OT Who do you side with?, Campus Police Offer Shoots Intoxicated.. Options

[seanery]

Slain student's family to sue for $100 million
Michael McKinney, a 21-year-old Ball State student, was shot and killed by a campus police officer who was responding to a burglary call.
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The family of slain Ball State student Michael McKinney will file a $100 million civil rights lawsuit in federal court Tuesday against the university and the officer who shot and killed him.

The 21-year-old McKinney was unarmed when first-year Ball State police officer Robert Duplain shot him four times Nov. 8. The 24-year-old Duplain responded to a burglary call at 3:30 a.m. that day and found McKinney banging on the back door of a residence.

Police say McKinney was asked to stop and that he lunged at the officer which resulted in the shooting.

McKinney was later found to have a blood alcohol level of 0.34, more than four times the legal standard for drunken driving. The student's family has maintained he was knocking at the door of the wrong house when Duplain shot him.

The incident caused outrage throughout the school's campus in Muncie and resulted in the university changing its police training policy in December.

The family's attorney is Geoffrey Fieger, a nationally known lawyer who successfully defended Dr. Jack Kevorkian on three murder charges for assisted suicide. He also won a $25 million lawsuit against the Jenny Jones Show in connection with the death of one of the show's guests. Fieger, whose office is based in Southfield, Mich., also was the Democratic Party nominee for governor in 1998.

"The facts in this case are egregious," Fieger said in a release issued today. "Not only was the defendant Duplain poorly trained and inexperienced, but he used lethal force in gunning down an unarmed man who had not threatened anyone in any way."

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I know there are more facts than you folks know, but what are your thoughts?

[need4speed]

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This guy didn't really have it coming - it's just a tragic thing. 100M isn't going to bring him back. There is currently legislation against the medical system that would limit payouts on malpractice suits - maybe we should have something like that here.
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I agree about the $100M not bringing the kid back.

But I also strongly disagree with legislation on damage caps.

Such legislation won't take into consideration, cases where, say the kid was paralyzed or severely brain damaged. His medical bills for the rest of his life would be in the tens of millions. Just to vegetate in a hospital bed for the next 30 years. I don't think that such expensive burdens should just be thrust on his parents like that, when the cop could just have used tear gas or a taser.

In that regard - the kid was VERY lucky.

I know it's a very popular concept in this nation that greedy trial lawyers have driven up the cost of medical care due to malpractice suits. But the real issue here is that these suits, despite their multi million dollar payouts, don't actually punish the guilty parties. If a doctor is sued for malpractice, his insurance company pays, and he keeps right on doing what he was doing, and his patience pay for the increased insurance rate. The only real winner is the insurance company, and often, the lawyer.
Worse still - the cost of medical treatment alone - without malpractice factored in, is similary skewed by major abuse of our patent system.
I'm all for capitalism and free enterprise - and making a buck. But these companies are obviously VERY profitable, even with their skanky accounting practices hiding the money so they look like they're not. When marketing budgets are 5 times R&D budgets, and their CEO's make 4000 times what their scientists and engineers make, you know there's no real profitability problem going on. A company making life-saving drugs or equipment should not need marketing. Life saving just doesn't need to be pushed. I'm not saying we should get rid of drug patents, I'm saying that the extensions and wrangling that goes on to prevent competitors from producing low-cost generic alternatives has gone way too far.

Sorry this is straying so far off topic. I just feel quite strongly about this issue - that the main reason why medical care in this country is so unaffordable, is because of the situation with the industry lobbyists writing laws that make competition in the drug industry impossible. Remeber that what makes Capitalism great, is FREE enterprise, Competition breeds excellence. A Patent, is, at it's root, a government-sanctioned Monopoly. The Constitution says "Limited" and ". . . to promote the useful arts and sciences" - NOT to guarantee a certain profit margin, etc.

The whole point of this is: the argument that malpractice suits are why medical care costs too much is a lie. And the rationale for lawsuit caps is crap.

That's not to say that some of these lawsuits haven't gotten way out of hand.
The woman who recently was awarded $1,600,000,000 (that's 1.6 with a capital B-billion dollars) for being defrauded $4800 on a $25,000 life insurance policy. . . well those jurors should just be shot (and the fraudulent insurance salesman should just go to jail, period - the fine here, is pure crap).

And if this kid's dead - maybe a few hundred thou - a reasonable, nomal, average life-insurance policy. But $100 Million? Absurd - he's dead. There's no expensive medical care required here. Just some sad parents who, unfortunately, are going to have to learn to go on after a tragic accident.