frankie_the_yankee wrote:Xander wrote:
That is not a valid comparison. There are laws that protect workers from harassment and certain (not all!) unsafe environments. A better example would be that nothing in the law, for instance, prevents a taxi cab company from sending a driver into a known bad part of town to pick up a fare. If you don't like driving into bad parts of town at night, your legal option is to quit, or refuse and be fired.
If you want a comparison for the potential recourse against a company for a policy that effects you negatively, make it the actions against companies for other matters of policy, not actions taken when laws were broken.
OK. How about this? Buy a ladder lately? Some guy steps on the paint can shelf, falls down, sues the ladder company for makng an "unsafe" product, and wins. So now ladders all have stickers on these shelves that say, "This is not a step".
The ladder company
did not break any laws when they put the ladders on the market.
No one forced the guy to buy one. And no one made him step on the paint can shelf. Yet he wins the suit anyway.
(Note: I don't know if a suit like this wa ever filed, but the ladder companies seem to be concerned enough about it to put these stickers, along with many, many others, on every ladder they sell.)
So somebody does something,
within the law, and you get hurt as a result of it, and there is a potential tort action as a result.
Of course it matters how direct the connection is between the action and the harm. The defense could argue that even if you had a gun the BG accosting you at the ATM could have still hurt or killed you. I think the outcome of a suit would depend on the circumstances. Best case would be a guy with a CHL whacked by a rampage killer when he could very probably have protected himself and others had company policy allowed for him to be armed.
Just because it would be something new doesn't mean it isn't possible. New torts get created almost every day.
Only because I'm a glutton for punishment:
Yes, I know, people win unworthy lawsuits all the time.
I revise my statement to read "You can't really expect to have a valid legal standing for damages when you show up to a place voluntarily and disarm voluntaril, though you might still win from the insurance agency and even possibly the jury."
Though it seems long winded and a tad cumbersome in language. It never occurred to me that when I made that perfectly lucid argument someone would point out that it's possible to win money in America for ANYTHING, heck I thought that was common knowledge. My original point was that your employer, by disarming you, has done nothing, at all, to endanger you. Therefor you'd have no real legal standing.
Though, obviously you may still win.
Totrs, as I understand them, exist when the actions of another harm you through no fault of your own. In the case of an employer disarming you it simply wouldn't apply. Anymore than your employer would be responsible for body damage to your car during a hail storm in his or her parking lot.
