Jenksismyhero

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 04:05 PM) You mean that individual plaintiffs will have to deal with the costs of bringing lawsuits, instead of getting a free ride as a member of a class? At the end of the day class action lawsuits generally benefit 1 group of individuals, lawyers. Millions of dollars are paid to the class action attorneys, very little real money ever reaches the classes hands. Its just a stupid system regardless, but if you want to sue a company, you should have to pay the cost of the lawsuit. They are free to file pro se and most likely the Defendant would settle for nuisance (you can generally get a few hundred dollars just for them not having to file appearance actually hire an attorney). As I said Class Actions are for the benefit of attorneys who make millions, while the injured class gets pennies. Honestly Im not a huge fan of class actions just because they are really nothing more than individual claims that are joined together so that a law firm can get a big pay day. I really dont believe class action suits are there for the benefit of the actual individuals, otherwise you wouldnt see the type of settlements that the class action attorneys sign off on. As long as the attorneys get paid, they could care less what happens to their "plaintiffs". Id be far more cynical if class action lawsuits could only be brought by NFP law firms with the majority of the money going to the harmed class. Agreed.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 02:35 PM) His roles in "Kings" and "Pillars of the Earth" were so meh because he was basically Swearengen in different clothing - that tone of voice, the eye brow raising/wide-eyed look...I dunno, very distinctive. It was difficult to take him seriously in those other roles. But I felt like in Pirates he was less Swearengen and more just some evil pirate.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 02:24 PM) Are there ever times you feel class-action is legitimate? Of course, where the Plaintiff's are similar and the wrongdoing of the Defendant is the same. Products liability cases for example. I'm more inclined to agree with you about fraudulent charges like in that prior AT&T case (my issue with that was more that I didn't have a problem forcing people to go through arbitration first).

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 08:19 AM) So in my home search I have been trying to be as thorough as I can possibly be...part of me wants a fixer upper...part of me wants something older, but already fixed up for me....part of me wants to stay near the Strip...part of me wants to go live in the mountains (yes, there are mountains within 40 minutes or so of the Strip, where you can experience all 4 seasons). I have found options for each desire, and am following through on them... And then last night at work, while just searching through available lots, I found some land out in the middle of nowhere...where there are wild horses roaming about, no utility hookups, and just miles and miles of clean air, sunlight, and stars to drink a beer and smoke a cigar underneath....and I got to thinking... How amazing would it be to live off the grid in a place like that? To either buy an existing home outfitted with solar panels and backup generators (yes, there are some affordable ones)...or to actually buy a prefab home and outfit it with everything necessary to live off the grid? The thought of it is making me dream of the possibilities...the hardest part would be getting the financing...although there are companies that specialize in these types of loans...and then of course getting the septic tank put in and dealing with all the permitting...but I think it could be done...a very small space mind you...but it could be done for $200k or so.... Anyways, sorry for wasting your time...just a dream I am having right now... I grew up with like 10 acres of land in "BFE" (central Illinois) with forests, some open land, and even some streams and a small river. Then I moved to the city, and now i'm in the burbs. If I could, I would do what you are dreaming of doing in a heartbeat. I'm so tired of pavement, traffic, people that don't understand the rules of walking on sidewalks are the same as the rules of the road (move to the right unless you're going to pass. it's not a hard concept people!) etc. Hopefully one day I can. But unfortunately my wife and i picked careers that essentially require us to be near a metro area.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 01:53 PM) Of course. Doesn't mean you can't process the metaphor man, come on. There are legitimate and lawful reasons to pay employee A, a female, less than employee B, a male, that have nothing to do with gender discrimination. The same cannot be said of skirting safety protocols. That's a terrible metaphor.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 01:42 PM) And in this case, the difference is what, a few thousand dollars per employee? Over 1.5 million cases? Having the class action status is the only way in which this would be dealt with. You've accepted that the statistics are a problem that would be something the courts would normally deal with, but once again you're happy with a decision that leaves the actual plaintiffs no realistic recourse to deal with the problem. I'm happy with a decision that forces people to prove their individual case when there's not a lot of commonality to infer that each plaintiff was the victim of the same discrimination and suffered the same types of damages.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 01:26 PM) If I were to run a series of coal mines, for example, and I set the only policy being "Run coal" and I judged managers effectiveness based on how much coal each one ran...I've pushed the actual decision to ignore the safety standards on to a low enough level that based on this standard, it is the local manager making the decision so class action status against the company is not possible. Basically, it creates a convenient way for a smart set of lawyers to prevent class action lawsuits for just about anything...you push the actual decision down the level far enough and no matter what the policy, class action status as a redress against a large company becomes nearly impossible Employment decisions regarding promotions or wages and the decision to ignore safety protocols are two entirely different things.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 01:30 PM) They're not being given the chance to prove actual discrimination though. Yes they are. Go file a suit and use those statistics of corporate wide discrimination to your advantage. That happens in nearly every discrimination case.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 01:23 PM) There you go. In this case, Walmart was allowing a situation where women were consistenly not promoted or paid as well as men. While it may not have been an official company policy, the company got around this by allowing the decisions to be made at a level where that type of decision was going to be made. There needs to be a legal redress here and it can't be "1.5 million individual cases". I don't see why people should essentially be presumed to be a victim without having to prove actual discrimination and actual damages. That's the law, regardless of how s***ty Walmart is as a company.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 01:07 PM) Well that goes back to the argument we had before, most of those suits will never get filed because individually they're not that strong. You need the grand pattern of being a s***ty company to drive the case and to have it actually make an impact on Walmart, both financially and policy-wise. eta: "I only got a .25 raise as cashier while the males routinely got .30" isn't a case worth suing over individually, but if you've got 100,000 cashiers with the same claim in a class suit...well... True, but I think discrimination is a different ballgame than charging (or overcharging) someone on a bill. There could be 25 reasons why you got .05 cents less per hour that has nothing to do with being a female. Just because you happen to be female, happen to make .05 cents less, and happen to work for Walmart shouldn't mean that you're automatically a victim of discrimination.

Pirates 4. Ugh. I mean, the first one was great (witty, entertaining, new, about pirates), and now the whole franchise is just being thrown into a garbage disposal and whatever spits out they call it a movie. Surprisingly Ian McShane wasn't bad (I was expecting Al Swearengin on a boat), Penelope Cruz was gorgeous (as usual) and the mermaids were pretty cool. But the writing. Ugh. So many one-liners that just fell flat. The only saving grace was that my wife and I had gone on our honeymoon on Kauai about 2 weeks after they had wrapped up some filming there and we got to see a lot of the remote areas where they shot. Other than that. Meh.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 12:55 PM) Well that's why it's a very difficult issue. How does this get fairly judicated? Individual suits. You can still use those statistics to bolster your case if you don't already have a strong one ("see jury! not only did she not get the promotion despite being overly qualified, but she's not the only one in the company...")

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 12:44 PM) I dunno, statistical samples of that large of a group to show systematic discrimination seems pretty appropriate. A thousand tiny, individual claims may not amount to much on their own, but lumped together, can show that Walmart is either actively discriminatory or does nothing to correct or prevent it. But by this logic any woman employed by Wal-mart is now a class member, even if she never applied for a promotion or raise, let alone actually being denied those things in favor of a male counterpart. That's Scalia's point - how can you really say there's commonality when you're talking about tens of thousands of business decisions that are independent from one another? You're basically using two criteria to define the class - being a female and employment with Wal-mart.

Balta, beyond the "ZOMG! Scalia wrote the opinion, so I know little kittens will be murdered somewhere!" reaction, why is this decision wrong? Don't you think in this case, where you have 1.5 million women claiming discrimination (so, XX thousands of managers/supervisors making employment decisions), that they be required to actually show what discriminatory acts occurred and what damages they suffered, instead of relying on general statistics of a company employing millions and millions of people?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 11:48 AM) And this decision created a new one based on Scalia's gut. The official standard right now, in clear, unambiguous legal terms, from the mind of Justice Scalia, is that class action qualification requires "some glue holding the alleged reasons for all those decisions together.” I'll await your official legal definition of "some glue". No, the standard is commonality. His usage of a phrase "some glue" has the same meaning. It's not "new."

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2011 -> 09:09 AM) It's worth noting more why they rejected it...they rejected it by creating a new, nebulous standard which they did not define which is required for suits to qualify for class action status. Now, for example, as long as a company keeps the decision making pushed low enough where there is no official policy, i.e. it's not official policy to discriminate against women but the company sets up a situation where it is guaranteed to happen for various reasons, class action status is impossible, and 1.5 million people have to either hire lawyers on their own or just suck it up. Huh? There's always been specific standards for class certification.

Oh no! Quinn's a commie too! http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/news/lo...0,5636379.story

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 17, 2011 -> 03:35 PM) but I think you are confusing interest with whether something affects someone more. ANd you said that a d*** picture affects the average american more than torture policies in the middle east. How did torture policies affect you personally? If we're talking about an American soldier, or a potential American soldier, maybe. But an average American? I know nothing in my life has changed from either event. How did "torture policies" affect you?

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 17, 2011 -> 03:15 PM) I think this is the most cynical thing I've ever read. Either i'm not conveying my point clearly enough or you guys have some really weird, warped view of the average American consumer of news/media. Are you honestly telling me, in a country that votes more for an American Idol contestant than the President of the United States, that it's surprising that a dick pic controversy would "sell" better than stories about prison abuse half way around the world**? **Which btw, was covered 100000000 times more than the most recent scandal involving US troops taking pictures of dead civilians/terrorists under Obama's watch.

Anyone watching Swamp People? I just busted through the first season in about 4 days. It's basically Deadliest Catch with alligators. I'm going to New Orleans in Sept. for a bachelor party and really want to go alligator hunting now...

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 17, 2011 -> 02:10 PM) This is correct. The first season covers the first book, Game of Thrones. There's three more books already published, a fifth due this summer and a planned 6th and 7th. That'll probably be another 10 years though at this rate. Costco has all 4 books in a set for $19.99 if anyone is interested in reading them.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 17, 2011 -> 01:44 PM) LOL. Dick pics > violations of civil liberties and acts of war, and the media rightfully focuses on what Americans can "relate" to. Our society is doomed. As it relates to the average American, yeah, i'd say dick pics of a Congressman has about as much impact on their day as what some guard in a prison camp in Iraq did. I don't think I ever said that was right/wrong, that's just the way it is.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jun 17, 2011 -> 10:05 AM) Which actions actually impact people in a discernible way? Neither.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 16, 2011 -> 06:12 PM) Greenwald on Weiner and our political culture Yeah he's using it to bring up his same hobby-horse, but he makes a good point. That's a terrible point. One involves the actions of the President (or other members of the Executive) during the time of war, the other has to do with private citizens possessing photos of a Congressman. Which is gonna be easier to cover? Which is going to be more relatable to the average American?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 16, 2011 -> 05:23 PM) I'd bet you that 5% of the Congresspeople who cheat on their spouses wind up being exposed. Or at least that it's closer to 5% than 75%. How many of them used easily recordable/trackable means like text messages to "cheat?" I'll even grant him one....one mistress to mess around with and send these pictures too. Maybe you can pay her off to keep quiet. But there were a ton of women here. Strangers really. How stupid can you be? I bet as soon as someone found out he was a Congressman they were shopping those pictures like crazy. How do you get that far up the political ladder and not think of that?