decrepit.  I hadn't expected it to be so painful to spend so much time on foot.  If this goes on, I'll be exploring in a mobility scooter!

Savannah, Georgia was a pleasant surprise in many ways, the first being the weather.  Inland, Georgia was hot and muggy, very unpleasantly so, but on the coast it was a lot cooler and more pleasant.  The Savannah River runs through town, just off the old business and now tourist district, which adds to the cooling.  There are lots of old buildings, some almost as old as the American Revolution and many dating back to the Civil War period.  They've been done up as shops, restaurants and artsy touristy places, leaving the exteriors unchanged but updating the interiors.  Many of the streets are still cobbled rather than tarred, some of them very uncomfortable even in a modern SUV, forcing one to drive at little more than walking pace;  and the traffic through the tourist areas is very heavy, again slowing one down a lot.  On the other hand, the tourist zone is probably no more than a mile or two square, so everything is reasonably accessible.  Those who have land available for parking are doing a land-office business, with everything being run by text messaging or QR codes and visitors' cellphones, so the overhead is minimal.

I was very glad to be able to see the Civil War side of Savannah for myself.  It's all very well to read about what it was like, but to actually see the steps leading up from the river, and the buildings that housed ship chandleries and shops and warehouses dating back that far, and old Civil War forts and jetty pilings, and see old pictures of sailing ships lining the river bank to load and unload . . . it makes it much more real in my mind, and hence I can write about it much more realistically.  It was a very worthwhile visit from that perspective.

The Interstates and regional roads were in pretty decent condition, but traffic was very heavy at times east of the Mississippi River.  I didn't enjoy driving through it, particularly when traffic backed up near cities like Atlanta or Chattanooga.  It confirmed me in my belief that we needed to live west of the Mississippi, where there's room to breathe and space to maneuver.  We acted on that belief when we moved to Texas in 2016, and we were very happy to get back here when the journeying was done.  How all those people will cope - let alone move - if a really bad disaster hits, such as struck North Carolina last year, I hate to think.  (We wanted to visit North Carolina this trip, to see our friends at Killer Bees Honey, but so many of the roads, hotels, etc. in that area are still closed or heavily restricted due to hurricane damage that we gave up on that idea.)

Our cats, of course, were ecstatic to greet us . . . for about ten seconds.  Then the guilt trip started.  "You went away!  Without us!  Where were you?  Why did you abandon us?"  And so on, and so forth, ad nauseam - all while demanding, and getting, treats, petting and attention.  Cats are very good like that.  They forgave us in time to cuddle up with us that night, purring at us to reassure us that even though we didn't deserve it, they still love us.  Sound familiar?

Now we settle back into our normal routine.  I'll be preparing for surgery in a few weeks (of which more later), and must transcribe notes and observations from the trip into a usable format for writing.  My wife went back to work today, and found plenty waiting for her.  She has to get a root canal treatment do-over tomorrow, so she's not real happy about that - and who can blame her!  Me, I'll try to get some more blogging done after I take her in and bring her home.

Thanks to everyone who prayed for traveling safety for us.  Your prayers came in handy a couple of times, I can tell you - and they worked!

Peter

"The Ford moves in mysterious ways"

 

That was the observation of a commenter at Zero Hedge, playing on the Biblical phrase "The Lord moves in mysterious ways", following the news that a deacon had run over a wannabe church shooter with his Ford F-150 pickup.  A volunteer security guard then emptied his handgun into the shooter, killing him.  Station WXYZ Detroit reports:

Deacon Richard Pryor is the first one who came into contact with the shooter, hitting the shooter with his truck.

Pryor opened up for the first time about making the split-second decision to run over the gunman with his pickup truck.

“Soon as he got out, I saw the fatigues and gun on his hip. He pulled his weapon out of the vehicle," Pryor said.

But, he said his first memory of an attempted mass shooting on Sunday is of an eerie conversation he had with the shooter before the gunman started firing.

“I verbally pulled up and said, 'Are you OK?' He doesn’t respond. Just kind of looked at me," Pryor said.

Seconds later, with no prior police or military training, Pryor said he felt a calling to jump into action. He hit the gas and ran over the shooter, who would eventually fire numerous rounds on Sunday.

“Do you recall feeling, if you didn’t intervene, people would die?" I asked.

"I knew but I didn’t know," he said.

That action temporarily stopped the shooter, who responded by shooting into Pryor's truck. Moments later, the shooter was killed by a security guard.

“I’ve realized how much damage he came to do. Especially after the fact. Generations of families were in this church," Pryor said.

Although another guard was wounded, Pryor said he's thankful more people weren't hurt, or worse yet, killed.

“I’m not a hero. That’s the security staff, Jay, John and others that eliminated this man," Pryor said.

As a result of the violent scene, Pryor's truck was destroyed, a vehicle he used to deliver bread for a day job. Thankfully, a GoFundMe has surpassed $25,000 to help him get a replacement.

There's more at the link, including video interviews with Pryor and other security personnel and witnesses to the shooting.  They make interesting viewing.

One can only thank God that the church was alert to the possibility of trouble from whatever source, and had instituted an armed and trained security team to deal with such problems when they arose.  Many churches have still not done so, and remain at high risk.

I'm pleased to add that the fund-raiser has so far raised more than $47,000 to buy Mr. Pryor a new truck.  Heck, after valuable publicity like that - a Ford truck stopped a mass killing - I'm surprised Ford hasn't offered him a new truck free of charge!

Well done, that man.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 267

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past couple of weeks, as and when I could take time from book research.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

We're safely home again, and regular blogging will recommence from today.

While we were away, we learned the sad news that world-famous classical pianist Alfred Brendel had died at the age of 94.  He was particularly well-known for his interpretation of Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt, and made many recordings of their works, including some of my personal favorite renditions of several pieces.

One of them was this 1977 recording of Beethoven's Choral Fantasia, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink.  I owned a copy on vinyl way back when, and upgraded to a CD edition later.  I was delighted to find it on YouTube as well, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I still do.

Mr. Brendel's genius will be missed.  Let this piece be his epitaph here.  I hope he and Beethoven are sharing a glass of the good stuff somewhere as they discuss it!

Peter

Progress report

 

Our time in Savannah, Georgia is drawing to a close.  We'll be heading out tomorrow on a winding path back to Texas, taking in a couple more writing research places on the way.

Savannah's a nice town:  very touristy, with prices to match, but a lot of genuine history buried among the neon signs and glitter.  Many old buildings (or their exteriors, at least) have been preserved, and are a reminder of not just the Civil War era but of the entire colonial period in North America.  There are some good restaurants, plenty of bars, and lots of art galleries and other "arty" things.  We've enjoyed ourselves, even though we weren't here primarily as tourists.

I found a lot of information and background for my Civil War trilogy.  This morning we took a boat tour of the harbor all the way down to Fort Jackson, and then up the river to the container area, which is apparently one of the busiest in the USA (our tour guide said it was, in fact, the biggest in terms of number of TEU's handled).  The old fort was a massive chunk of masonry erected on what was, at the time, swampy marshland - an amazing piece of engineering in those days.  Sherman's "March To The Sea" forces captured it in late 1864, using improvised boats and pontoon bridges to cross intervening rivers and swamps to reach it.  The other major fortification near the city is Fort Pulaski:  I've set one of the incidents in my trilogy in close proximity to it.

I thought we'd find it difficult to cope with the humidity in this area, but near the sea it's been far less humid than I feared - certainly a lot better than inland Georgia on the way down.  The heat's been pretty bad, but that's the case almost everywhere on the east coast and in the Gulf at this time of year.  We've taken care to drink plenty of water and keep our electrolytes up, so we've been OK.

We're not sure precisely which route we'll follow back to Texas, because much will depend on places we'd like to visit for research purposes on the way.  Traffic will be a big factor.  I'd love to visit several places in Atlanta, but the roads getting there are usually jammed, and riding around the city's not much fun either.  We'll probably take a more southerly route through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana before reaching Texas.  We'll take at least two days over it, and more likely three, because neither my wife nor myself can handle ten- or twelve-hour days on the road as well as we used to.  Age takes its toll.

Once again, prayers for traveling safety will be greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance!

Peter