Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[Yahoo]

A flight attendant suing the wife of megachurch evangelist Joel Osteen told a jury Tuesday she was simply doing her job when she was attacked without provocation. Continental Airlines flight attendant Sharon Brown testified that Victoria Osteen approached her and was upset and angry before the start of a 2005 flight from Houston to Vail, Colorado.

Read more here.

[From me]

Have you ever flown on Continental?  If so, you will agree with me Victoria probably had reason to be angry. Continental ruined my honeymoon in 1988 when they overbooked our flight to Cancun.  They wouldn’t let us on our scheduled flight or the next one.  Then they sent our luggage down to Mexico without us.  By the time we got to Mexico 2 days later on another airline, the wonderful people at Continental sent our luggage back to Atlanta.  So for that reason I side with Victoria.

Actually, she was trying to share with the flight attendant how to have her best life now! 

What do you think?

[Herald-Leader]

A lawyer for the first officer of Comair Flight 5191 has asserted a novel, and controversial, defense in 21 lawsuits filed against him: that the 47 passengers of the doomed flight share the blame for their deaths.

In response to questions from a plaintiff’s lawyer, James Polehinke’s lawyer asserted that the passengers killed in the Aug. 27, 2006, crash should have known that Blue Grass Airport was dangerous because of considerable media coverage of a massive runway construction project there. They should have known the air traffic control tower was understaffed, that airports in Louisville and Northern Kentucky are safer and that taking off in the dark is dangerous, wrote William E. Johnson, a well-known attorney from Frankfort.

Attorney David Royse, who represents two families, said it amounts to a blame-the-victim strategy. Polehinke had asserted “contributory negligence” — legalese for saying the other party is also at fault and contributed to their injuries.

“We find it ironic and disingenuous that he would suggest the passengers are now at fault when he was the pilot and he had all this information,” Royse said.

Read about it here.

[From me]

This has to be one of the dumbest claims I’ve ever heard!  How is it the victims’ fault?

What do you think?