Читать книгу THE LIFEBOAT STRATEGY - Mark Nestmann - Страница 8

Here’s another insane result of America’s lawsuit epidemic.

Let’s say you operate a restaurant. Now, restaurants fail at a high rate in even the best of times, but in an economic downturn, they fail in droves. And if the following incident happened to your restaurant, I suspect you’d shut it down the next day.

A prospect applies for a job as a cook at your pizza shop. Sure, he weighs 380 pounds, but since the Americans with Disabilities Act forbids discrimination against the “morbidly obese,” you hire him.

All goes well for a time. Then one day, a freezer door hits your cook in the back. Your worker’s compensation coverage is adequate to pay for the cook’s back surgery. But what happens next is a classic example of American lawsuit mania.

Naturally, the cook hires a lawyer. A few days before the cook’s surgery, his lawyer calls. It seems the cook must undergo weight-loss surgery before the back surgery. Doctors have advised him the weight loss surgery is necessary to ensure the success of the back operation. And, his lawyer says, you must pay the $20,000 cost for the weight loss surgery, since it exceeds your worker’s compensation insurance limits.

Now, you hire a lawyer. Your lawyer tells you that you shouldn’t have to pay. So, the cook sues you and your business for $20,000. You lose the case, but your lawyer tells you that you can appeal. You appeal the decision, and lose again.

In a nutshell, that’s what’s happened to an Indiana pizza shop in 2009. And, on Aug. 6, 2009, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled the shop must pay the cost of lap-band surgery for an obese cook injured at work.11

Only three weeks later, the Oregon Supreme Court issued a similar ruling.