Making The World Safe...From Lawyers

This is a shame (from Investor's Business Daily):

Fearing lawsuits over injuries, a West Virginia county is removing swing sets from elementary schools. A minor, local issue? No. America’s litigious society has changed the way kids play.

Roughly a year after a child broke his arm jumping off a swing like Superman and his parents are settling a lawsuit for $20,000, Cabell County, W.V., schools are yanking swing sets from school playgrounds. The lawsuit was one of two filed in the last year against Cabell County schools over swing set injuries, the West Virginia Record reported Thursday. School safety manager Tim Stewart, who is overseeing the removal, said he sees “a high potential when it comes to swings and lawsuits.”

What’s happening in Cabell County is not an isolated case. Local governments, fearful of lawsuits, have been for years closing pools, stripping playgrounds of equipment and banning outdoor games.

A Massachusetts elementary school has told students they can’t play tag. One Boston school forbids handstands while another in Needham, Mass., doesn’t allow students to hang upside down from the monkey bars. A pool in Hazleton, Pa., closed some years ago after a swimmer sued for $100,000 because he cut his foot running and jumping into the pool, though he’d been warned not to.

When I was in second grade I was swinging on the swings at my school and decided I'd go for reverse dismount, bailing out of the swing on the back of the arc rather than on the front. I landed on all fours and my left wrist took the brunt of it. Hairline break.

There were no warning signs. No teachers were standing by to tell me not to jump off the swing that way. Never even thought of suing the school. It was my own dumb fault.

Today we live in a society where we expect to be protected at every turn, even from our own stupidity, or else somebody has to pay. Anybody but us.

It's time for loser pays tort reform.