Eighteen days...

At the corner of 18th and Irving Place you can find Pete’s Tavern, the oldest continuously operating tavern in New York. (During the Prohibition it disguised itself as a flower shop.) Sometimes called O’Henry’s place (he frequented it as the turn of the century), it is indeed a landmark. Even though the original Pete (Pete Belles) did not want to be famous back in 1864 when he opened the place. He just wanted his own tavern.

Tick tock, tick tock, 127 years later, Ruth MacLeod is at the Tavern. It is a nice summer evening and tables are set outdoors, inside a guard-rail. Ruth is there, so is a group of waiters and customers. She needs to pass through, but the waiters are chatting up the customers and so she needs to step around them, outside the guard rail. There is an indentation in the sidewalk. She stumbles and falls (Torts class! An open and shut slip & fall case??). She sues Pete’s. The issue becomes whether the tavern's duty of care extends beyond the guardrail.

On appeal, the court said no and the complaint against Pete’s Tavern was dismissed. (Properly, don’t you think?)

Compare and contrast:

Tick tock, tick tock, a year later (in that most publicized of cases, so think about it, this is the most debatable jury award), 79 year-old Stella Liebeck sustains 3rd degree burns, requiring hospitalization and skin grafts, after she spills coffee purchased at McDonald’s. Does McDonald’s know the coffee is too hot to serve or drink? Yes, having had 700 recorded severe burns in the decade prior to this case, they knew. Were they willing to reduce the temperature (that was held at nearly 50 degrees above the industry standard)? No, that would have reduced the optimal brewing capacity of every last grind. What would get them to reconsider? A large punitive damages award (large in a manner of speaking; the jury award, reduced considerably afterwards, was equal to two days’ worth of coffee sales for the chain), shifting the cost-benefit calculus, so that it no longer paid for them to serve dangerously hot beverages. Was Stella thinking of lawsuits as her son pulled out of the drive-up the day she opened the cup to put in the cream and sugar? No, she just wanted a cup of coffee.

Litigation, regulation… I heard GWB last night speak to a crowd in Wisconsin about the dangers of both. About the need to free companies of regulatory restrictions and free each and every one of us from frivolous litigation. I wonder what the hell he was talking about?

(*see “forty-second street pre-election diary” post, September 22, for explanation of post title)