August 12, 2005
Just plain ungrateful
It seems the survivors of the recent Air France crash are trying to win the lawsuit lottery:
Air France, they say, has not done enough to compensate or reassure them. So they are considering joining a class-action lawsuit filed last week in Ontario Superior Court, which seeks $269 million in damages for trauma, any future medical expenses and loss of property and earnings.
Compensation? Trauma? I guess these people are ungrateful about the fact that they survived a freaking plane crash! We all wish bad things didn’t happen in life. But the fact that they do is unavoidable.
Investigators say the flight voice and data recorders have indicated that the Airbus A340 was working properly, so they’re now looking at weather, runway safety and what forced the co-pilot to land too far down the runway.
Here’s the kicker. If someone was breaking procedure, that would make them at fault. For example, if the pilot landed long rather than aborting the landing and making another trip around the pattern, the pilot and Air France may be at fault. There were no known mechanical failures, so that absolves them of that responsibility. If the weather was too bad but air traffic control authorized them to land in the conditions, perhaps air traffic control might be culpable. Perhaps this was a faulty design of the airplane manufacturer, in which case that they may be at fault here. To determine all that, we need to let the investigators do their job, and wait for the results. I’m not opposed, should there be strict limits on statute of limitations for filing a lawsuit, doing so before that time to meet that statute, but I don’t think these people are entitled to become wealthy just because a plane crashed.
If this was just blind bad luck, these passengers should be thankful for the fact that they survived. From what I understand, all on board survived with only minor injuries. That’s pretty impressive. After all, in most plane crashes, there are no survivors. Further, I realize that this is a tremendously damaging event to anyone’s psyche. It may irreversibly change the rest of their lives, much like any natural disaster might. But you can only sue when there is a party at fault. When an earthquake destroys your home, you don’t sue the Earth. And when you get on an airplane, you are implicitly accepting the fact that the airplane may crash and you may die or be horribly injured. There are no guarantees. As I mentioned, if one party can be shown, through negligence or malice, to be a substantial cause of this crash, sue the hell out of them. But if not, these passengers need to accept that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and be thankful that they survived.
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Yea! Brad, You nailed it. It’s a shame that so many people get “sue” happy. I would be eternally grateful just to have survived that crash. I might like some compensation for my luggage, but I wouldn’t ask for anything more.
Pay their immediate and follow up meds and send them home.
Trauma? Please.
Reminds me of the lawsuits over “gross stuff in food.”
Did it make you sick? No, not the sick to your stomach for a few minutes b/c you bit into a finger part. Did you get sick? A bacteria or virus that messed you up for a while? No? You get $100 and a free meal. Now get over it and be a man/woman.