It seems to me to be a stupid lawsuit because there was clear and
objective evidence that the defendant's equipment was in no way
responsible for the death of the victims.

The defense of your position about this being the stupidest post of the
day is based on nothing but your own hunches and opinions. Your estimate
of their fees and costs is based on nothing more than your own hunch. And
I'm not convinced that typical contingency fees are as you say they are.

Finally, to my knowledge, at least some court-case winnings are not tax
free. In fact, a recent article I read (although admittedly, I trust the
media almost as much as lawyers) discussed a specific case where the
court case winnings, INCLUDING that money paid to the contingency
lawyers, was considered taxable income. In that specific case, the taxes
equated to about half the winnings, the other half went to lawyers, and
at the end, between medical bills, court costs, filing fees, payments to
investogators and expert witnesses, and all that, the "winner" owed about
$10,000.

Since then, in fact as a direct result of responding to your post, it
seems that there are indeed some court costs that are not taxable, so
perhaps this particular settlement is not taxable and the winner didn't
end up losing money.

But at the end of the day, all that is left is the reality:
Parker Hannifin paid $4M to Carnahan.
They also paid their own lawyers (presumably an exhorbitant amount of
money in the 7-figure range).
Carnahan paid AT LEAST $1.33M to their lawyers (I believe it was much
closer to $2M.)
Carnahan paid expert witnesses, investigators, and other related
expenses.

The best case scenario is that the collective attorneys in this case took
home about the same amount as Carnahan's family.

All because Parker Hanifin supplies vacuum pumps in airplanes, and they
could have failed (but didn't).

Sorry if my faith in this country's legal system has been shattered.


I don't claim to have the answers. I don't think the loser should pay the
winner's legal fees. I think people (lawyers) who bring frivolous
lawsuits should be penalized. And I think damages that cannot be
quantified should be limited. There needs to be some sort of check-and-
balance system for our legal system. It's not there now, ad the lawyers
have demonstrated that they cannot police themselves.



(smackey) wrote in
m:

Judah wrote in message
. ..
The best part is that at the end of the day, the Carnahans will
probably owe money anyway.

The only one who makes any money in these stupid lawsuits is the
lawyers.


This is about the stupidest post of the day. Lawyer fees will be
one-thid, typically; perhaps, forty percent. They probaly spent
$25-30,000 of their own money for expenses-experts, depositions,
travel, exhibits etc. The Plaintiffs will wind up with around $2.5
million, give or take. Most or all of it will be tax free.

Of course, the conservative, anti-lawyer/civil justice crowd could
hope that their favorite solution to the "lawsuit crisis", i.e. loser
pays winner's attorney fees- would solve the problem. Then PH could
pay $5.3 million.

Question: Why was this a "stupid lawsuit"?