Litigation - following a regata collision. Amorita - Sumurun crash in 2007.

Zen Zero

Zen Zero

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This popped up on Facebook this morning:

http://www.ny30.org/amorita_accident.htm

I don't know any of the people involved but I do wonder why it is necessary to involve the civil courts in a question that should be handled as an insurance claim.

I mean was the skipper/owner of the Sumurun just being a prick for the fun of it of did his insurance company oblige him to act like one?

Here's some more info:
http://www.ny30.org/pdfs/village_soup_031108.pdf
 
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Hope there was no one down below. Flippin scary, and what about seeing a stunning boat that you love destroyed in seconds.

Quite remarkable having quite such a good photo record of what was happening. In answer to the question why did it end in litigation, presumably either the big boat thinks they were not in fact negligent, or the owners of the little boat are asking for an unreasonable amount of money (not sure if $1million is unreasonable in the circs), and big boat owners are not willing to compromise at such a large sum.
 
Romeo said:
Hope there was no one down below. Flippin scary, and what about seeing a stunning boat that you love destroyed in seconds.

Quite remarkable having quite such a good photo record of what was happening. In answer to the question why did it end in litigation, presumably either the big boat thinks they were not in fact negligent, or the owners of the little boat are asking for an unreasonable amount of money (not sure if $1million is unreasonable in the circs), and big boat owners are not willing to compromise at such a large sum.
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I just wonder if it's normal to behave like that over there. Surely it's stuff the insurers can sort out? In fact I believe they did settle out of court in the end but all that messing about will have delayed the financial part of the repair project, which isn't a very nice thing to do to a competitor and fellow boat owner.
 
Zen Zero said:
I just wonder if it's normal to behave like that over there. Surely it's stuff the insurers can sort out? In fact I believe they did settle out of court in the end but all that messing about will have delayed the financial part of the repair project, which isn't a very nice thing to do to a competitor and fellow boat owner.
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What's "nice" got to do with it? These people are rich. Rich people don't do nice, because if they did do nice they wouldn't be rich.
 
Humm, proper to seek redress through the courts, well just suppose who you are (wealthy) and who one might litigate against (negligence with poss malice) if the feeling is of one who acted without due regard to any rules or proper understandings in the circumstances.
Having seen (photographic evidence) the relentless progress of the larger yacht in such close quarters on the approach to the mark, one might just assume or judge that the yacht skipper or helmsman was hell bent on forcing his way through the other yachts come what may.
In those personal circumstances the skippers or owners of the other yachts might just want to sue for damages over and above the repair costs of the damaged yachts.
Good on the claimants I would say, if asked.
 
It's pretty ridiculous that the court even considered the case. They should have just left it with the protest committee. In fact the only issue in front of the court should have been whether the protest committee (and the following US Sailing Appeals Committee) was the correct forum for hearing the protest. The court is opening themselves up to a huge number of cases with this. Can you imagine what would happen if every crash in auto races ended up in court?

The article does not tell us what is the actual purpose of the lawsuit. Perhaps the Sumurun insurance company is refusing to pay without a court order. As said above, the court should not hear the facts of the case at all. They should do nothing more than rule that the Sailing Committee is the proper forum for this.
 
JumbleDuck said:
What's "nice" got to do with it? These people are rich. Rich people don't do nice, because if they did do nice they wouldn't be rich.
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OK got it, so that means that all of the poorer people are really nice and the huge middle class is ..well nothing I spose. Great to have a clean labeling system like that!
 
I thought to register a protest during a race you had to hoist a red protest flag which clearly they didnt do....

(I am being facetious )

2 stunning boats and i dont think i would want to race with someone like that if someone is prepared to 'sail' like that, and for what its worth it should have been settled at the club that organised the race and never gone to law
 
dom said:
OK got it, so that means that all of the poorer people are really nice and the huge middle class is ..well nothing I spose. Great to have a clean labeling system like that!
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But as many of us sailors are owners of "luxury yachts" (thank you, Daily Mail), we must presumably be rich.....and therefore Not Nice.
So we should stop pretending to like and be polite each other.
 
dom said:
OK got it, so that means that all of the poorer people are really nice and the huge middle class is ..well nothing I spose. Great to have a clean labeling system like that!
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Poor logic, old chap. Just because (rich => not nice) implies that (nice => not rich), not that (not rich => nice). When you invert the terms on each side you have to reverse the direction of the => as well.

So, for example, while cats are not amphibians, and amphibians are not cats, it is not the case that non-amphibians are cats.

(amphibian => not cat) and (cat => not amphibian) are equivalents.

Rich people are never nice, but that doesn't exclude the possibility that some poor people are not nice either.
 
Nope sorry, despite the general insistence of the Scottish press and the Grauniad south of the border, there actually are some very rich people who are also nice. It's not true that "rich people are never nice" although I suppose if you approach anyone with a preconceived bias against them they aren't going to react particularly positively

But if you think about it, being staggeringly nice is generally a more successful policy. Being incredibly awful works only in careers such as armed robbery.
 
Humm, I can here the official statement from representatives coming out now, as - we do not do nice - when racing, just force our way and 'bugger' the consequences or perhaps something like that.

So to seek litigation, yes certainly the right thing to do.
 
JumbleDuck said:
Poor logic, old chap ....

Rich people are never nice, but that doesn't exclude the possibility that some poor people are not nice either.
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Indeed, yet the idea that people belonging to the same cultural, ethnic or social group are all the same is just nonsense. And no good has ever come from attempts to classify people into distinct groups where each displays similar attributes and thereby enables them to be objectively ranked against one another.

I'm therefore wondering what is the attraction of going down roads like, “after a long study that I have not documented, I hereby declare that rich people cannot be nice.”

Perhaps it’s simply because we all need a positive self-image to survive; perhaps that’s why evidence is never put forward by race/social theorists that a race other than the one they belong to is superior; perhaps that’s why such arguments are always a bit predictable?
 
tcm said:
Nope sorry, despite the general insistence of the Scottish press and the Grauniad south of the border, there actually are some very rich people who are also nice.
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They may well be pleasant, but they are not, by (my) definition, nice. And nobody ever got rich by being staggeringly nice, or stayed rich while being staggeringly nice.
 
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