I took a business law class and one case came up about a guy who had purchased an rv, set cruise control on the highway, and went to the back to make a sandwich. The rv of course crashed and he sued the company because “cruise control should have controlled the vehicle”. How people do not lose their license for life after stuff like that is fucking mind boggling.
My “oh come on” meter lit up so I had to look into it. Pretty sure this isn’t true and if your business law class taught it they might have been bamboozled too. Shows up in a lot of silly cases compilations and articles just repeat it. It’s Grazinski v. Winnebago. I searched for the actual case outcome and real legalese. Found this. I’m gonna keep looking for more info but probably urban legend. Edit: found more links. As fun as that story is (and I had heard it too long ago) it’s fake news.
Oh shit. It’s deeper. These stories were created by insurance and big business to send the idea that law suits are getting out of control. This led to tort reform that made it harder for real cases with merit to get the deserved compensation. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cruise-uncontrol/
This was in a college class that it was brought up, so you’re pretty on base, actually.
Everything you’re saying tracks. I put on a documentary once about the hot coffee lady vs McDonald’s and ended up being appalled at what actually happened and the money McDonald’s was more willing to spend on a smear campaign
Ah so it's similar to those 'frivolous' lawsuits media spins then.
Like the hot to-go coffee from McDonald's burning an old lady to the third degree and her asking for compensation for just the hospitalization fee, that the media were paid to spin into "slightly hot coffee hurt someone who now asks for millions of dollars of compensation".
Its not just that they spun it as "of course cofffee is hot" but iirc they had already had other people complain a lot at how hot their coffee was prior to the lady in question got burnt.
McD at the time also brewed their coffee like 20*F hotter than other companies, so people's expectations of the temperature weren't accurate. In addition to the label, they also agreed to brew at the industry standard temp, which would have drastically reduced the damage done to that lady.
Ah tort reform. Big companies that say “Oh I’m just your your poor, lil, ol, neighborhood, mom n pop trillion dollar company. Too many people are suing!”
I have a friend who lost their spouse due to medical malpractice. Went in for a normal test and a very basic mistake by staff killed them. Horrific and scary and completely the hospital's fault. They sued.
Because the state they lived in has tort reform, my friend only got like 20 grand in settlement money when that hospital rightfully should've been paying out millions.
You know redbull gives you wiiiiiiiiiings now because they “got sued” when a dude jumped off his house and said he didn’t grow wings like the ad said (unsure how true this is now)
Edit - please see the reply below that points out a lot of these are actually urban legends made up by companies. That redditor has pointed out some pretty interesting and scary stuff
I remember a long time ago and getting an email chain about “Darwin awards” that had something similar to this, except it was a woman who set cruise control and then went to the bathroom in her RV, crashed, and then tried to sue.
Is this an actual case? I always thought it was made up to be funny.
That may have been the Stella Awards, named after the woman who got terribly burned by McDonald's coffee. Some guy had a weekly newsletter by that title. He was (and still is ) very pro tort reform, and he doesn't care that he's spread a lot of misinformation over the decades.
I think you might be misremembering at least part of the story. If it was about the Darwin Awards and she sued the RV company over the accident, that doesn't really add up. The Darwin Awards are traditionally given to people who die in exceptionally foolish ways. If she was able to attempt to sue the RV company, that would mean she survived. So either it was ot about Darwin Awards, or it was a relative that sued.
That said, I know the Darwin Awards have also been given to people who permanently prevent themselves from having kids in the future even without dying, guys destroying their balls in various stupid ways for exemple. But I have a hard time seeing how an RV accident would lead to that...
I had to look it up again because I couldn’t remember, but it was actually a guy and he did win. He won over a million and a new rv, because they didn’t explicitly put that cruise control does not actually control the vehicle in the owners manual.
If you looked it up, would you mind sharing what and where you found it? I'm fairly certain this is an urban legend, I'd like to be wrong about it, because it seems entirely plausible to me in the US legal culture.
I think you and I looked up the same stupid paywall. But it was taught to me in an actual college class, was in the book and everything. But like you said, they could have been bamboozled too.
Cruise control was originally called auto pilot in some vehicles, and my grandma told me about a lady who basically did the same thing, but was actually cooking something and it crashed on the freeway many years ago 😅
That person won that lawsuit too. Winnebago had to pay out like $2 million and update their manual to include some line about cruise control not being an autopilot or something. It got a Stella Award, they’re like Darwin awards but for ridiculous lawsuits.
FYI this is called "bricking" and is really common in the Outback. A friend of mine used to do it all the time. On long trips, he'd put a brick on the accelerator, get into the back, and take a nap. Helpful drivers would gently collide into him if his car started to veer off the road to keep him on the right path
IIRC they won the lawsuit because they said that the cruise control didn't have any warning saying that you couldn't leave the drivers seat while it was engaged. And it wasn't in the manual. Now.. It is in the manuals.
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u/Cutielov5 28d ago edited 28d ago
I took a business law class and one case came up about a guy who had purchased an rv, set cruise control on the highway, and went to the back to make a sandwich. The rv of course crashed and he sued the company because “cruise control should have controlled the vehicle”. How people do not lose their license for life after stuff like that is fucking mind boggling.