Common Sense Act II
A resolution to improve worldwide human and civil rights.
Category: Human Rights Strength: Significant Proposed by: Fantasan
Description: : Far too many civil injustices occur each and every day in courts around the world. Frivolous lawsuits plague innocent homeowners and businessmen, who have done nothing wrong but earn enough money to become a target of an opportunist.
Lawsuits on the basis of idiotic negligence on the part of the victim shall henceforth be dismissed in the courts of UN member nations, as they violate the civil liberties of those being sued.
Idiotic neglegence shall be defined as such:
1:Burning oneself with a hot beverage, such as coffee.
2:Injuring oneself while using a tool in a reckless or improper manner, such as without safety gear or for a purpose the tool is obviously not supposed to do.
3:Consuming a legal product which is either high in fat or damaging to the body, such as fast food or tobacco.
4:Any injury incurred during the commission of a crime, such as cutting yourself on a broken pane of glass while burglarizing a home.
This proposal will lower the tax burden on all citizens, it will make the jobs of Judges and Juries easier, and will help restore a modicum of common sense to the world.
I for one am voting against this ridiculous proposal.
How is this resolution ridiculous? It will help end the ridiculous insanity of many courts. The only way this resolution can become ridiculous is if you twist and bend it through tiny loopholes which only a mad dictator would use. Torte Lawyers are sick bastards who need to be shut down!
First off, "Torte Lawyers" would be lawyers who fight for the rights of a limited class of deserts.
Tort lawyers, on the other hand, deal with negligence claims.
I am a lawyer, and have acted in tort matters. I am not a sick bastard. Inciting hatred against lawyers (or any other identifiable group) and making prejudicial statements is heinous, in my opinion. To me, an appology should be in order, or failing that, a hearing to judge whether the individual who uttered such prejudicial and hateful statements should be bannished from the nation or otherwise sanctioned.
I will review the regional constitutional documents later tonight. If it turns out that there are grounds for having a hearing investigating and judging the above noted individual's conduct and hate filled statements and a determination as to what sanction or penalty, if any, he is to be subjected to, I will make a post under a separate heading dealing with that issue and hopefully set the wheels of justice into motion (unless a public apology is issued prior to my making such a post).
Now, getting on to the issue at hand, that being the resolution itself - I feel it should be opposed, for the reasons I stated in a post to the NS regional board:
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I'm against the resolution - whether or not the UN has the mandate to encumber the legal regime of individual nations in that matter is open to debate.
However, my main concern is that the resolution is poorly worded and will result in unintended consequences.
The resolution defines "idiotic negligence" as:
"1:Burning oneself with a hot beverage, such as coffee.
2:Injuring oneself while using a tool in a reckless or improper manner, such as without safety gear or for a purpose the tool is obviously not supposed to do.
3:Consuming a legal product which is either high in fat or damaging to the body, such as fast food or tobacco.
4:Any injury incurred during the commission of a crime, such as cutting yourself on a broken pane of glass while burglarizing a home."
These are all findings of fact, and as such, in a free and democratic country should be dealt with in a court of law or other tribunal. It is difficult to outright ban a cause of action on such simplistic grounds.
As for unintended consequences, point three, for example, is problematic - what if you eat a Burger, that is high in fat, but it also turns out to be undercooked, causing you food poisoning? As it reads right now, the resolution would ban any litigation arising from it, because you were eating a food high in fat.
Point number four is also a problem. Say you were going 61 KM H in a 60 zone, got cut off, and became paralyzed in a resulting car accident - according to this resolution, you could not sue for damages, as you were committing a crime (speeding).
Point number 1 is a problem - what if the hot beverage you burnt yourself was given by mistake (say you order an iced tea, and they send you real tea instead, without telling you?) - because a hot beverage burned you, you could not sue, even though you had reasonable grounds tobelieve it was a cold beverage. And what if you burn yourself with soup - a law suit would be allowed with a hot food, such as soup, but not a hot beverage - this seems incongruous.
I also see problems with point number 2. What is proper safety gear? This is a question of fact that needs to be before the courts.
The bottom line is that most of the above ills are already dealt with under the law of contributory negligence. If you spill hot coffee on yourself, a judgment of $6,000,000 in damages may be awarded. But if you are 95% contributorily negligent due to your own stupidity in burning yourself with the coffee, that sum is reduced by 95%. Often, media report huge multi-million dollar damage awards, without stating that the plaintiff was found contributorily negligent, and as such, only received a small fraction of the reported sum.
This resolution smells like a thinly veiled attempt to restrict individual freedoms, and has the unintended consequence of letting certain wrong-doers get away with negligence, due to the resolutions sloppy wording. This resolution will only serve to allow negligent parties to get away with negligently injuring people, and then relying on the resolution to evade responsibility for paying for the damages caused by their negligence.
My view is that we should leave it up to each individual nation to legislate in the areas of tort law and contributory negligence. These are not matters of international importance, and should not be legislated at the UN level.
Alternatively, if the UN for some reason does see fit to legislate negligence standards on a global scale, then it needs a far better worded resolution than the above one. The current resolution, as I have stated, has too many unintended results.
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There is no defending this resolution. Even if you accept that this is a matter of global importance under the UN domain (which it, IMHO, clearly is not), it also fails in achieving its purpose. As stated above, this resolution results in what appears to be too many unintended consequences. It will result in many innocent people, who were not at all contributorily negligent in having their rights to receive compensation taken away from them.
Ideally, this matter should be dealt internally in each nation, through the passage of tort legislation (whether it be stronger contributory negligence laws, or the adoption of a no-fault tort scheme as is found in New Zealand and in the province of Manitoba as it relates to car accidents).
Therefore, I submit that whichever side of this issue you are on, you cannot favour this resolution. On the one hand, it is outside the scope of the intended UN mandate to deal with matters of global importance. On the other hand, even if you accept that this is a matter of global importance, the resolution fails in its limited purpose, spilling out to too many unintended consequences, and as such, also must be voted against.
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What he said.
Last UN Decision
The resolution "Common Sense Act II" was passed, 8627 votes to 4776, and implemented in all UN member nations.
