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  3. Americans are still chuckling about the "pants suit". A man—a judge, no less

Americans are still chuckling about the "pants suit". A man—a judge, no less

游客2023-12-05  22
问题     Americans are still chuckling about the "pants suit". A man—a judge, no less—sued his dry cleaners for $ 54m for allegedly losing his trousers. A sign at the shop promised " Satisfaction Guaranteed". The plaintiff was not satisfied, so he cried fraud. He then used his highly trained legal brain to calculate the damages he was owed. He started with $1,500, a reasonable fine for consumer fraud. He multiplied it by 12, for the number of his complaints. Then by 1,200, for the number of days he was deprived of his trousers. And then by three, for the three owners of the dry-cleaning shop. After adding a bit more for mental anguish, the total came to $67m, but he kindly reduced it to $54m.
    When the case was dismissed in 2007, many felt justice had prevailed. But the defendants had been put through purgatory and saddled with $100,000 in legal costs. They closed the shop and considered moving back to South Korea. The case illustrates " an important truth about human nature—that angry people can go nuts," observes Philip Howard, a campaigner for legal reform. What was most shocking about the pants suit was not the idiotic claim, he says, "but that the case was allowed to go on for more than two years. " Some judges think even the nuttiest plaintiffs deserve their day in court. As the judge who let a woman sue McDonald’s for serving her the coffee with which she scalded herself put it: "Who am I to judge?"
    The rule of law is a wonderful thing, as anyone who has visited countries ruled by the whims of the powerful can attest. But you can have too much of a wonderful thing. And America has far too much law, argues Mr. Howard in a new book, Life without Lawyers. For nearly every problem, lawmakers and bureaucrats imagine that more detailed rules are the answer. But people need to exercise their common sense, too. Alas, the proliferation of rules is making that harder.
    At a school in Florida, for example, a five-year-old girl decided to throw everyone’s books and pencils on the floor. Sent to the head teacher’s office, she continued to wreak havoc. Her teachers dared not restrain her physically. Instead, they summoned the police, who led her away in handcuffs, howling. The teachers acted as they did for fear of being sued. A teacher at a different school was sued for $20m for putting a hand on a rowdy child’s back to guide him out of the classroom. The school ended up settling for $90,000. Understandably, many schools ban teachers from touching pupils under any circumstances. In New York City, where more than 60 bureaucratic steps are required to suspend a pupil for more than five days, teachers are so frightened of violating pupils’ rights that they cannot keep order.
    The relentless piling of law upon law—the federal register has 70,000 ever-changing pages-does not make for a more just society. When even the most trivial daily interactions are subject to detailed rules, individual judgment is stifled. When rule-makers seek to eliminate small risks, perverse consequences proliferate. Bureaucrats rip up climbing frames for fear that children may fall off and break a leg. So children stay indoors and get fat.
    The direct costs of lawsuits are only one of the drawbacks of an over-legalistic society. Too many rules squeeze the joy out of life. Doctors who inflict dozens of unnecessary tests on patients to fend off lawsuits take less pride in their work. And although the legal system is supposed to be neutral, the scales are tilted in favour of whoever is in the wrong. Because the process is so expensive and juries are so unpredictable, blameless people often settle baseless claims to make them go away. The law is supposed to protect individuals from the state, but it often allows selfish individuals to harness the state’s power to settle private scores.
    Will any of this change under Barack Obama? At first glance, the odds are poor. The new President is a lawyer from a party dominated by lawyers. His vice-president publicly thanked God last year that lawyers are such a problem for corporate America. When Mr. Obama was in the Senate, he once voted for a mild curb on jurisdiction-shopping by class-action lawyers, but otherwise tended to vote against tort reform. And Democrats in the new Congress are itching to reward the lawyers who donated so generously to their election campaigns, for example by revoking the(admittedly short)statute of limitations on pay-discrimination claims, allowing lawyers to mine decades-old grievances.  [br] In the case of "pants suit" ,______.
选项 A、the plaintiff ended up getting $54m from the shop owners
B、the defendants reluctantly agreed to pay a fine of $100,000
C、both the plaintiff and the defendants suffered great agony
D、many Americans felt relieved when the case was settled
答案 C
解析 推断题。本题定位于第一段和第二段前半部分。从第一段倒数第一句的关键词“mentalanguish”可以推知，原告本身在该诉讼案中承受着巨大的痛苦；而根据第二段第二句的关键词“purgatory”以及后面提到的商店老板把商店关掉，考虑回韩国，亦可推知被告在本案中也承受了巨大的痛苦。综上所述，[C]为正确答案。根据第二段第一句“在2007年本案被驳回时，很多人都认为公正占了上风”可知，原告请求5400万美元的索赔并未如愿，故[A]错误；从第二段第二句可知，10万美元只是被告花的诉讼费，故[B]错误；[D]说“当本案被裁决时，很多美国人悬着的心已经放下来了”，而文中涉及美国大众的两句话为第一段第一句的“美国人仍在笑谈‘裤子诉讼’的故事”以及第二段第一句的“很多人都认为公正占了上风”，都不能推出美国人对此案的“担心和不快”，故排除[D]。
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