Copper Theft and Electrocutions

[wwhitney]

I'm pretty sure that nothing in Remington's marketing material encouraged anyone to go hunting other humans.

Apparently Remington's legal team, and the insurer's legal team, felt their position with regards to that was insufficiently strong, and so they settled.

The settlement includes a lot of public disclosures by Remington, so we'll have more insight on the above in the future.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[petersonra]

Apparently Remington's legal team, and the insurer's legal team, felt their position with regards to that was insufficiently strong, and so they settled.

The settlement includes a lot of public disclosures by Remington, so we'll have more insight on the above in the future.

Cheers, Wayne

I suspect it was mostly that they were in a gun unfriendly state court and the cost of litigation would have made it problematic.

 

[LarryFine]

No, the analogy would be suing GM if their marketing encourages you to get behind the wheel and run you over. That was the basis of Remington's legal liability.

It ignores the fact that the user stole the weapon (from his mother), so marketing had nothing to do with it.

 

[wwhitney]

It ignores the fact that the user stole the weapon (from his mother), so marketing had nothing to do with it.

I don't see how the theft is relevant? If GM were using Death Race 2000 to market cars, and I stole a car and proceeded to run down pedestrians, the argument is that GM still bears some legal liability for using Death Race 2000 in its marketing.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[LarryFine]

I don't see how the theft is relevant?

The user was not the purchaser, so how could marketing have been an influence?

 

[wwhitney]

The user was not the purchaser, so how could marketing have been an influence?

You seem to be drawing a distinction between two scenarios in which I don't see any difference in the manufacturer's culpability:

1) The manufacturer (allegedly) markets a product improperly (in violation of statute, or suggesting an illegal use, or whatever), I go out and steal the product, and I misuse it.
2) The manufacturer markets a product improperly, I go out and steal some money, I use the money to buy the product, and I misuse the product.

I would think that if the marketing is improper, and contributes to the product misuse, the manufacturer could have legal liability, regardless of whether the product was purchased, a gift, stolen, etc.

But maybe I'm wrong, IANAL.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[Hv&Lv]

No, the analogy would be suing GM if their marketing encourages you to get behind the wheel and run you over. That was the basis of Remington's legal liability.

Cheers, Wayne

I don’t think anyone at Remington ever encouraged mass shootings.
I own several AK style and AR style weapons, along with a pretty good arsenal in my home and have never wanted to blow away the masses due to marketing or Looney Tunes cartoons.

 

[xformer]

We've had some that didn't end in death but just a big surprise. A string of copper theft to the west of me. Well at least some of it was copper. Had several new service installation that when POCO went to connect they call the inspection office why was the inspector passing service installation without ground rods and conductors. Fortunately there was pictures showing the original installation. Someone was going thru the effort to pull up the "copper" ground rods and cut the cable and steal it all. Imagine the thief's surprise whe he was told that big copper rod was not copper but just clad.

 

[wwhitney]

I don’t think anyone at Remington ever encouraged mass shootings.

I expect you're correct that Remington did not ever explicitly encourage mass shootings. But there is plenty of marketing that would be less egregious but still illegal, and I believe that is what the plaintiffs were alleging.

As I understand it, the plaintiff's legal theory was that (a) Remington's marketing did in fact violate the state Consumer Protection laws, and that (b) as such their conduct was not shielded by the 2005 federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The US Supreme Court upheld point (b) by declining to review the lower court decision not to dismiss the suit on the bases of that 2005 federal law. And apparently the defendant and their insurance companies decided that the risks and costs of litigation were enough to settle rather than litigate point (a).

Cheers, Wayne

 

[NTesla76]

Accountability means nothing anymore.

Sent from my SM-G781U using Tapatalk

 

[robertd]

I remember back to shop class in high school seeing some safety videos. One video in particular, it must have been put out by Caterpillar or similar, and it showed people working on heavy earth moving equipment and how you needed to block things before you work on them. It showed proper blocking and then someone who didn't and the hydraulic line leaking and you didn't see all the gruesome details, but you got the idea. I recall seeing another with someone locking out an electrical panel and then someone not locking it out and then you see the alternative scene with someone flipping a breaker back on while someone's working on the circuit.

Like this:

 

[garbo]

It has been awhile since I have heard or read about a major copper theft. I found this article in my Safety Training archives.
There seems to be a lot of talk about arc flash but not a lot about electrocutions and what high energy power can do.
I will have to caution readers it is pretty graphic and not for the faint of heart. I think it is important and I am posting it since it may save somebody's life.

Years ago we had a guy get electrocuted while standing on top of a box car. His wife wanted to sue the city & the railroad for not having high fencing blocking off hundred of miles of tracks and for not installing warning signs. Often wondered how a warning sign would be worded. Maybe CAUTION if you try to steal wire 18' off ground you could be electrocuted.

 

[4x4dually]

That video is awesome. Two of my favorites are "don't un-loosen tracks without proper blocking" and the dude that throws a cigarette out the window then moments later bails out of his machine engulfed in flames. LMAO

 

[Jraef]

I visited an old lumber mill a few years ago because they were blowing up VFDs right and left. What I found after looking at some serious floating ground reference voltages was that all 3 of their pad mount service transformers (old mil, several expansions) had no bonding to ground, they had all been cut, presumably stolen by tweakers. That could have gone terribly wrong. Their transformers had chain link fences around them, but nobody ever paid attention to the fact that the locks had been cut. Going backward from when they started losing their VFDs, it had probably been that way for over a year.

About 15 years ago now, I was building 300-500 HP soft starters for farmers in the Central Valley of California because the farmers were having to cease using diesel pumps. Tweakers would steal the submersible pump cables by cutting them off in the starter, then hooking up their truck to the pump cables and driving off, letting the cables snap where they will, which of course dropped the pump into the well and left it unrecoverable. I got to one site to start up the soft start only to discover the bumper of a truck laying there still attached to the cables. The license plate was still on the bumper, but it turned out to be a stolen truck. Rumor had it that whenever one of these tweakers was caught in the act, they were never seen again.

 

[electrofelon]

Tweakers would steal the submersible pump cables by cutting them off in the starter, then hooking up their truck to the pump cables and driving off, letting the cables snap where they will, which of course dropped the pump into the well and left it unrecoverable. I got to one site to start up the soft start only to discover the bumper of a truck laying there still attached to the cables. The license plate was still on the bumper, but it turned out to be a stolen truck. Rumor had it that whenever one of these tweakers was caught in the act, they were never seen again.

You know it sounds kind of extreme and something one of these Middle Eastern countries would do, but I'm leaning more toward the death penalty for things like that I can't stand these people anymore. Just last week one of my past job sites was broken into and they stole the copper lines from a chiller. Week before that a resi job I'm doing had the door kicked in, apparently nothing stolen miraculously. Week before that, another former job site was broken into and had three portable generators stolen. Seems like the vast majority of job sites get broken into now.

 

[infinity]

You know it sounds kind of extreme and something one of these Middle Eastern countries would do, but I'm leaning more toward the death penalty for things like that I can't stand these people anymore. Just last week one of my past job sites was broken into and they stole the copper lines from a chiller. Week before that a resi job I'm doing had the door kicked in, apparently nothing stolen miraculously. Week before that, another former job site was broken into and had three portable generators stolen. Seems like the vast majority of job sites get broken into now.

I feel your frustration. We've had a similar problem with car thieves. For 6 months the State had banned any pursuit of a stolen car and the number of car thefts skyrocketed. Seems these thieves would target affluent towns where there is no crime and people don't lock their doors or cars. Many even left the key fobs in the car in their driveway. These thieves would ride around (usually in a stolen car) and look for the high end cars with car mirrors that weren't folded in and they would then know that he car was unlocked. Many times the fob was in there so they just drove the car away. Even when reported the police just watched them drive away.

In my town we had 4 cars stolen in 2 weeks. Fast forward to this week, after the state recently lifted the pursuit ban a group of thieves in a stolen car being chased crashed and they all died. Oh well.

 

[petersonra]

I feel your frustration. We've had a similar problem with car thieves. For 6 months the State had banned any pursuit of a stolen car and the number of car thefts skyrocketed. Seems these thieves would target affluent towns where there is no crime and people don't lock their doors or cars. Many even left the key fobs in the car in their driveway. These thieves would ride around (usually in a stolen car) and look for the high end cars with car mirrors that weren't folded in and they would then know that he car was unlocked. Many times the fob was in there so they just drove the car away. Even when reported the police just watched them drive away.

In my town we had 4 cars stolen in 2 weeks. Fast forward to this week, after the state recently lifted the pursuit ban a group of thieves in a stolen car being chased crashed and they all died. Oh well.

I can understand banning high speed pursuits over just property. A fair number of police pursuits end with innocent people getting hurt.

What is the calculus of how many dead completely innocent people can die or be seriously injured to allow police to engage in high speed pursuits over just property.

Seems to me the answer is to get people to lock their cars and take the keys with them.

 

[electrofelon]

This is quite an interesting solution and worth a listen.

Eye in the Sky

Ross McNutt has a superpower: he can zoom in on everyday life, then rewind and fast-forward to solve crimes in a shutter flash. But should he?

www.wnycstudios.org

 

[petersonra]

This is quite an interesting solution and worth a listen.

Eye in the Sky

Ross McNutt has a superpower: he can zoom in on everyday life, then rewind and fast-forward to solve crimes in a shutter flash. But should he?

www.wnycstudios.org

there is already a crap load of video out there that could be reviewed to solve crimes. The problem is that there are not enough people to watch it and pull out the few minutes or seconds out of thousands of hours of video that might be of value.