Do You See This As An Obscene Money Grab?

Discussion in 'In the News' started by Trevalius Guyus, Feb 21, 2021.

  1. Trevalius Guyus

    Trevalius Guyus Veteran Member
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    https://www.yahoo.com/gma/family-11-old-boy-died-210400208.html

    This is a tragedy, no doubt. However, I took better care of my bird and dog during our sixty hours of no electricity.

    What parents simply stick their kids in bed together, and then leave them in a freezing room? Well, this mother did just that, apparently.

    We had the stovetop burners lit. It was 10° outside, and 68° inside. Yes, we were taking chances with fumes and fires, but everything worked out just fine.

    At what point do we say, "Hey, it's a terrible tragedy that your son froze to death, but you should have taken whatever steps you needed to, to keep that from happening!"

    Thing is, with public sentiment being what it is, I have a feeling this woman will be living in much richer digs in the future, and will probably be interviewed many times as she steps out of her 2021/22/23 Ferrari.

    Death, it's not just for mourning, anymore! It's your chance to get filthy rich, so seize the opportunity!
     
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  2. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    While I agree with much of what you suggested, @Trevalius Guyus, I support the idea of holding the electric companies responsible for their actions or inactions. When they fail in their responsibility to provide reasonable service, they should be held responsible for it, no more or no less than other industries.
     
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  3. Trevalius Guyus

    Trevalius Guyus Veteran Member
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    Ken, I think we agree on that, but should we also hold the companies responsible for actions people make or fail to make to protect themselves and their families?

    This child's death was easily preventable, had the mother thought about what she was doing. Her own actions killed her child, I strongly believe.
     
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  4. Faye Fox

    Faye Fox Veteran Member
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    I say wait for the autopsy results. So many questions that I would want answered such as why did the brother also not have effects of hyperthermia? In times of old people slept in cold freezing houses and wore heavy nightclothes and caps. I bet the autopsy shows suffocation. I don't see this case going anywhere.
     
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  5. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    None of this makes much sense to me, either. If I were freezing like this, I would have had my kids sleeping in the same bed as I was, certainly a three year old child.
    It makes sense to all bundle up together for warmth.
    It seems strange that the little child survived and the older boy did not, so there has to be more to this story than is being said. I totally agree with @Trevalius Guyus that she could have taken better care of her family.
    She was just fine, and the little child was, too; so why would the older child freeze to death, especially when he was a healthy young boy.

    As @Faye Fox mentioned, people used to sleep in homes where there was only a small wood stove, and when it burned out during the night, and the temperature was below zero outside, the house was pretty darned cold when you got up in the morning.
    I remember very well having water frozen solid inside the house, and sometimes getting up once or twice during the night to add wood to the fire to try and keep it going overnight.
    We were all freezing cold most of the night, but warmed up the next morning once the fire was burning good again.

    Also, this freeze lasted quite a few days, so did the children make it all the way to the end when it was starting to warm up, and then the boy died ? Or had he been laying dead in the house for several days ? None of this really makes sense, so hopefully, there will be a good investigation of what really happened.
     
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  6. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    I can see both sides of "personal accountability" versus "corporate accountability," but I won't pass judgement based upon the "facts" that the media puts out.

    Obviously seems to be a lot of neglect going on, but we don't really know.
     
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  7. Susan Paynter

    Susan Paynter Very Well-Known Member
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    What do animals do to keep their young ones warm. They keep them close to their
    bodies. What was this mother doing, knowing it was freezing. Being in the country for such a short time, she knows about lawsuits?? not throwing a stone at her, just questioning ?

    From the corporate side, they were not prepared or did not anticipate this type of weather would hit them ever. Not condoning their lapses, but there is some great detail missing.

    scale.jpeg
     
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  8. Beth Gallagher

    Beth Gallagher Supreme Member
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    I'm always disgusted when the first call is to a lawyer instead of the funeral director. "Grieving" mother?
     
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  9. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    As in other such cases where death is claimed to be there result of negligence, it's not unusual for it to be found that the negligence was on both sides and the awards decreased or all together withheld.
     
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    Last edited: Feb 23, 2021
  10. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    Growing up, our house was heated by one central oil heater, which was basically a large drum that oil dripped into. Located near the center of the house downstairs, heat would rise so there would be some heat on the second floor, but often the second and third floors would be closed off in the winter. Heat wasn't pumped from one part of the house to the other so rooms on the edge of the house would be colder than those toward the center and rooms on the ground floor would be warmer than upstairs rooms. As a teenager, I chose to make the attic my bedroom so I was awfully cold in the winter, and had to depend on blankets. I don't think anyone considered any of this to be negligence on anyone's part. Still, if I'm paying for electricity I have a right to expect electricity unless it's a good reason why that cannot occur.
     
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  11. Faye Fox

    Faye Fox Veteran Member
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    The thing is with electricity if it is off you don't pay unless you use LESS than the basic amount. That eliminates the argument that I paid for a service that wasn't rendered. The argument will be what is reasonable to expect from a power company during emergency circumstances. If they purposely shut down a plant that is different from one failing even if negligence in design was a factor. It will have to be proven that they knew it would fail and refused to correct it.

    Almost the entire state was affected, so any negligence by the power company will be a class action suit, rather than one individual that from what I read has no basis to make such a claim. I think her lawyer is hoping that public outrage will force the company to give her a quick settlement to shut her up. Based on what we know at this point, any court would throw this out. This was all released before an autopsy in hopes of swaying the public court of opinion and a rush of judgment to demand justice. How can a fair jury be chosen when this is worldwide news?
     
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  12. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    The house in north Idaho where I grew up had the same kind of heating. It was one stove where fuel oils dripped in (from a huge outside storage tank), and that was what heated (or tried to heat) the whole house. My bedroom was in the back room, so the heat barely got that far, and i would usually sleep in my jeans and sweatshirt and bundle down in my sleeping bag , trying to keep warm. The bedroom windows had that frost swirls all over on the inside of the windows.

    We had to keep the oil stove on low heat, because it would growl and rumble and threaten to explode if it got turned up any higher, and I remember mom running outside with me in the middle of the winter because the stove was trying to explode, and my dad was inside trying frantically to get it shut off before the lid of the drum blew off.
    It was SCARY ! !
     
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  13. Susan Paynter

    Susan Paynter Very Well-Known Member
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    If there was a tsunami and families lost their loved ones, would they be suing nature?

    Having one oil tank to heat the house, i suppose it was the way things were done at the time. Being cold and freezing to death are two entities. This was a different scenario, power went out the mother was responsible to keep the kids warm, period. Unless of course she left the kids alone at home and she was out at work??
     
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  14. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    We're not necessarily talking about nature, though. Electric companies will sometimes shut the power off to some areas so that they can supply electricity to others. That's a choice that they make and, like everyone else, they should be held responsible for bad outcomes resulting from their choices.
     
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  15. Shirley Martin

    Shirley Martin Supreme Member
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    It seemed odd to me from the start that the eleven year old died but the three year old did not. I would think that the three year old was more vulnerable to the cold. Something just doesn't seem right there.
     
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