Alphecca: What Shakespeare Said...

February 15, 2005

What Shakespeare Said...

A group of Austrian and German victims of the Asian tsunami disaster are to file a lawsuit demanding that Thailand, French hotel chain Accor and US forecasters prove they reacted adequately to the disaster, their lawyers said.
The suit, naming Accor and the US-run tsunami early warning system in the Pacific as well as Thai authorities, will be filed in a New York district court this week, the lawyers said in Vienna.

'We found that serious lapses were committed,' said Herwig Hasslacher, one of the three lawyers for the group.
[...]
The case was presented as the first of its kind arising out of the Dec 26 disaster, when a powerful undersea earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra sent huge waves pounding into coastlines around the Indian Ocean.

Nearly 290,000 people died, including several thousand Western tourists who were holidaying in Indian Ocean resorts, notably in Thailand and Sri Lanka.
The suit will be filed on behalf of 15 Austrian and four German victims of the disaster.

The targets are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Washington and its Hawaii-based tsunami warning centre; the Accor group of hotels where some of the victims stayed; and the Thai government.
The NOAA is accused of having registered the earthquake but failed to alert Indian Ocean countries of the impending tsunamis as the Hawaii centre covered only the Pacific.

Can lawsuits over tornados, hurricanes, ice-storms, meteor strikes, droughts, floods, et cetera be far behind? There is a sickness in this world and civil trial lawyers are to blame.

Posted by Jeff Soyer at February 15, 2005 01:01 PM

Comments

We must be careful not to over-generalize. 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

Posted by: Steven Malcolm Anderson at February 16, 2005 01:01 AM

Can we at least deduct the number of lawyers from the casualties of the tsunami disaster?

Posted by: billy-jay at February 16, 2005 07:14 AM

I'm not usually on the side of the government, but shouldn't the plaintiff have to actually prove negligence on the part of the NOAA, the hotels, etc?

And since when does the mission statement, or for that matter, authority and responsibility, of the NOAA extend past the maritime economic interest boundaries of the United States?

Posted by: Heartless Libertarian at February 16, 2005 10:09 AM

HL, don't look at it as being on the side of the government, look at is as being on the side of common sense.

Posted by: billy-jay at February 16, 2005 10:18 AM

There was a report issued by the Pacific tsunami watch group that noted an earthquake at a certain latitude and longitude; it then went on to say that no warning would follow as that was not in the Pacific ocean.

Perhaps this is the grounds for the suit.

I think an analogous situation would be for a fire to occur in Tijuana, visible from San Diego, and for the victims to then sue the San Diego Fire Department for not responding. It should get tossed out.

Posted by: Paul at February 16, 2005 01:14 PM

Actually, Shakespeare wasn't talking about what we call lawyers today, but the legislators.

Not that in any way diminishes the Bard's brilliance.

Ross in range on that misquote

Posted by: Addison at February 17, 2005 04:06 PM

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February 15, 2005

What Shakespeare Said...

By Golly, you're reading an archived post. Click Here to head to the main page and read current stuff...

Check it out:

My group sci-fi blog novel:

Colony: Alchibah