Posts by Matthew Poole
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Lets say I injure you in a car accident. A minor mistake on my part, but I'm at fault.
Under the present system I'm charged with causing an accident and fined.
Very unlikely. You'll probably get away with it, unless you've really drawn some serious blood. Of the 400+ deaths (let's not even go into the serious injuries) how many are prosecuted? And how many people notice those prosecutions?
Actually, it's not at all "very unlikely". If the Police are notified (required by law in the event of injury), they will investigate and quite potentially prosecute. I had the misfortune to be collected by a car while riding through the Domain last October. I suffered muscular damage to my right shoulder, courtesy of being thrown off the bike and my arm flailing around as I landed on my backpack. Suspicion of a re-seated dislocation, ambulance called, quick trip up the road and around the corner, etc. I never did speak to a cop about it, but figured no blood, ACC covered the bus ride and treatment, she was absolutely mortified (couldn't even dial 111 on her phone), so no big deal.
A few weeks later I got a phone call from a traffic officer at Greenlane, who'd tracked me down somehow using just my name and the fact that I lived in Remuera/Epsom. The driver had made a report, and he wanted to get my side of the story. As I recounted it, and based on what she'd told him, we established that it was entirely her fault. He said that he was quite prepared to open a prosecution for careless driving causing injury, but I prevailed upon him to just give her a warning as I didn't see the point in dragging her through the courts for something about which she had clearly felt completely awful. So prosecution for even fairly minor incidents is entirely possible, and seems to be the default position. Had I not been a fairly generous and forgiving soul, that would've been another conviction for the stats.As someone pointed out above, many drivers who kill kill themselves. A large percentage of fatal crashes are single-vehicle, single-occupant. Many of the others result in the death of the at-fault driver, making prosecution rather difficult. Prosecution is, similarly, rather difficult when the at-fault driver is in a coma or otherwise incapable of mounting a defence (such as being in a permanent vegetative state).
Also, quite a few fatal crashes involve multiple deaths. The average is certainly greater than one death per fatal crash. If we call it 1.25 (because I simply cannot be bothered wading through the LTSA stats to find the real number), that means 338 (423/1.25=338.4) at-fault drivers. If 1/3 of them killed themselves or were otherwise rendered incapable of being prosecuted, that leaves 225 alive and prosecutable. In a handful of cases, prosecution isn't going to happen. A mechanical fault caused the crash, or something about the road, or a medical condition (that will result in revocation of licence). Of the rest, the SCU will almost always prosecute. Many drivers plead guilty at the earliest opportunity. I worked alongside Stu Kearns' SCU team several times while in the Fire Service, and he once said that they took great pride in the number of files that they prepared that resulted in guilty pleas once the defence lawyers saw the evidence. They're careful, and thorough, and every investigation is carried out as a homicide. That's part of the reason why it takes so long to re-open a road after a fatal crash.
You really think the media's going to report a bunch of guilty pleas? Of course not. That's boring. They'd rather report on the defended hearings, which almost invariably result in a conviction. If the conviction rate from trials is nearly 100%, which it appears to be based on my recollection of reported trials, the number of guilty pleas will be many times higher. Defence lawyers don't usually advise their clients to go to a trial in which they're pretty much guaranteed to lose. -
You tended to need an MI5 clearance to open a sodding bank account too.
You still do, or did a couple of years ago when the parental units went to the UK with a view to migrating (they gave up after 18 months and came back). The step-paternal unit is a UK native, but after living in NZ for the last 20-something years he's obviously unworthy of the trust of the British banking system. Mum said it was an absolute horror trying to get a bank account opened, involving much filing of paperwork and presentation of multiple forms of photo ID.
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I seem to recall reading somewhere that one-third of all degrees granted in the last few years are in commerce.
That's not the end of the world, though. Commerce covers a very wide range of topics. There's the classic accounting and finance, plus economics, international business, international trade, marketing (*hiss*), management, operations management and research, information systems, and commercial law. Well, that's the range of majors offered at Auckland. So while 1/3 of all the degrees might be commerce degrees, it doesn't mean that 1/3 of all graduates are accountants, or economists.
I'll come out with a BCom in Information Systems and Commercial Law, neither of which qualifies me to be an accountant or an economist but still allowing me to take my place amongst the ranks of the commerce grads :)
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Tried that and disabled my hosts file just in case. Seems odd, what browser are you using? I've tried Opera and IE6.
Very bizarre. Firefox from Mac and FreeBSD, and I stooped to using Safari and it works there too. But, if I try it from a box other than at home or work, and people in other cities trying it for me, 403's appear.
Something funky with DNS, methinks, coz I get the same IP address from boxes on which it works. -
I get a 403 on that one
Bizarre. Works fine for me. Try just typing overlawyered.com into your address box.
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For those who think that doctor was being an asshat, check out OverLawyered for some examples of true legal insanity. A couple of events from our shores are in there, but it's heavily dominated by the US - and, amusingly enough, West Island. Seems that our 'roo-loving cousins like the 'merkin legal system, as well as 'merkin "diplomacy".
Anyone who dares suggest that we should do away with ACC should be pointed to OL forthwith. That kind of nonsense is a direct consequence of allowing, nay encouraging, people to sue in the event that they're injured. Take away the no-fault provisions, and watch the lawyers go mad. It's bad enough with the forecast privatisation of the workers' account if National win the coming election (it wasn't pretty last time they tried it, either), but a wholesale shift to "personal responsibility" *cough* encourages people to take as little responsibility for their actions as they can possibly sell to a jury.
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the Domain Name Commission is always there to ensure the smooth operation of the .nz domain space.
I didn't think the DNC would get involved in what is, effectively, a contract dispute? Perfectly willing to crack heads if transfers are being resisted or other issues around the management of the actual .nz space, but Simon's complaint seemed to be more of an invoice for services-not-provided than a refusal to allow the domain to be transferred.
Unless I misunderstood his post. -
Poor bloody "I'm not authorised to help you" call centre workers.
To be fair to Telecom, that's an entirely justified attitude. Russell isn't their customer, his provider is. There's a whole world of pain for Telecom if they put diverts in on lines that have been unbundled from them, potentially ending on Cunliffe's desk for a stern talking-to and some adverse legislation.
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For all their flaws, and they've got a whole closet factory full of skeletons, Telecom's always, IME, been great at dealing with service outages due to cable faults. No fucking around, no charges, they'll happily divert to a mobile for the duration.
Many years ago (Eight? Nine?) I was living in Orakei and an errant cable-finding-device (aka back-hoe) went through a phone cable and cut service to thousands of houses. Obviously this was back in Telecom's darkest days, but it was absolutely no problem for the C/S person to divert the home phone to my Vodafone mobile. Got a call the following day to confirm that the line had been fixed and check that the diversion could be removed, too. No charges.If VodaHug are trying to charge you for an emergency divert, I'd be looking for another provider. If they have to take it up with the contractor, or Telecom, to recover costs then so be it (and there should be clauses in the contract about who's responsible in such a situation), but it's not your fault that you were without service and needed the diversion put in place.
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It was probably more an intellectual exercise than anything else for him.
This is where a lot of highly-tech-savvy teens get into trouble. They do it "because they can", and without a full understanding of the consequences. Whether it's from straight naivete or, as seems to have been the case with Walker, retarded social development leading to an incomplete appreciation of potential nefarious intent of others, it's not because they're malicious.