The Law Is a Ass a Idiot

Law 12 Tort Law Ms. Ripley

"The law is a ass --a idiot"

LONDON -- Which society has a legal system that rewards the bad and punishes the good? Until recently, most British people would have had one answer: the American.

After events in March, however, they aren't so sure.

First, one of Britain's first American-sized compensation settlements was finally paid; then, it was revealed one of the nation's biggest group of care givers has seriously curtailed a form of tender loving care it has dispensed for decades because it is afraid of lawsuits.

Historically, the rule of law administered by an impartial and just judicial system and based on a reasonable, common- sense approach to justice was one of the proud exports of British society. Now, however, the American compensation culture has crept across the Atlantic and, legal system observers and victims argue, it is perverting the course of British justice so criminals benefit more from the legal system than their victims and decent, compassionate people are afraid to care for others' children for fear of being sued.

On March 13, 17-year-old Carl Murphy was reportedly in a Liverpool pub celebrating the date with justice he would have on the next day, his 18th birthday. Murphy, a repeat offender who also has a history of abusive behaviour in a string of schools, was not going to find himself up before a magistrate for underage drinking; rather, he was undoubtedly heading down to the bank to dip into the #500,000 ($1.16 million Can) compensation award he had received from the courts nine years earlier when he had injured himself while breaking the law.

His mother and her partner would not be accompanying him to the bank as prisons don't give day passes to convicted crack and heroin dealers.

When he was 11, Murphy trespassed into a container storage facility, climbed onto a warehouse roof and crashed through, falling 40 feet and sustaining head injuries. He sued the firm, claiming he wouldn't have had the accident if it had kept its perimeter fence intact. Instead of telling him he had been an idiot who shouldn't have been up there in the first place, the courts awarded him #500,000 and banked it for him till he turned 18, by which time he had earned #67,000 ($156,465 Can) interest.

The award, it was noted, was 50 times the compensation a family of a murder victim would receive. If it was not the first emergence of the compensation culture in the U.K., it was certainly one of the most shocking early examples which helped to stimulate a wave of compensation cases that have caused many people to think twice before doing what a few years before they would have considered proper.

At the same time, Murphy was considering his financial options -- property speculation and opening a shop were apparently topping the list for someone whose violent brushes with the education system had prepared him for neither -- the education system itself was in turmoil because of the compensation culture.

A study by university researcher Dr. Sarah Thompson discovered that teachers across the U.K. are refusing to put bandages on youngsters' playground cuts and scrapes because they fear parents will sue them if the children have an allergic reaction to the adhesive or the latex.

Instead of the traditional "sticky plaster", teachers are being told to wipe grazed elbows and cut knees with a wet paper towel so parents don't sue them and the school.

Even although allergies to bandages seldom cause more than a mild rash and the Anaphylaxis Campaign reported it had no records of anyone going into an anaphylactic shock because of such an allergy, schools are playing it safe, legally if not medically.

The country's occupational health and safely officials have taken a similar approach by telling employers to remove Aspirin from first aid kits. An employee with a headache may in fact have something more serious and first aid training isn't sufficient to prescribe medication.

That may be because first aid training has taken a back seat to legal training. Dr. Thompson reported talking to a primary school teacher who told her the first thing she was taught on her first aid course was that parents could sue.

Although the compensation culture is growing, there are still judges prepared to buck the trend.

Two men who tried suing the railways for injuries sustained when they tried unsuccessfully to "surf" on a freight train had their case thrown out by a judge who dismissed them as "foolhardy" people who had only themselves to blame.

- Imlach is a London-based Canadian freelance writer.