Civli Litigation exists for one primary purpose: to settle accounts between insurers.
Read the fine print of almost any insurance policy--one of the rights that the insurer obtains from you is "subrogation." That is the right of the insurer to stand in your shoes, and to sue in your name to recover any benefits paid out to you by the tortfeasor. Every parent who lost a child, or whose child stands in need counselling or any type of special care, and who is recovering a claim for those losses from an insurer has given that insurer these subrogation rights.
So when you blithely complain about litigation, and lawyers preying on human misery, remember for a moment that these things don't happen in a vacuum. They happen for a reason--and often for a very good reason. If one insurer is left holding the bag for the losses of a whole community, that cost will get distributed to policy holders--assuming, of course, that the insurer can survive the risk exposure. By allowing insurers to have and use subrogation rights, losses can be distributed as broadly as possible, ensuring the ongoing viability of the system.
As for the state's liability, who knows? But one thing is patently clear--you can be sued not only for your acts, but for your omissions as well. The issue here will not be whether the security was adequate--clearly it wasn't--but whether the security was reasonable in the circumstances. You cannot protect against all threats. But you cannot use that as an excuse to fail to protect against threats that are reasonably foreseeable.
This litigation strikes me as neither frivilous, nor vexatious. There are some important principles at stake--not the least of which is setting out with some clarity the responsibility of the State when it provides primary and secondary education.
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--James
29 Dec 2012, 4:45 pm
*&^%$#@ing civil litigation ...
