<p>
I some how doubt the problem is solely, or even primarily, due to private contractors.</p>
<p>Compare the neighborhoods that didn’t vote for Menino with the areas that didn’t get plowed. I suspect there is a strong correlation… 
</p>
<p>I posted on the other thread about this… this isn’t entirely surprising.</p>
<p>Lehigh students to have a bit of a reputation in this area of being spoiled and not very pleasant… some people try to avoid places they will be. I don’t know anyone that goes there personally so i can’t speak to their personalities but I’ve heard some horror stories. Obviously they can’t all be bad eggs and I’m sure most are quite wonderful… but I don’t hear anyone else complaining about any of the other college students around here… and there are quite a few. It’s always that one. </p>
<p>All of the waitresses/waiters/bartenders that I know have complained about them not tipping or leaving like 1 or 2 bucks on a 30 dollar bill. If you’re going to eat out at more-expensive-then-most-college-students-can-afford places you should know how to leave an appropriate tip. Don’t parents teach these things?</p>
<p>I was on vacation the other year in another state and at a restaurant/bar the waitress asked where we were from and we told her… she told us that just a week earlier there was a bunch of colleges in town for a volleyball tournament and one college all came in at once and pretty much took over the bar for several hours and didn’t leave a single tip on hundreds of dollars of food/drinks. That college was lehigh. We felt so bad for her that we tipped her 20 bucks on a fourty dollar bill. </p>
<p>I have a feeling it’s just a few people giving the place a bad name… but stories like this lawsuit don’t help.</p>
<p>Fendergirl, since my Lehigh grad D points out when I’ve only left 18% tip and worked for tips when she was younger, I’m sure I know at least one Lehigh person who can and does tip accordingly ;). She sent me the link and is appalled by this. It’s embarrassing for those good honest and hardworking Lehigh students.</p>
<p>I’m not offended at all. I’ve heard the stereotype before (well deserved or not I don’t know).</p>
<p>Deb, I’m sure some of them are great. :)</p>
<p>Glad to hear some can tip… Lol!</p>
<p>I will say this… They get quite the work out walking on that campus!!</p>
<p>Sent from my DROID BIONIC using CC</p>
<p>Torts are fine as long as loser pays. Don’t force me to spend money defending myself against you unless you are willing to pay for my defense if I win. Torts can bankrupt the defendant. Not fair. Sue me and you take all the risk. I pay if you win. You pay if you lose.</p>
<p>Here’s a link to the story with some more details:</p>
<p>[Lehigh</a> University professor, sued by student over poor grade, insists C-plus is appropriate | lehighvalleylive.com](<a href=“http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/bethlehem/index.ssf/2013/02/professor_sued_by_student_over.html]Lehigh”>Lehigh University professor, sued by student over poor grade, insists C-plus is appropriate - lehighvalleylive.com)</p>
<p>If the 0 in class participation dropped her a full letter grade as per the story above, she was probably already struggling in that class as a B is a crummy grade in grad school…even if it is passing. </p>
<p>Add to that emotional instability/outbursts in class, father stepping into what should strictly be a student/Prof matter…especially considering she’s a grad student well-past 21, and more…</p>
<p>Agree with those who feel she should consider other careers. I wouldn’t want someone exhibiting the above behaviors or manifest such immaturity as a counselor/therapist for anyone…especially in K-12. </p>
<p>I also find it absurd the father said he was surprised someone could get a 0 for class participation even if they participated regularly. </p>
<p>Obviously, he never heard or chooses to be ignorant of the concept of docking points for negative class participation. Something which is practiced not only at the undergrad level, but also even by some high school teachers.</p>
<p>Nope, it is actually private contractors. Most plowing by cities and towns is done by private companies under contract. These were the people that failed. As for how neighborhoods voted, I would indeed bet that West Roxbury was plowed but Menino wins Southie by a lot - he wins everywhere - and they were squashed. And it was the mayor out in the streets yelling at people about it despite his being quite ill. (Even the Herald reports that it’s private contractors and they note problems in Dorchester and JP and that the city will be reviewed the GPS data from each plow to see who screwed up.)</p>
<p>As for the idea that losers should pay, that would be a godsend to big companies because then they would lose incentive to settle. The cost of litigation for a small plaintiff or defendant would be bankrupting so the advantages in settling would all pass to the big companies with deep pockets. And it would make litigation longer and more expensive because deep-pocketed litigants would see that each dollar spent gives an advantage in settlement leverage. So no, it’s a really bad idea that looks nice on the surface.</p>
<p>Now, what kind of career can she pursue?</p>
<p>Well, when you’ve got the Boston Public Works Commissioner saying things like “we are <em>confident</em> all the roads are passable” when it’s not true, it doesn’t fill me with confidence that the contractors are adequately supervised or that they were given the proper direction in the first place.</p>
<p>I agree that “loser pays” is a bad idea, although “loser pays for frivolous lawsuits” would be ok. Although now the question becomes, what is frivolous? You could probably argue that tobacco lawsuits were frivolous after the first hundred or so, because Big Tobacco won them all. Yet ultimately they lost to the tune of $250 billion.</p>
<p>We could probably all agree that the guy who sued his dry cleaner for a million bucks because they lost his favorite pair of pants was frivolous. Or the guy who sued Michael Jordan for $1 billion because Jordan looked like him.</p>
<p>Sounds like an entitled, spoiled child to me. So she can’t be a licensed professional counselor? What’s she going to tell students when they don’t get the grade what they want? “Sue the school.” Good that she didn’t get the required grade.</p>
<p>
The reason we don’t have this rule in the United States is that no individual could ever take the risk of suing a large company unless victory was almost completely assured. We already have the problem of the richer party running up the costs of litigation to try to drive the poorer parter into premature settlement.</p>
<p>Don’t believe all the propaganda about a tort crisis in this country. It really isn’t true.</p>
<p>
Would you change your view of the case if it came out that the person who gave the low grade did so because, say, he doesn’t think women should be licensed professional counselors, or because he doesn’t think, say, that lesbians should have that job?</p>
<p>^ I couldn’t disagree more. Lawyers have ruined this country. There are no more accidents,everything is always somebodies fault.People now sue because you hurt their feelings,or they were’nt picked for the team etc.</p>
<p>
It always bemuses me that people who say things like this so rarely move to other countries.</p>
<p>The vast, vast majority of lawsuits involve real disputes that need adjudication. The vast majority of baseless lawsuits are dismissed, or are settled for very small amounts of money (so-called nuisance value). Those that actually go to trial are rare, and those that come out “wrong” (by a reasonable person’s view) are even rarer. And usually, when people think a case was wrongly decided, it’s because they don’t actually understand it–like the hot coffee case.</p>
<p>How about AIG’s attempt to sue the government for bailing them out? That’s beyond frivolous. It has gone too far. I think there are too many lawyers and they’ve run out legimate lawsuits to engage them all.</p>
<p>No doubt there are real disputes but there are even more lawyers.</p>
<p>Most judges have little patience for frivolous lawsuits. And remember, the vast, vast majority of lawsuits get settled long before they get to a trial.</p>
<p>The system we have isn’t perfect–but it has a lot going for it, in terms of poor and vulnerable people being able to use it to get justice. It’s not surprising that the rich and powerful think it goes too far in that direction.</p>
<p>Any objective person would realize I’m talking about the 10,20,30% of frivilous lawsuits by less than scruplous lawyers scamming for fees. Many judges are in on the scam because they’re all lawyers also. Welcome to USA, the most litigious society in human history.Little Johnny’s parents sue because he didn’t make the soccer team.</p>
<p>I don’t know why the kneejerk anti-government stuff occurs but I actually know a bit about how snow plow contracting works because of my work in commercial real estate. In Boston and other cities and towns, there are a few systems but the gist is that contractors end up assigned to specific routes & roads and these are all tracked by GPS. They also get very specific notes about areas where the blade needs to be lifted - like on traffic tables - and these are even programmed. In Boston, contractors simply failed to clear entire streets, cleared in some case half the length and stopped, etc. It wasn’t a case of not going back sufficient times. They didn’t do the first level of the job. The one they contracted to do. </p>
<p>The next level takes some discussion. So for example, where there is no overnight parking, the contractors are generally supposed to peel to the curb. But they work with Public Works to determine whether that can be done, when, etc. Things do get messy during a storm. I used to be close to a few DPW directors of towns - through development and going to meetings - and I knew how they oversaw the operation. </p>
<p>But the funny thing is, people can’t accept a private failure and now the idea is to blame government supervision. If the idea is that private companies do better, then saying they fail because of lack of government supervision is a non-sequitur. They should be better at it. They weren’t in this case and often aren’t.</p>
<p>And I totally agree with Hunt’s comment about the lack of a tort crisis. In fact, if you look into the odd and huge verdicts they come from the most conservative states - like Texas and Alabama - not liberal states. The reasons there are complicated but for example a case was brought about paint touchups to BMW’s - that the paint was touched up to cover defects and shipping damages - and that case was brought in Alabama. BMW didn’t disclose this. Why would they? And the judgement was $2M in punitive damages, with only $4k for repainting the car (which didn’t need repainting). That was only overturned when the US Supreme Court ruled the punitive damages were grossly excessive because they were so out of proportion. But the bottom line is: the problem with tort judgements is mostly a Southern phenomenon.</p>
<p>If there is a problem, it’s that the cost of suing is too high and that cost is used as a lever by rich defendants when there is a real problem. Get the wording: when there is a real fault, defendants have an incentive to drive up costs to increase settlement leverage - and discourage and delay - and that incentive increases the more the actual harm. It’s weird and perverse that cases with the most merit can be the most difficult to bring but then those are the ones fought the hardest. </p>
<p>Note that I have a different opinion about medical malpractice. That is a separate subject because that system is essentially used as a very expensive form of social insurance. It requires a weird guise of “fault” - like negligence - when the reality, putting aside real cases of really bad medicine, that diagnosing and treatment is an art and “fault” is a misnomer. I’m not against the social insurance part - though the numbers can be absurd - but I am against the way the system works. For example, my father was chief at an urban hospital and thus was named in many lawsuits simply because of his position. That required huge amounts of paperwork and dealing with lawyers and insurers and drove up costs. It was “necessary” because the system requires finding some individual person to be at fault but I think a better system would be to evaluate a claim as a whole and to determine what happened as a whole. That would be a way to partly disengage the insurers’ lawyers and involve medical professionals - not witnesses for hire - in a tribunal designed to identify objective truth. It’s funny that the securities industry can require arbitration but medicine can’t.</p>
<p>
This is nonsense, as is the idea that 10% of lawsuits are frivolous. Don’t believe everything you read, especially if it’s in all caps.</p>
<p>I cross-posted with Lergnom–I agree. I think the biggest problem with medical malpractice is that the law is so wildly divergent from state to state. In some states, there is a good argument that there is an insurance cost crisis; in other states, there isn’t.</p>
<p>I think 10% is way to low.It’s much worse that that.As for judges,why do you think they fight like dogs to get these relatively low paying jobs??Could it be the outside perks???</p>
<p>
If you choose to embarass yourself by posting stuff like this, I’m not going to stop you. But I will ask, how do you come by these observations?</p>