I read this morning in the local birdcage liner that insurers for Johns Hopkins University Medical Center have agreed to pay out $190 Million in a class action lawsuit by women whose Private Parts may have been photographed and otherwise recorded by a gynecologist who was on staff at that fine institution. There is no indication that he made the pictures for anything other than his own purposes whatever those might have been (he committed suicide shortly after the pictures came to light). There is no indication that anyone other than the dead doctor ever saw any of the images. Other than perhaps the occasional unique tattoo (butterflies dont count) or perhaps a birthmark in the shape of Madagascar, there was nothing in the photos, videos, or the doctors records that would have identified exactly whose Private Parts were depicted in each shot.
Counsel for the plaintiffs states that All of these women were brutalized needed counseling, they were sleepless dysfunctional at home, with their mates blah, blah, blah.
So it was OK for this doctor to personally see their Private Parts (in the course of doing his job), but not OK for him to take pictures so that he alone could see them later. Point taken.
One Hundred Ninety Million United States Dollars. US$190,000,000.00.
Words do not exist that could adequately describe the perverse stupidity and societal insanity that this case represents. Here we have a team of attorneys who have taken an individual doctors indiscretions and made them into a pretext to extort a mountain of money from a group of insurance companies.
Parenthetically, I will say that I often object to contingent attorneys fees in personal injury lawsuits as they are outrageously high for the amount of work involved. But in this case, they earned every fucking penny. They took NOTHING and made it into a Kings Ransom. 50% would not be too high a fee.
There has been no tangible harm to anyone. The plaintiffs, individually, cannot even verify that they were depicted in any of the photos or videos, and if any of them suffered emotional distress as a result of that possibility it would only be the result of pre-existing neurosis anyway a condition that can be rebuttably presumed for everyone of the gender in question in any event.
One needs to be reminded that to the extent that insurance companies pay out these outrageous settlements, it is only temporary. In the next accounting year ALL OF THEIR SUBSCRIBERS (i.e., YOU) will reimburse them handsomely.
It has been suggested in the past that the Legal System establish some sort of scientific board of inquiry to weed out tort cases based on technological nonsense (e.g., I got brain damage from overhead power lines, Twinkies turned me into a nymphomaniac). But even that board could not weed out a case of imaginary damages to the psyches of unwitting females who may or may not have been photographed.
The end is nearer than we think.
Counsel for the plaintiffs states that All of these women were brutalized needed counseling, they were sleepless dysfunctional at home, with their mates blah, blah, blah.
So it was OK for this doctor to personally see their Private Parts (in the course of doing his job), but not OK for him to take pictures so that he alone could see them later. Point taken.
One Hundred Ninety Million United States Dollars. US$190,000,000.00.
Words do not exist that could adequately describe the perverse stupidity and societal insanity that this case represents. Here we have a team of attorneys who have taken an individual doctors indiscretions and made them into a pretext to extort a mountain of money from a group of insurance companies.
Parenthetically, I will say that I often object to contingent attorneys fees in personal injury lawsuits as they are outrageously high for the amount of work involved. But in this case, they earned every fucking penny. They took NOTHING and made it into a Kings Ransom. 50% would not be too high a fee.
There has been no tangible harm to anyone. The plaintiffs, individually, cannot even verify that they were depicted in any of the photos or videos, and if any of them suffered emotional distress as a result of that possibility it would only be the result of pre-existing neurosis anyway a condition that can be rebuttably presumed for everyone of the gender in question in any event.
One needs to be reminded that to the extent that insurance companies pay out these outrageous settlements, it is only temporary. In the next accounting year ALL OF THEIR SUBSCRIBERS (i.e., YOU) will reimburse them handsomely.
It has been suggested in the past that the Legal System establish some sort of scientific board of inquiry to weed out tort cases based on technological nonsense (e.g., I got brain damage from overhead power lines, Twinkies turned me into a nymphomaniac). But even that board could not weed out a case of imaginary damages to the psyches of unwitting females who may or may not have been photographed.
The end is nearer than we think.
