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nberry said:
First let me make one thing clear. I have spent most of my law career DEFENDING people and companies in personal injuries litigation.
I was not part of the 1980 litigation but I honestly believe most of you would have voted in favor of the Plaintiff given the secretive memo intrOduced at trial.
The CGT litigation has many good points in favor of the Plaintiff which I am not at liberty to discuss. One thing you all must understand is these cars with their huge power are basically dangerous in a average drivers hands.
Porsche and other car companies know this and that is why they developed safety devices to help the driver. In the CGT, Porsche could have installed several devices which would have made the car safer. However they wanted performance to be the prime consideration and installing these devices would have compromised the ultimate performance experience. But what they did not do was consider the buyer. Anyone with money could buy one regardless of driving skill or experience.
Thus, as many of you have stated ,several of them have crashed their CGT's (notice how many single car accidents?) and many have been seriously injuried. They just did nott know how to handle the car.
Given the propensity of the car and the necessity of driver skill why would Porsche wily nilly sell it to the public? What warning did they give to these these inexperienced drivers that this car will spin out of control without corrct modulation of the throttle and sharper input than necessary on the steering wheel while at speed over 70 mph?
Since it was a limited production car why not required training on the opreation of the vehicle with the setup and power it has? They are cash rich but apparently callous in their disregard as to to who is buying the CGT. I could go on but I think you get the point.
BTW, only recently has Porsche begun to train some owners of the CGT how to drive the car. Mike has posted on his experience and he has has much experience in track work as most do. I am certain he learned a lot about his car after his training.
Finally this applies not only to Porsche but to the rest of the car manufacturers. I have written this before but it bears repeating. Try flying any airplane without training and approved licensing. .
Nick, nothing against you and/or your work, I'm pretty sure that you're a hard working person and you probably deserve each buck you earn. But I wouldn't really compare cars to planes. Let me use the US as an example: US laws require that any person who wants to operate a motor vehicle needs a driver's license, right? US laws don't mention what kind of vehicle, if it has 50 HP or 500 HP. Right? The same training for everbody who wants a driver's license, no matter if he drives a 50 HP car or a 500 HP afterwards.
So wouldn't the authoroties who are responsible about proper driver training before issueing a driver's license need to be held responsible for inadequate driving after obtaining the driver's license? So if the drivers can't handle a car with 500 HP right after they obtained their driver's license, shouldn't the authoroties forbid the driving of such cars for let's say a period of a couple of years until the driver has gotten proper training/experience?
And furthermore, there are speed limits and traffic laws, right? How stupid has somebody to be to crash a Carrera GT in the city at a speed of 35 or 40 mph? Or even at 60 mph?
Yes, of course there are track courses where drivers can drive the hell out of their supersportscar. BUT: does Porsche for example approve track racing of their cars? Does Porsche "push" people in any way to track race their car? I doubt it. Why would somebody put a helmet on his head if he isn't aware that he is going to put himself at a high risk driving his car at high speeds on the track? Does the same person wear a helmet on public streets? No. This means that this specific person knows very well what he is doing and of course he is to blame if something happens and not Porsche.
And finally: owners who have driven and/or owned high power sportscars in the past, cannot really sue Porsche for selling them a "dangerously" fast car and not making them aware of it. This is not only stupid, it smells fishy.
Don't get me wrong: I understand the grief of the family of a victim who died in a horrible accident, especially if this accident happened like in Ben's case during a track event which actually should have been fun. But exactly here is the "problem": the word fun. If somebody does snowboarding for fun, he is aware that he can be seriously injured. Who would be to blame? The manufacturer of the snowboard? The snow?
I love the US and I always felt like home. But sometimes, I have my problems with some pretty weird regulations and the attitude of some people. Example: speeding. Go over 20 mph over the legal speed limit and the highway patrol guy is almost ready to shoot you.
A beautiful woman sunbathing topless on a huge beach, beach patrol handles this case like if somebody just robbed half of the people on the beach. My wife not wearing a bra at Disney World in summer time (at 105* F) and trust me, you couldn't see a thing through her shirt...a fat 300 pounds guard comes over and violently threatens her to throw her out of the park like as if she just molested a 5-year old boy or something.
The customs officer at the border forgets to take out the green ticket out of your passport when you leave the US...when you want to re-enter it after a year, they refuse entrance because they don't know if you have left one year ago.
I could give you more examples.
What Americans really need is less lawyers, a little bit more common sense and a little bit more flexibility regarding certain legal situations. I don't know the IQ requirement for police/security/customs officers in the US but sometimes I get the feeling they are trained robots and not thinking humans. No, I never had problems with them but only because even in some pretty humiliating situations, I was keeping my mouth shut.
9/11 made the whole situation even worse and I can't hide the feeling that a lot of people are actually using 9/11 and homeland security/patriot act to cook their own soup like we say here and to show how "important" they are. Example: I took a picture of my little girl in a mall. A security guard came over and asked me to refrain from taking pictures. When I asked him why, he said because of 9/11 and security laws. Talking to a lawyer at my hotel afterwards about this incident, I learned that the security guard has been BS me.
To make a long story short: common sense is the key to a change. If a judge has the widow of a 35-year old accident victim in front of him who is sueing a sportscar manufacturer for 5 Mio $, he has to tell her: "I'm sorry about your loss but your husband was an adult at 35 years of age, he was a successful business man, meaning that he wasn't stupid or naive, he owned several high performance sportscars in the past, he even did professional track racing in the past, he clearly knew of the dangers involved by driving such a car on a closed track for "fun". Sorry but you shouldn't blame the manufacturer of the sportscar but your husband because he put his life at risk. IF there is somebody to blame anyway."
But of course this would make lawyers pretty poor...can't let this happen, right?!