Politics And Current Events

[tifosi77]

I heard a house member saying this new antisemitism law will penalize (not sure how) anyone calling for the end of Israel as a state.

Huh? Not that I agree with the sentiment, but that seems crazy.

Yeah, that is utter insanity. lol

[tifosi77]

I'd like to know the % of the student population that's involved in these protests.

My guess it's very low and some of these protestors are not students.

count2infinity, any of this going on at PSU?

Look at Ol Miss yesterday. You had a couple dozen protestors and a couple hundred drunk frat boys drowning them out. That's in the deep south, so I'm sure it's got the lowest demonstrator to bro ratio, but lets be honest it's probably not much better elsewhere.
Its probably is a good sign about who is a student and who isn't, though. Organize that stuff in Oxford and you get dozens; organize that in LA, Berkeley, Austin, or New York and you've got outsiders helping turn it into hundreds.

Another thing that has influenced the UCLA goings on: The LA federal building is more or less right across the street from campus. Organized protesting was taking place there (right in the midst of the biggest traffic snarl in a city sort of defined by traffic snarls) months before anything was happening on university property. They literally only had to shift their physical location like 2500' to be in the midst of UCLA.

So between the valedictorian shenanigans at USC and the proximity to existing mass protests near UCLA, both of the big local events had sort of tangential aggravating circumstances pressing down on the scale.

[faftorial]

Trump handing out pizza to FDNY during trial lunch break today.

They seem to love him.

[faftorial]

Another thing that has influenced the UCLA goings on: The LA federal building is more or less right across the street from campus. Organized protesting was taking place there (right in the midst of the biggest traffic snarl in a city sort of defined by traffic snarls) months before anything was happening on university property. They literally only had to shift their physical location like 2500' to be in the midst of UCLA.

So between the valedictorian shenanigans at USC and the proximity to existing mass protests near UCLA, both of the big local events had sort of tangential aggravating circumstances pressing down on the scale.

There are 5 or 6 GOP led House committees about to open investigations into the college protests. I guess since the impeachments have failed they needed to move onto something else.

[NAN]

A steel pipe broke free from a construction site at Pitt and rolled over a lady

[NTP66]

Trump handing out pizza to FDNY during trial lunch break today.

They seem to love him.

Did he also hand out forks to those mutants?

[Shyster]

I heard a house member saying this new antisemitism law will penalize (not sure how) anyone calling for the end of Israel as a state.

Huh? Not that I agree with the sentiment, but that seems crazy.

Yeah, that is utter insanity. lol

The concern, as I understand it, is that the IHRA definition of antisemitism could be used to determine, for example, what constitutes harassment or a hostile environment under various federal civil-rights statutes. The opponents of HR 6090 argue that legitimate and First-Amendment-protected criticism of Israel could be construed as creating a hostile work environment for Jewish coworkers. A response to that from proponents of HR 6090 is that the Department of Education has been using the IHRA definition of antisemitism for Title VI enforcement since 2018, and Trump signed an executive order making the IHRA definition applicable government-wide during his presidency, which Biden has not reversed. Plus something like 30 states have adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism for their state-level civil-rights laws, and it doesn’t seem to have led to any significant problems at either the state or federal level.

[nocera]

A steel pipe broke free from a construction site at Pitt and rolled over a lady

That's some terrifying final destination type ****.

[Shyster]

Great lawsuit, though.

[nocera]

I don't think the dead woman cares too much about that.

[Shyster]

Her heirs will, eventually. That's gonna be a huge check.

I don't do PI work and never have, but I'd take that case in a heartbeat. Shoot, I'd go all Shenderovich and do it for 25%.

[Troy Loney]

Would that case basically just be looking for the precedent that awards the most money?

[Shyster]

I don't think it would even be a matter of looking for precedent. It's just a matter of maximizing the payout, which shouldn't be too hard because the negligence is so clear. I'd bet money that this would be a res ipsa loquitur (Latin: "the thing speaks for itself") case. That's a legal doctrine that applies when something happens that literally cannot happen without someone being negligent, and the injured party could not possibly have contributed to the injury. If the judge agrees that what happened falls under the doctrine, then there is no need to prove that the defendant was negligent and that the defendant breached a duty of care. Instead, the case goes straight to the imposition of damages.

The doctrine arises from a 1863 English case in which a barrel of flour rolled out of the second-story loft of a warehouse and hit the plaintiff, who was walking by the warehouse. The defendant argued that the plaintiff was required to prove stuff like who was responsible for the barrel and how they breached their duty of care. The judge in the case basically said, "Nah, barrels don't fall out of second-story windows and hit people on the street without someone in that warehouse being negligent, and the warehouse is owned by and under the control of the defendant, and there's no way the plaintiff could have contributed to being hit by a flour barrel, so based on these facts we're just going to say the defendant was negligent and breached a duty of care and go straight to damages." Although it came from England, the doctrine has been fairly widely adopted in the US, including in PA.

[faftorial]

I don't think it would even be a matter of looking for precedent. It's just a matter of maximizing the payout, which shouldn't be too hard because the negligence is so clear. I'd bet money that this would be a res ipsa loquitur (Latin: "the thing speaks for itself") case. That's a legal doctrine that applies when something happens that literally cannot happen without someone being negligent, and the injured party could not possibly have contributed to the injury. If the judge agrees that what happened falls under the doctrine, then there is no need to prove that the defendant was negligent and that the defendant breached a duty of care. Instead, the case goes straight to the imposition of damages.

The doctrine arises from a 1863 English case in which a barrel of flour rolled out of the second-story loft of a warehouse and hit the plaintiff, who was walking by the warehouse. The defendant argued that the plaintiff was required to prove stuff like who was responsible for the barrel and how they breached their duty of care. The judge in the case basically said, "Nah, barrels don't fall out of second-story windows and hit people on the street without someone in that warehouse being negligent, and the warehouse is owned by and under the control of the defendant, and there's no way the plaintiff could have contributed to being hit by a flour barrel, so based on these facts we're just going to say the defendant was negligent and breached a duty of care and go straight to damages." Although it came from England, the doctrine has been fairly widely adopted in the US, including in PA.

Is it likely to be settled out of court?

[Troy Loney]

I don't think it would even be a matter of looking for precedent. It's just a matter of maximizing the payout, which shouldn't be too hard because the negligence is so clear. I'd bet money that this would be a res ipsa loquitur (Latin: "the thing speaks for itself") case. That's a legal doctrine that applies when something happens that literally cannot happen without someone being negligent, and the injured party could not possibly have contributed to the injury. If the judge agrees that what happened falls under the doctrine, then there is no need to prove that the defendant was negligent and that the defendant breached a duty of care. Instead, the case goes straight to the imposition of damages.

The doctrine arises from a 1863 English case in which a barrel of flour rolled out of the second-story loft of a warehouse and hit the plaintiff, who was walking by the warehouse. The defendant argued that the plaintiff was required to prove stuff like who was responsible for the barrel and how they breached their duty of care. The judge in the case basically said, "Nah, barrels don't fall out of second-story windows and hit people on the street without someone in that warehouse being negligent, and the warehouse is owned by and under the control of the defendant, and there's no way the plaintiff could have contributed to being hit by a flour barrel, so based on these facts we're just going to say the defendant was negligent and breached a duty of care and go straight to damages." Although it came from England, the doctrine has been fairly widely adopted in the US, including in PA.

For sure, was just wondering if the award amount is based on prior cases. Cause of that whole description you provided (the negligence is evident)

[Shyster]

Is it likely to be settled out of court?

I would not want to take this to a jury, especially in Allegheny County. We're nowhere near as bad as Philly in terms of large jury verdicts, but I'd bet this settles.

The fight is going to be on the back end. The plaintiff's estate will probably sue both Pitt (as the owner of the project) and the general contractor, and is going to want both to pay up. Pitt is probably going to say it's all on the general contractor. The general contractor is probably going to blame a subcontractor. That subcontractor might blame another subcontractor, and so on, and all of their insurance companies are going fight it out.

For sure, was just wondering if the award amount is based on prior cases. Cause of that whole description you provided (the negligence is evident)

No. In fact, juries in PA at least are not allowed to know what prior juries have awarded as damages.

Prior awards would certainly factor into settlement offers, in terms of what a defendant might be required to pay if the case goes to a jury. A plaintiffs' lawyer would certainly point to prior jury awards in terms of making a settlement demand. But prior awards wouldn't play into what a jury would actually award if the case went to trial.

[Shyster]

[shafnutz05]

[Kaiser]

All these betas out here with their tight colons

[NTP66]

[Lemon Berry Lobster]

[nocera]

[King Colby]

Wow. I wonder what predicated that

[count2infinity]

That's the calmest take down/gun removal/fight, that I've ever seen... weird.

[count2infinity]

https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news ... ch-pastor/

Apparently earlier, the dude shot his father? (I'm guessing based on last name...) Weird all around.