[1027] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
sue their pants off
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Aram Harrow)
Thu Jan 31 23:46:45 2002
Message-ID: <200202010443.XAA10174@no-knife.mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 23:43:17 -0500
From: Aram Harrow <aram@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
The justification for a large lawsuit isn't compensation, but
punitive damages -- since the probability of negligence causing a
costly lawsuit is low, the cost of the lawsuit has to be high in order
to deter negligence.
Furthermore, the lawsuit is not just about MIT not calling her
parents. It also claims that MIT mental health services knew Shin had
a high risk of committing suicide but took inadequate action (decided
not to see her in person, etc...)
I don't know if these are strong grounds for a suit or even what case
law is like for these sorts of things, but it's definitely not
immediately obvious that this lawsuit is bullshit, or just a way of
lashing out and transferring guilt.
Personally, I disagree with it -- among other reasons, because the
constant threat of suing tends to make people more worried about
avoiding liability than improving things -- but I think that it's not
so unreasonable that we can't at least consider it at face value.
-aram
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