SUBMITTED: Saturday, November 03, 2007
POSTED: Saturday, November 03, 2007
THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE! YOU NEED TO GET AN ATTORNEY IN YOUR STATE, LICENSED BY YOUR STATE BAR TO HAVE VALID LEGAL ADVICE IN YOUR CASE!
THIS IS A STATEMENT OF OPINION ONLY! I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY AT LAW!
I know a little bit about personal injury suits and I can tell you that this is roughly the equivalent of a "slip and fall" accident, almost impossible to try and win anything -- or so I was TOLD! Now I know why !I thnk I know what a court in Texas would probably tell you and why.
THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE! YOU NEED TO GET AN ATTORNEY IN YOUR STATE, LICENSED BY YOUR STATE BAR TO HAVE VALID LEGAL ADVICE IN YOUR CASE!
THIS IS A STATEMENT OF OPINION ONLY! I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY AT LAW!
I am going to tell you,first, that I am surprised they didn't make you PAY for that bar stool.
You could have kept it and insisted on having the box that it was shipped in and had evidence for your case.Also,have bought an identical one and insisted on having the shipping box for comparison purposes.
I am a regular Big Lots customer and I am VERY SELECTIVE in what I buy there and I have been DELIGHTED with EVERYTHING I have bought there and am Still using ALL of it so I am admitting a bit of a bias at the outset. That said, I remember personally seeing something that resembled the merchandise in question that you allege harmed you --but as a result of YOUR own action.
AS I remember, it was some overpriced (expletive deleted) they probably got from the equally overpriced and outrageous Pier One Imports -- statement of opinion here, maybe YOU can afford Pier One's prices. Even at Big Lots prices, it was too overpriced for what it was..cheaply made crap probably made by slave labor in Asia. (Sometimes, my favorite store screws up when they price merchandise they allegedly want to "move"... I saw it, thought it was cute ,too but I DIDN'T HAVE TO BUY IT OR SIT ON IT!)
Don't you know how much you weigh?
Remember, a lot of that imported stuff is designed by and for smaller , lighter people, usually persons of traditional Asian heritage who usually do not weigh as much as Americans ( of all ethnicities) or are as tall as Americans. Make your own comparisons online if you don't believe me.
People are sometimes prisoners of their own experience and can't comprehend fully something or someone that is out of their day-to-day personal observations and experiences. Just as true for some manufacturers in Asia as it is for our manufacturers in the USA... The buyer from Pier One was probably a petite person, probably a lady--since their targeted marketing demographic used to be young,professional women,and the merchandise would have suited her lifestyle perfectly...Again, the buyer was probably only taking him/herself and other consumers like her/him when s/he bought it, which is probably why the merchandise was not sold and ended up eventually in the possession of Big Lots!
These manufacturers of the bar stools are in business to make a large and fast profit. Material to make substantial and larger chairs for heavier folks cost MONEY.Even slave labor costs money so they have to knock this stuff out as fast and as cheaply as they can to get the object of business: PROFIT! No telling from which Third World bastillion of enterprise these chairs originated from but you can bet they probably didn't know or care about the ultimate destination of them! All they considered was the $$$$$.
Big Lots was NOT the original buyer of this merchandise. They were trying to profit from Pier One's obvious mistake of buying merchandise that didn't sell, probably for al lthe reasons I theorized about above. I would venture to say that most consumers in America are not petite,slender persons of small stature.
Then, too, Big Lots buys a lot of liquidated merchandise usually sold by the "lot" which is where they get their name, I believe. They are gambling that they can buy things other outlets have not been able to sell for whatever reasons, inventories and warehouses of businesses that are no longer in business, overstocked merchandise and sell it low and make a profit. There is a REASON why that MERCHANDISE didn't sell in the first place. THINK about it! Something is wrong with it for those consumers but it might be right for Big Lots Consumers. You have to know what you are doing when you buy something or even shop for something these days!
BIG LOTS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE PLACES TO SHOP! BUT YOU HAVE TO CONSIDER THE ANCIENT LATIN SAYING ( translated to English by ME!) as let the CONSUMER BEWARE!
Some of the stuff that Big Lots buys was not able to be sold by other stores like Pier One which is probably where those " potentially lethally cute " bar stools originated...I saw those but I knew that I weighed 200 lbs. and so I did NOT try them out. They looked rather flimsy to me and I KNEW BETTER THAN TO SIT ON THEM!
It's called COMMON SENSE!
If your stature and your butt and your weight is TOO BIG TO COMFORTABLY fit into or onto the merchandise, THEN DO NOT SIT ON IT!
You should have checked and made sure that all the screws and fastening devices were tightened first and that the bar stool had all of the legs level on the ground and would not rock back and forth easily on the floor when you shook it. Also, one might have withstood your weight while another MIGHT have had a defect from the FACTORY. IF so, the factory MAY be liable but good luck suing slave labor in a Most Favored Nation Trade Status. They might not even still be in business.
You would have to PROVE that the original manufacturer deliberately placed this product into the stream of commerce and meant for YOU to have it, amongst other things...IF you can even find out who made the damned product. Your lawyer would have to buy one of these identical offending bar stools including the packaging to get the address of the manufacturer in order to get an idea of exactly how the product harmed you and they probably are not available anymore...
YOU HAVE TO CHECK THIS STUFF OUT BEFORE YOU PERSONALLY TRY IT OUT--E.G., SITTING ON IT, ETC.!
Again, COMMON SENSE!
I want to inspect what I buy BEFORE I buy it. I am too busy to take everything back to the store so I don't want to make that mistake BEFORE I leave the store. BUT...I have a realistic sense of what will bear my weight and what won't. If you are visually impaired, a person with you should have told you or at least let you feel the merchandise so you would have an idea of what it was like and how it was made and whether or not it would bear your weight.
Where the doctrine of implied risk comes in is that you HAVE taken all this into consideration and you STILL persist in sitting on the merchandise, YOU are taking the risk that it will colapse and injure you at worst and make you look like a fool at the least! IT WAS YOUR DECISION TO MAKE.
You KNEW what MIGHT happen if you sat on it and yet you RECKLESSLY ignored the risk of harm to your person and you did it anyway.
The store is only making the merchandise available for visual inspection. They did NOT INSTRUCT OR REQUIRE you to sit down on it. YOU chose to do that. Most stores I know, including Big Lots, have a sign that says FOR DISPLAY ONLY. I wonder where that one went....Maybe someone removed it or hid it? Hmmmmm...
What works for a 100 pound, 19 year old female college student or yuppie professional woman may not work for a 200 pound, 50 year old former police officer or a 265 bouncer or a 300 pound lard ass couch potato.
COMMON SENSE.
THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE! YOU NEED TO GET AN ATTORNEY IN YOUR STATE, LICENSED BY YOUR STATE BAR TO HAVE VALID LEGAL ADVICE IN YOUR CASE!
THIS IS A STATEMENT OF OPINION ONLY! I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY AT LAW!
As I recall, Pier One mainly catered to yuppie females back in the 1980s but their outrageous prices have kept me out of their stores since then so I can't tell you what their inventory is these days. They can't sell a lot of stuff,sometimes, and so it stays in unsold lots until great retailers like Big Lots come along and buy it up, sometimes getting extra lots of stuff in the bargain sight unseen, for unbelievably low liquidation prices,which are then passed along to the customers.It is a very simple, beautiful merchandising strategy. I hope they do well with it because I appreciate good business dealings!
I have furnished two houses using Big Lots merchandise and the people couldn't have been happier but I stuck with items more solid than those "Cute" but flimsy bar stools.
WATCH OUT FOR THE GLASS TABLE TOPS--something else YOU should AVOID in Big Lots! They have a lot of them, also very beautiful -- and I do not have them in my own home just in case!
COMMON SENSE.
Now, here is something else I want to ask:
Did your injuries require you to be taken from the store by EMS and have you made substantial medical bills since then? The store MIGHT be liable for them but you have to prove SOME negligence on their part and NONE on your part. This also gives you documentable evidence, a chain of custody, as it were. You will need it. It is best right from the scene, otherwise, how does the court know you aren't trying to cash in on OLD INJURIES that occurred somewhere else and you were trying to open the deep pockets of an unsuspecting merchant?
Did you get the names and addresses of any witnesses who saw the incident and can verify that you carefully inspected the display model with all due care and caution and attempted to make sure it was safe to sit in or that you plopped yourself down onto it without a preliminary inspection?
Did you get a personal injury attorney who specializes in SLIP AND FALL type cases?
Has he or she presented a letter of demand to the store?
Without an attorney, your case goes NOWHERE and even if they are a PERSONAL INJURY attorney;slip and fall is a sub-specialty because they are so hard to prove!
MAYBE your attorney can subpoena the surveillance camera footage but if it has been over a year, don't count on it. Used to be that they would recycle the master VHS tape after a year or so. I have no idea about the digital security camera images.
You might TRY filing pro se but if you make a mistake anywhere in the myriad of legal forms or in the order of their filing, you are not exactly laughed out of court but it will not find favor... you will lose. They call it "foolwork" because only a fool represents him/herself in court.
I am going to give you the benefit of a doubt but IF I were a judge, it would sure SEEM like a SCAM to me to extort money from the store.
Knowing that the bar stool was flimsy, made for lightweight people, a "reasonable person",would not have sat on it all OR not without checking it out to see how it was constructed, reinforced and if it would bear their weight.
And that's how it looks to me.
THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE! YOU NEED TO GET AN ATTORNEY IN YOUR STATE, LICENSED BY YOUR STATE BAR TO HAVE VALID LEGAL ADVICE IN YOUR CASE!
THIS IS A STATEMENT OF OPINION ONLY! I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY AT LAW!
WHY DON'T YOU TAKE THIS CASE TO JUDGE JUDY OR JOE BROWN ON TV?????You may need the chair you damaged and another chair of the identical kind to show them as evidence.....
THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE! YOU NEED TO GET AN ATTORNEY IN YOUR STATE, LICENSED BY YOUR STATE BAR TO HAVE VALID LEGAL ADVICE IN YOUR CASE!
THIS IS A STATEMENT OF OPINION ONLY! I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY AT LAW!