Fired up over blame

June 12, 2008

In a recent newspaper story, the Boston Globe tells of how two women are suing a restaurant because their husbands (both firefighters) were killed fighting that restaurant’s fire.

What’s stupid is that these guys died. What’s more stupid is that these women are suing the restaurant for allowing the fire to happen.

They contend that the restaurant owners were negligent in maintaining and cleaning the kitchen’s exhaust system and allowed so much grease to build up that a fire was a likely outcome.

The jump to a courtroom seems to me to be fairly idiotic. It’s a fire. In most cases an accident. So what are we all to do in the future? Should we hold everyone more responsible for the results of a job that firefighters get paid to do?

It’s idiotic. What’s next, suing criminals in civil court for their actions in crimes? Or suing street repair crews for not staying on top of potholes? Wait a minute, that already happens.

In this particular issue, I think the firefighters were doing a job that has inherent risks and there shouldn’t be recourse. Especially recourse of this nature. We spend far too much time blaming others for our lot in life and the courts are clogged with idiots – from the people bringing cases all the way up to judges who allow farces to continue.

If this case is allowed, it opens a door to people suing everyone from the electrician who wired a house 20 years ago to the weatherman who didn’t alert people that there might be lightning in the area that could cause a roof fire.

What do you think? Here’s the story at Boston.com.

More to come…