Whose Responsibility Is It Anyway?

This past week, while watching AC360 one evening, I was reminded of the case of a woman who fell into a fountain while walking in a shopping mall and texting at the same time. When it first hit the web, the incident made it on Anderson Cooper’s RidicuList and as a part of a RidicuList classics, the video was shown again this week. The story made it on the RidicuList not because a woman fell into a fountain but because the woman found herself a lawyer and decided to sue the store because, as she claims, no one came to help her when she fell. What?!? If you watch the video (see below), as a shrewd observer, you will notice that the woman immediately gets up and out of the fountain. And anyway, what should've security done? Stop her and tell her to please not text while walking? I am sure she would have appreciated that... Yes, it is embarrassing, but she should just own up to her actions and move on. Instead, she decides to start giving interviews so now everyone with a TV or a computer knows who she is. It was her fault she fell to begin with and it is now her fault everyone knows that she was the one to fall. So if her premise is that she is suing for humiliation, I sure hope she doesn't win as in my opinion, she is the one responsible.

The video reminds me of similar cases such as the woman suing for burning herself with hot coffee and the guy suing that his bike did not come with a warning that he, the buyer, must turn his light on when riding during the night! Not only these two sued; they won…millions of dollars…

Thanks to such wonderful people, we now live in a time of ridiculous warnings on all products to prevent people not from injuring themselves but from coming back and suing the company producing the products. 

The major issue here is that for some reason many people in Western societies have lost their ability to assume responsibility for their own actions. It is always someone else’s fault. It is the world that owes them and it is the world that is to blame for the fact that they fall into fountains while texting or getting hit by a car while riding a bike, at night, with no lights on. Such people must live blissful lives as they no longer have brains to think rationally and critically with in order to avoid injuring themselves in ridiculous ways. Most importantly, if they do encounter an unfortunate incident, they can still sleep soundly as the incident was most certainly not their fault. 

- Krasi