RIP Kobe Bryant

Half of the settlement includes the $15 million they were awarded in the federal lawsuit for violation of privacy. So the county is paying $13 million and change to avoid more lawsuits.

 

1. I said "by and large."
2. WRT the light stand, work like that undergoes inspections . . . which makes the company liable because they said "good to go," and there's paperwork to prove it.
3. Let's face it. We sue the biggest bank account whenever possible, not necessarily the "most responsible." Companies and counties have bigger bank accounts than people.

 

OK, the light stand is a bad analogy, but the fact is if you are doing something as a representative of a company, the legal system says the company is responsible.

 

I guess. I just see those lines as blurred sometimes.

I'm making a delivery for Publix in a Publix van. I ram my vehicle into a bunch of protesters, killing several.

I just don't see how Publix is at fault. I could have just rented a van to do my killing. Just because it was Publix's shouldn't change the dynamic all that much.

 

I remember when I was in law school, one of my least favorite classes was Torts. The subject matter is no less interesting than anything else, but the teacher's philosophy (which we spent all of our class time discussing) was never about responsibility or weighing competing values, but always to ask "who can better absorb the cost". I hated it, not because it was offensive but because it was boring.
Post script: it was my first semester, and I stopped going to class about a month into the semester. I was nervous, but couldn't imagine that I would actually fully bomb the class, but I also couldn't imagine that I could get away with it. In the end, she said that she was giving us what was in essence a 4 hour in class final (only grade of the course), but because when she was a student she found in-class tests stressful, she gave us 48 hours to do it. I gathered a few books from the library (pre internet) and a couple of sets of notes (I had kind friends). The test had 2 questions, each worth 50%. The first was a typical fact pattern which I was ready to do. The second was "We read article X by author Y - respond in way Z". I never heard of x, y or z and they weren't in the notes I had. If it had been an in class test, I couldn't have passed. As it was, I was able to run back to campus, find the article in the library and do OK. I would have done better, but she put a word limit on the issue spotting fact pattern question and even though it was hand written, marked off where she stopped reading when I went over! I considered myself very, very lucky.

 

And in my head, that's where I make the distinction: Were you truly acting on behalf of a company. Publix shouldn't be on the hook for the fact you committed a terrorist act except when you did it, you were on Publix business, so it could be argued.

I think my distinction here is they took the photos as part of official business for the department. The deputies or the firefighters wouldn't have had them if it wasn't for their jobs. The department should have better safeguards around evidence photos, especially sensitive evidence photos. Clearly the safeguards that were in place weren't enough. Like why isn't a forensic team taking the photos with official equipment? Why isn't a commander making sure people's phones are not taking photos?

There is only so much Publix can do when you are driving deliveries. Give you safety training. Put in speed restricters. Ban cell phones in the van. There is just no way to properly prevent you from committing mass murder. The cops should have better safeguards and there were ways they could have prevented it.

My layman's opinion.

 

I think in a lot of ways, COVID forcing everything to be virtual saved my wife in law school. Everything was recorded so she could go back and review lectures and refine her notes. CrimPro and Torts I think gave her fits too. She enjoyed Torts more, but it gave her fits.

 

The sheriff’s deputies and firefighters who thought they’d come into some small amount of wealth from taking crash scene photos and selling them to TMZ/National Enquirer/OK! &c. are the ghouls.

 

Those are the people who need to be nuked from orbit with the penalties. Fine 'em out the ass, ruin 'em financially. Then expose them, shame them, doxx 'em to the moon. Splatter their names and faces all over hell and back. Make them the proverbial cautionary tale.

 

I think it had way more to do with the teacher than the subject. Even Civ Pro was a favorite of mine.

 

I imagine there are more than a few first responders in SoCal who have heard stories of "a guy" who bought a boat with what he gave TMZ after some celebrity crime scene or tragedy - and like the member of Congress who cashes in on Wall Street - you just figure you'd be dumb not to cash your lotto ticket. And understand, I'm not excusing it at all, but being a first responder in LA has to suck when you respond to some of the homes there and then return to your 3 bedroom in Chatsworth.
You do wonder how much Kobe's stature in LA influenced the settlement. If its some B-list actor or singer, no way its $28m.

 

Editorial: He spent 38 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. It's a stain on our justice system

How do we compensate a person for being so misused by our justice system? How do we compare the debt for wrongful imprisonment to, say, the $1.2 million the county approved to settle the Aceves Jimenez case, or the nearly $29 million settlement with Kobe Bryant’s survivors for the horrendous but still lesser harm of county personnel circulating photos of the remains of the basketball legend and other victims in the helicopter crash?