You keep objecting with unfocused confusion, but you admit you don’t know all the facts of the case, and several people have explained to you how and why Target’s responsibility to maintain a safe environment for its shoppers is an established legal concept. If you think the situation is unfair, perhaps you could explain why you care so much about an issue that does not affect you, because your claptrap about “personal responsibility” reads more like an excuse for your jealousy that you aren’t getting 4.6 million dollars.
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You got me. I am just making sure this is a slam dunk before stumbling into Target with a syringe in my palm. I’m not greedy, if we can avoid lawyers 2 Million should cover everything.
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How could you possibly know this? If Target had presented evidence that they were taking reasonable precautions to patrol the lot, the outcome of the suit might have been different. Maybe the plaintiff brought evidence that the lot was a mess and had junkies living behind it for weeks and Target didn’t do anything about them. We really don’t know enough details to make sweeping pronouncements.
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This is not an appeal to authority, this is a recognition that other people have access to more information than you do. What you are doing is analogous to waking up to a crowd of people shouting about your roof being on fire, shrugging and declaring “it’s really absurd to think there is a fire unless you could see flames and smoke coming from it, most of the time roofs are not on fire” and then going back to bed.
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How do you know that? I’m not saying it’s not true, but I’m curious about your justification for making such a strong claim in the first place.
The reason I’d like to know is that earlier you said this:
there’s no way to determine how long the needle was there
but I don’t think you have any more information about what kind of people the jurors were than @Brainspore has about how long the needle was there. In that case I have to wonder why is it OK for you to draw conclusions about what kinds of people the jurors are but not OK for others to draw conclusions about Target’s liability?
Also, how do you know that Target’s lawyers are so incompetent as to have allowed a jury with such a bias to pass judgment on their client? Were they napping during jury selection?
You could interpret it as an appeal to authority if you were being uncharitable. But it’s really an appeal to reason. I am advocating for deferring to people with more information than I have. That doesn’t seem to me an appeal to authority – the jurors aren’t authorities, just people who have information that I don’t have.
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Fair enough, but would you say the same thing for controversial trials such as Zimmerman or the officers charged in Freddie Gray? I know those are two extreme examples, but there are many cases where public opinion doesn’t align with official judgement.
If someone finds like a judge or jury statement, that would be great.
The big difference, and the highly relevant part of the story that nearly everyone is eagerly ignoring…
The woman with the needle stick initially asked asked for some goodwill assistance, to the tune of $12,000.
It was only after Target refused that it went to litigation, and only then did the award balloon into the million$.
In your hypothetical, you’ve ignored the very high likelihood that @Brainspore 's homeowner’s insurance would promptly and unequivocally make the goodwill payment.
All of the arguments in this thread that hinge on strict interpretations of liability are missing that very significant part of this story.
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I don’t care how extreme the examples are. These are just not good analogies.
In the Zimmerman trial, the only source of information about the events in question was Zimmerman himself, who clearly had an interest in presenting his actions in the best light. That said, I think the evidence did exonerate him from the perspective that he really seems to have killed Martin in self defense (I think it was wrong of him to get in that situation in the first place, but I don’t think he should have had to let himself be killed for having played vigilante).
In the Gray case, it was police being charged and we know how that goes. I can only find one of them who was acquitted by a jury, though – several had charges dropped by the DA’s office entirely, and most were acquitted by judges. Again, the primary source of information about the events were the defendants, who had good reasons to try to hide or minimize any wrongdoing on their part.
But in the case of Target, I have no a priori reasons to suspect the jury to be biased against Target. In fact, I would have expected Target’s lawyers to be very active in the jury selection process to try to make sure that wasn’t the case. Had the ruling been made by a single individual as in the case of most of the officers in the Gray case, then I think it would make less sense to defer to their ruling – it’s less likely for the 12 jurors to share a bias against Target (or “corporations” according to @bjones1) than for individual judges to have a pro-cop bias.
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I don’t believe I made any statements of certainty or conclusion regarding the facts of this case as others here have done. Please cite where I did so.
I would not without firsthand knowledge as many here have (which you are also doing at the moment in your inaccurate assertions of my point/position). I didn’t even speculate on the events in question.
My point was one of objectivity and trying to illustrate that the viewpoints everyone is espousing are reflections of their own bias/belief/projection with (in all likelihood) no first hand or concrete knowledge of the facts.
It very well may have been a junkie who shot up month ago and Target did nothing to clean up their parking area for weeks, they may have even known that the needle was there and chose to do nothing about it. I wasn’t involved, so I have no basis to state a viewpoint about the “facts” of the case.
But it is also just as possible that the needle was dropped seconds before it was found, unused, by a diabetic.
Just because someone hates Target (I think they’re okay) or corporations in general (I have little love for them as a whole) does not validate their bias.
But, this is BB and this sort of “pitchforks and torches” trolling is precisely why I end up stepping away from this community for a few months about once a year.
You have snarkily accused others of claiming omniscience several times. ( In none of those instances did those people actually claim what you accused them of claiming.) Look:
Heroin addicts aren’t known for speed.
Is that a claim to omniscience? Or a claim to know how long the needle was there? No, it seems like a bit of a joke, actually.
The money did go to a deserving cause. The money went to a woman who racked up 12K in medical bills because Target doesn’t keep its parking lot clean.
Is that a claim to omniscience? Or a claim to know how long the needle was there? No, it’s a summary of the court’s findings – which were factually that Target owed the woman hospital expenses plus punitive damages.
So please forgive me for reading into your incredibly over-the-top snarky statements an undeserved certitude that the ruling in question is wrong. I would hate to misinterpret your words in a public forum in an attempt to shame you and make you look ridiculous. That wouldn’t be the least bit fair, would it?
A jury found on behalf of the plaintiff. That’s not definitive, but it’s not unreasonable to assume that, given Target’s ability to field a team of lawyers, this means that the plaintiff actually had a pretty good case against Target.
There are no torches or pitchforks, and I don’t see any driving trollies going on at all. Some people agree with the ruling, some disagree, some are reserving judgment, and all are advocating for their various perspectives. Please stop dissembling.
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And that’s the crux right there. Yes, I was being snarky, but my snark was never aimed at the ruling, nor did I reference it. Re-read the comments I responded to. They were replies to people saying “Good, they (Target) deserved it for being negligent!” or making assumptions about what the history of the needle had been.
Just because one sees a needle in a parking lot and ones mind immediately goes to “junkie activity that has been overlooked for weeks by a negligent proprietor” doesn’t mean that is what took place. But people were making statements here as if they knew this to be a case. That was the only point I was attempting to make.
No, they weren’t:
Heroin addicts aren’t known for speed.
The money did go to a deserving cause. The money went to a woman who racked up 12K in medical bills because Target doesn’t keep its parking lot clean.
The first is a joke, the second is an affirmation of the jury’s ruling.
No, it was a hypothetical reason why the jury might have reached the conclusion they actually did reach. This is what happened:
-Alice claims that the ruling is ridiculous.
-Bob provides a hypothesis to explain the ruling.
-Alice points out that Bob can’t possibly know that’s the case.
-Bob points out that he doesn’t know, but that the jury did, and that the jury are privy to more information than either Alice or Bob.
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Wow, you’re really in a spin about this.
The comment (albeit a joke, that, yes, I recognized) first made an assumption that the needle had been used for Heroin. That is not known.
The second made the assumption that Target had ample time to clean up the needle without us knowing for sure how long it had been there. Nor do we know the validity of her medical costs in relation to the incident.
Don’t get so bent out of shape about it. I’m not saying I know anything about the case or ruling. I’m simply trying to promote the idea that others be objective and realize they (in all likelihood, unless they were directly involved in the case, which I assume all here were not) do not know either and should temper their “certainties” which are actually only their own perceptions/biases.
Oh, don’t worry, I’m not the least bit bent out of shape about it. I’m just trying to point out that you are mistaken in your premises and that you are unfairly misrepresenting people to make their positions look more ridiculous than they actually are.
But it’s hard to reason people out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into in the first place, so I’ll let it go.
Have a great day!
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Perhaps. Possibly an over-reaction to too often seeing people act irrationally and with undue certainty. Didn’t mean any harm, really just want us all to take a breath before we spit out a hot take on things we really know little/nothing about. It’s a lesson I still haven’t learned entirely but try to incorporate constantly. 
I try to focus more on the “what I don’t know” in a situation rather than what I’m “sure” of.
"“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so." - Mark Twain.
Thanks for the discourse. And you, seriously, have a great day as well.
ADA compliant? The “Justice” department has a set of guidelines that mandate the use of strobe lights and pain weapons, although I’m pretty sure the law is supposed to mandate accessibility.
… And I’ve just been beaten again.
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