The Internet Is A Stressful Place for Litigators

Many of us here at Abnormal Use handle personal injury lawsuits, including lawsuits in which people are injured while using a product. Those who do not handle personal injury cases for a living can entertain themselves for hours watching #epicfail videos, which depict calamitous accidents involving trampolines, forklifts, recreational vehicles, exercise balls, and various other common products. These videos show people jousting with coworkers in their forklifts, knocking over shelving filled to the brim with store inventory, landing headfirst in the sand after flipping off of an exercise ball, flipping a recreational vehicle while slamming on the brakes and attempting to slide around an obstacle, and various other antics. Unfortunately for us, these videos are not mindless entertainment. They are stressful, issue spotting exercises. We routinely assist clients in defending cases in which plaintiffs have seriously injured themselves while engaging in these obviously dangerous activities. Videos that appear to some people as hilarious examples of people behaving with reckless abandon appear to us as problems for our clients. Most of the time, incidents that end up being litigated were not captured on video, so we must reconstruct what happened using eye witness testimony, physical evidence, and expert assistance. Don’t get us wrong. We love assisting our clients with these case. Our point is, we can’t enjoy these videos as mindless entertainment, and we are envious of people who can.