It Happened Again: The Annual Black Friday Trampling (1 Viewer)

[JonZ]

Mark,
I totally agree with your last post.

 

[drobbins]

[START SARCASM] It was the guys own fault he died. He saw the crowd, he saw the doors bending and flexing under the load. He didn't have enough brains to avoid getting trampled. He should bear the total responsibility for his own actions and their consequences. His poor decision ruined one of the best shopping days for all the stores customers and cost him his life. Only he could have avoided getting trampled. The store should sue him for the thousands of $$ in lost sales.[/END SARCASM]

 

[MarkHastings]

Very true, anytime something happens, our immediate thought is "Someone needs to be blamed and pay dearly for this". Society has become sue happy because it seems so easy to win these days. I think the reason why it's become so easy to win is because (again) we've put so much pressure on companies to be totally responsible for any accident that occurs on their property. Any wrong doing on the consumers part can easily be traced back to the responsibility of the company.

drobbins, I know you were being sarcastic, but I mentioned that before. I'm not saying the guy is responsible for dying, but it also wasn't pretty smart for placing himself in harms way (no matter if was his job or not).

I think I said this before, but people keep saying that the store should know that something bad could happen; and people have even mentioned that it's pretty obvious considering the title of this thread is "It Happened AGAIN", but that also means that everyone should be aware of these things. After hearing how unruly the mob was to begin with, it doesn't take a genius to know that bad things will happen once the doors open. The outcome of forcing 2,000 sale-hungry people through one doorway (that you're standing in front of) is pretty obvious to almost anyone (even if you have never heard of BF tramplings before).

There should have been some hesitation on the part of the guy opening the door. I would have said "Hell no! Get me some backup first" - or "Get people away from the door first".

 

[KurtEP]

Keep in mind too that the media makes all kinds of noise about cases where the plaintiff actually wins, especially if the facts seem strange. Unfortunately, they pick and choose what they feed to us, rarely giving us anything even remotely close to the complete picture. Often, if you hear the whole story, you can gain a very different perspective on the situation. Bad things do sometimes happen to people through negligence on the part of retailers, and they do result in large rewards. Fortunately, though, in most parts of the country, juries have tired of BS claims and usually see through those that have no basis. As a tort professor once told me, the golden age of being a tort lawyer is over.

 

[drobbins]

I am usually with you on the personal responsibility thing but this incident, I am with ChristopherDAC and his “reasonable person test" explanation. People should not sue a ladder company if they put a 12’ “A frame” ladder in the back of a pick-up truck parked on an incline while standing on the top rung and fall off. I think we can agree that, companies and society in general need to look out for the well being of other humans. This includes the weak and the strong, the stupid and the smart, the young and the old, the fit and the handicapped etc… This is what I was referring to in my “Warning labels have ruined the natural process of selection” comment. If we as a civilized society did not use warning labels or air bags, or crowd control, we would be living by the “only the strong / smart survive” mentality that the animals on this planet live by.

I do not know the man who was killed and I do not want to put him down in any way or pass judgment on him. With that said, I am assuming that a temporary worker, working night shift at Wal-Mart might not have the same IQ or training as the manager that Wal-Mart put in charge of their nation wide, multi million dollar, black Friday sales event. Surly Wal-Mart has spent millions if not more in analyzing customer behavior. It blows my mind that a store this size, with the resources that it has available, and past black Friday incidents did not see the potential for a disaster like this. I would bet they have a department full “experts” in this field. Whether this happened this year or next it was only a matter of time. How many years ago where the fights over Cabbage Patch Kids or the Tickle Me Elmos? What corrective actions have they put in place? Did the temp worker have any training in crowd control? Did the local night shift manager? Did Wal-Mart just focus on maximizing profits and overlook safety? Will they do anything different next year?

 

[Dave Mack]

The temp worker had no training in crowd control, was hired for "maintenance" yet he was supposedly moved to the doors because he was "big".

And once again, in those situations if you don't keep moving forward, you go down and are trampled yourself. So not everyone was just "savage" and uncaring.
If the store had had barricades that thin the line out and direct it and people positioned outside with megaphones telling people the situation and directing them properly, I doubt this would have happened.

 

[Dave Mack]

I hear ya, Travis. I just thought it was in pretty poor taste considering what just happened but IMHO it still does send the message to get there real early to get the deal, making it a competition. When people get competitive, it brings out some bad stuff sometimes. I am NOT exonerating the people who were purposefully breaking the door down, however.

 

[LewB]

A settlement in the Nassau case: Wal-Mart settles ?Black Friday? death inquiry - U.S. business- msnbc.com

 

[drobbins]

It looks like they put measures in place to avoid a repeat of last year.

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34064610/ns/business-retail/

 

[RyanAn]

Can anyone tell me if this person or the one in New York (jersey?) last year's "perpetrators" were arrested or charged?
I'm working my first Black Friday as a Wal-Mart employee and I'm gonna be in front, directing the inside traffic. My Wal-Mart's managers are really gung-ho about having this be as clear and contained as possible. I'm definately, unequivicly NOT going to get killed so some guy can get a 18 dollar toaster. I've worked the last 7 Black Friday's at a movie theatre and it's absouletly terrible.