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"The ground prong was differently shaped[...and] irregularly shaped." What!!!???? How did that happen? Who knew?
I plug in electrical stuff by feel all the time. It's exciting...especially when you can hold onto some metal that is attached by a low resistance path to EARTH!!
You know the charter company is lucky because they chartered this boat to someone who in this case certainly demonstrated that he didn't know dick about boats/electricity and they took a real chance on losing the boat with this guy.
Shake your head in amazement at the charterer but don't give the company a free pass. The company has a responsibility to make sure the charterer has a basic level of skill and experience and judgement.
I know...I know...there is a basic level of knowledge that enables one to get through the day without hurting himself or others and the company can't check out charterers on everything. At some point you have to assume that the charterer is standing there alive so you give him some credit for a basic level of intelligence. It's up to their lawyers to convince a judge and jury that this guy's mistake was below that threshold of expectations. Wouldn't have any trouble convincing me...
On the other hand I may be giving some people the benefit of the doubt. I mean...have you read some of those postings in the politics/government/religion thread?
So why do I only ever get hurt when there's no insurance company to sue? Surfing, working on the boat, hiking? Never in a nice big expensive national retail store!
I think we would all have to know more facts to decide this one. Was there a pattern of cutting corners here, whereby the suit may clean up the company's act, or did the customer not know what they were doing? My best guess is the latter. They must have already had the shore side cable plugged into to a hot pole, which you never do for many reasons. That has nothing to do with the worn plug or awkward position, etc. You either plug the shore in last or leave the breakers off until all connections are made. This guy now knows one reason why.
As far as the company taking responsibility for fully determining the competence of their client, I can not agree with that. If they knew the client didn't know what they were doing, that is different. But writing rules, laws, disclosures, regulations etc, to try to protect the dummest common denominator is absolutely worthless. The only protection those provide is to the company for the next lawsuit. They do not impact consumer behavior.
Further, if I shocked myself because I didn't know what I was doing, it wouldn't even dawn on me to sue. That is a cultural problem here.
writing rules, laws, disclosures, regulations etc, to try to protect the dummest common denominator is absolutely worthless. The only protection those provide is to the company for the next lawsuit. They do not impact consumer behavior.
They DO impact consumer behaviour in that they can drive whole industries out of existence. The light aircraft industry in the States is a shining example. When I was a kid in the 50's & early 60's Piper, Cessna, Beech etc. were vibrant companies and light aircraft were everywhere. The ambulance chasers with their product liability suits virtually eliminated the entire industry. Go to a private airfield and take a look - most of the planes in use are from that era. It's like cars in Cuba - little newer than 50 years old.
It's not the lawyers fault really - they are hired advocates. The ones to blame are the bottom feeders who LAUNCH the suits - the "injured" parties.
Lawyers are like cops & tow truck drivers - everyone loves to hate them until they need one, at which point they become their new best friend.
As I write this, I have a 120v 30 amp plug and receptacle in hand. It is physically impossible to stick the plug in incorrectly even if the ground lug had its tiny ear worn off.
Why?
Because the 3 prongs are not 120* equally apart!
Either the receptacle was wired wrong, or the plaintiff is a liar.
..failure to have an employee of the company re-engage all shore-supplied power, among other allegations.
And this, my friends, is how we end up with rules and policies that prevent a grown adult from doing a simple task that a child could do with ten minutes of instruction.
Make no mistake that the trial lawyers association lobbies very very very hard to insure their membership is advantaged.
I won't bore you will detail, unless requested, but there are several firms that are simply gaming the system to advantage themselves, when their class action benefactors get no money whatsoever. They simply get to collect their fees, which are intentionally run up, from the defendant. The class action members get a piece of paper that is worth nothing. The system is seriously broken and takes a huge toll on the consumer that they aren't ever aware of.
Sigh......I'd be willing to wager, and I'm normally not a gamblin' man, that our hero in this story was nodding his head rapidly saying "yeah, yeah...I know, I know. I HAVE sailed before you know!" during the time of instruction.
The best comment thus far, however, was the one that asked "Why would he plug into the dock power outlet BEFORE he plugged into the boat?". That's definitely backwards in my book.
I took a class "Introduction to Law" as an undergrad. The whole point of the course was that civil law was supposed to be based on the concept of "what would a reasonably prudent person do?" It was supposed to factor common sense into the equation.
I learned not to plug in things to an outlet by feel at age 4 when I attempted to plug a night light into a wall outlet in the dark. My finger fit perfectly between the night light conductor prongs and with my finger like that I could find the wall outlet in the dark by feel. I proceeded to pulg in the night light with my finger still there. Never did that again.
I am not a fan of specious torts. All they do is run up costs for insurance consumers much to the delight of insurance companies and tort lawyers alike.
This man did not have a treatable injury mention in the article.
Should he have been shocked? No.
Marina electrical systems are often sub standard and rarely fixed or maintained well.
2 wire Romex has no business on a dock.
Putting 5 boats on one circuit is just stupid. Having run heavy 3 phase wiring for industrial purposes a few times I made it my business to do it properly lest someone get killed.
Running proper wiring is neither hard nor complicated. But what I see at many docks is frankly scary.
As far as the boat is concerned a proper thru hull for AC power made from stainless should see little wear unless improperly used. Seems to me the Owner of the boat as well as the Leasee should have checked this both prior to leasing and prior to each use as seamanship dictates.
AC around the water is bad news. Many articles are written about stray currents etc.
Knowing this it seems the responsibility falls to the user for not getting shocked.
The suit is BS but the Marina should have GFI protection and proper 3 wire 108/120 ac connections to prevent shocks.
I can't really picture what happened from the article. But, if everything is wired/grounded correctly, and in good repair, I would think it very unlikely to experience a shock as described. Meaning that, I think it is at least possible that some sort of failure in the wiring/hardware did occur that contributed to the electric shock. Not saying this guy wasn't an idiot, just that maybe his idiocy is only partially to blame. After all, how many idiots have you seen in the marina who somehow are able to plug and unplug their shorepower without incident?
"I learned not to plug in things to an outlet by feel at age 4 when"
Well, let's face it. If the US wasn't infested with a couple of billion old-style 2 and 3-prong outlets, maybe half of them still lacking even a ground of any kind, we'd have to invent a new standard and the old blade-in-the-hole design would NEVER be considered safe or marketable.
I'm not suggesting we make the place safer by retrofitting a half billion outlets, just observing, there's a clear and present danger which we choose to tolerate because the alternative would be hiring a half million new electricians to wander around and change outlets and cords.
Personally I think we need to ban home electricity and kitchen heating appliances (both too dangerous, order take-in from a pro) as well as all civilian owned recreational automobiles (too resource intensive, call a cab). That won't cure everything but its a good start.
And many do just that which dilutes the pool of money and biases the jury.
My SO was badly hurt and she had no blame in the incident but recieved far less than she was damaged for...certainly not lost wages. After the lawyer got done with his one third plus expenses and the medical insurance got theirs. We where in the hole. After our loses and expences as we moved to Florida in mean time and we had to Fly up there for this BS. IF we had lied so she could have collected unemployment and just dealt with it we would have been $1400 ahead.
We were forced to sue because they would not give us even the name of there insurance to file the medical claims. The system is broken. Those entitled to collect damages are screwed. The con men fill there pockets. The Lawyers fill up good. The insurance companies LOVE the big law suits so they can jack premiums. Hey 10% of 1 billion is 10 times the cash as 10% of 100 million. Just ask MOBILE.
I'm generally opposed to lawyer's viewpoints, but I must agree here. I was an insurance adjuster for a year and I handled a couple thousand claims. Out of those, there were a grand total of two that I was sure that the claimant was trying to scam.
Keep in mind that most PI claims involve an insurance company. Insurance companies are greedy. They do whatever they can to avoid paying claims. There was a case a couple of years ago where an insurance company got busted for paying incentives to adjusters to deny more claims.
That said, PBS did an in-depth investigation several years ago about worker's compensation claim fraud. We all (or most of us) have a perception that many many people are trying to defraud the insurance companies with fake injury claims. PBS determined that the true incidence of fraud was 0.4%, the lowest amount of fraud of any type of industrial insurance.
If that's true, where did we all get the idea that most worker's comp injuries are attempts at fraud?
I believe that the insurance companies have done whatever they could to try to create that idea. I think that they've paid journalists to write stories that benefit them and that they do it a lot. It's in their best interest. Having worked in the claims side of insurance I can tell you that with one exception, everyone above me in the organization that I dealt with was basically soulless. They truly didn't care about anyone but themselves and their own advancement. That's why I quit. It was a good job but I couldn't stomach their behavior.
Mightn't the insurance companies worked towards making PI lawyers look as bad as possible as well?
This whole story just makes me mad and I don't get mad very easily.
Shame on him for carrying around a hot shore power cable and shame on the company for not finding out if he knew what he was doing. The simple fact is the breaker on the marina box should not be on if the boat isn't plugged in....it's very simple!
I am not a proponent for more licencing (aka taxes) but I am leaning that way in the name of safety. I wouldn't mind paying $??.?? every few years for a watercraft operators licence if it could help one person from doing something stupid anywhere near me or you.
Here is a little charter story that just happened in our marina 2 weeks ago.
A fellow and his family (not sure how many kids on board) chartered a 20something' power boat from the charter company in our marina (not mentioning any names).
Sometime during the day, he stopped at the fuel dock and took on fuel.
Only problem is he filled up the fresh water tank. They only found out after one of the kids sprayed the rest of the family with gasoline from the handheld nozzle while they were motoring around.
You cannot make this stuff up!!!
We found this out buy inquiring with one of the marina employees after seeing a fire truck and ambulance coming through the marina.
Who would have been been taken to court had they blown up?
I'm good with boater safety courses, but there is no course, license, fee or rule that will prevent anyone from being stupid.
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