Responsibility

American baseball pitcher Josh Hancock was killed in a motoring accident recently. His vehicle struck the back of a flatbed tow truck. He was drunk (nearly double the legal limit), speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, and talking on a mobile phone at the time. They also found marijuana in his rented SUV. To paraphrase Wikipedia, the reason the SUV was rented was that he'd been involved in another accident a few days before, and was likely drunk then, as well.

Sounds like a case of recklessness, and self-destructiveness that unfortunately caught up with him. Right?

Well, his father is suing the restaurant where he was drinking, the towing company, and the driver of the stalled car who needed towing:

"It's understood that for the entire 31/2 hours that Josh Hancock was there that he was handed drinks," Keith Kantack, a lawyer for Dean Hancock, said. "It's our understanding that from the moment Josh Hancock entered Mike Shannon's that night that he was never without a drink."

Now, if I'm not mistaken, most of us who go out drinking generally have a drink in front of us the whole time. It's not like we say to our server, "you know, I'm going to take a break for the next half hour, without a drink". So should a drinking establishment be required to ration our drinking time? As for the tow truck driver:

Police said Hargrove noticed the stalled vehicle and stopped to help. The report said he told officers he was there five to seven minutes before his truck was hit by Hancock's SUV.

The lawyer said:

"Were the police contacted?" Kantack asked. "Why weren't flares put out? Why was the tow truck there for an exorbitant amount of time?"

Exorbitant. And on to the driver of the stalled vehicle:

The lawsuit claimed Tolar was negligent in allowing his Geo Prism to reach the point where it stalled on the highway, and for failing to move it out of the way of oncoming traffic. A police report said the Prism became stalled when it spun out after being cut off by another vehicle.

Hokay, so everyone's at fault here except the drunken, speeding, seatbelt-less driver talking on the phone. Perhaps someone's father needs to do his grieving in private, instead of lashing out at everyone who was unlucky enough to encounter his messed-up, spoiled athlete son. I noticed that he's failed to sue the car rental agency, the dope dealer, the makers of the mobile phone, and most surprisingly, the person he was chatting with when he died. No, but perhaps his employer should be responsible:

Kantack said others could be added later as defendants in the suit. He declined to speculate on whether the Cardinals or Major League Baseball could be added to the suit

How about accepting that Josh Hancock was more than a little bit responsible for his own predicament?

And in a separate case, a former employee of IBM is suing the company for wrongful dismissal after being fired for using adult chat sites on work time:

James Pacenza, 58, says he was addicted to online chat rooms and that IBM should have offered him sympathy and treatment instead of firing him.

The Vietnam War veteran says he has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder since 1969.

He argues that he used the internet to control his psychological problems.

Hokay, so if I'm a self-diagnosed porn addict it should be okay for me to, say, browse porn at work? And say that I'm self-medicating? And the company should offer me sympathy, instead of handing me my walking papers?

How about a little responsibility here, too? If you do dodgy stuff on work time, and get caught, why not take your punishment like a man instead of blaming it on addiction and Vietnam? Nah, sue for $5 million. Some people are amazing.