Taunted Tiger Terminates Teen – Terrible Legal Dilemma Ensues

January, 2008

You may have seen it, Christmas Day, San Francisco, tiger mauls three teenagers, one dies. Now it seems the boys were taunting the tiger and the Zoo enclosure was three feet lower than it legally should have been. Everyone is lawyered up and so the blame game begins.

If it had happened in The Netherlands it would already be over. I remember walking through a store and slipping rather inelegantly on a patch of water. I said to my wife, "they need to clean that up or they will be sued."

My wife looked at me as if I had just landed from Mars in utter amazement and asked, "what do you mean?"

I said, "if an elderly person were to slip and fall and break a leg or a hip, they would own this chain with the lawsuit."

"Not in Holland. The judge would look at them and say 'you should watch where you are walking' and throw the case out. Everyone here is self-responsible."

Remove the plaintiff bar and you don't have this discussion in the US either. You fine the zoo significantly for not keeping the enclosure up to standard and you say "tough luck" to the taunters, you brought it on yourselves, now move along and take your media circus, lawyers, consultants, make-up people, PR firm and coiffed breathless anchor/reporters with you. Your 15-minutes are OVER!

I worked in LA for the law firm next door to those handling the Goldman civil case against OJ Simpson. He'd come in for depositions and below in the courtyard was this semi-circle of 20 or so camera tripods for the obligatory press opportunity before the evening news.

One day I had a visitor and we came back from a late lunch as a few of the live stand-ups were being broadcast. There was this breathless reporter standing four feet away as we walked by. She was exclaiming, serious as a heart attack - "that's right Tom and at no time during the deposition did Mr. Goldman make eye contact with Mr. Simpson!!!" We could not contain our belly laugh at the ludicrous nature of it all which I'm sure was caught on the open mike. She yelled some rather un-ladylike words at our backs when she was “clear” as we headed into the building... I blame the media for blowing it up.

Remember the only serious things about US local news, Fox and CNN are the music and graphics. I always tell my friends to watch the Beeb someday if you want news without breathlessness. The newsreaders use their entire lung capacity to project quiet confidence instead of prattling on with nothing new to say but hey, we’ll repeat it anyways!

There were mesmerizing interviews on 7/7 one with a quiet dignified reporter speaking to man with a bandage and blood stains covering his clothing and talking about what happened (and being given the time to speak) and then being asked by the reporter if he could please excuse himself to speak to the helicopter pilot standing on his other side who ferried a team of surgeons meeting that morning in his hospital to the bus bombing site and one of the Tube stations to do on-site triage which saved many lives that day.

Very matter of fact, nobody waiting to either interrupt or for their turn to speak or trying to outdo one another with inane lines such as, "what my colleagues was really saying here is...” and gripping, engaging television that told a huge story very well.

When will the media figure out we have more than a four-second attention span and that speaking intelligently might actually get us to stop and listen? In the US they say we get the government we deserve. I guess the same applies to our legal and media systems as well.

We deify celebrity. When Paris Hilton gets more manufactured ink than Dr. King on his national holiday birthday and the winner of American Idol receives more votes than any upcoming presidential candidates, will our problems ever run more seriously than "who let the tiger out? woof, woof, wooof, woof woof...."

It is but one symptom of many in a descent down a slippery intellectual slide. I love to watch everyone get churned up in the immigration debate when most are children of immigrants themselves. We’ve gotta stop those kids from coming to get engineering degrees in our universities.

That's not why the Chinese and others came to the US. They will graduate 5 million engineers in Beijing this year. They came to learn and build their own because we're certainly not producing quality PhD's in engineering, mathematics and science. Nope we've got kids earning degrees in media, entertainment and sports marketing!

The global playing field is now quite level, other countries are working smarter and harder and our egos cannot stand it.

Too, whatever happened to “I cannot tell a lie” and “the buck stops here?” Washington and Truman were known for those two. Now it's: deny, deny, deny, obviate, obfuscate and obliterate the truth so it fits my needs no mater what. Does anyone believe that if Watergate happened today we'd see a President resign like Nixon did? Hell no. They'd pull a Scooter Libby… Halderman and Ehrlichman take the fall then Nixon pardons them so they don't have to go to jail.

We have a system of situational ethics run amok. I want MINE and as long as I don't get caught that's good enough. No wonder it's a mess. When you see a liar or is it lawyer, I always get them mixed up, on the telly with bold-faced lies coming out of both sides of his or her mouth, what kind of example are we setting?

Just make sure I get mine and f*** all to the rest of the world. And if I get caught, I’ll just run off and hire the biggest, baddest most famous lawyer I can find to get me off.

Here in the UK I regularly see those caught lying in ANY court case having their sentences increased for "perverting the course of justice." I'd love to see that one in the next OJ trial.

When is anyone, anywhere going to ever stop, stand up, place hand over heart and say, I did it, I was wrong, I'm very sorry and I am prepared to face the consequences of my actions?

Not in this lifetime.

"Stupid is as stupid does." said Forrest Gump. There is enough stupidity in this tragedy to go around and around. Next group doing the fricasseeing will be the politicians adding their 2 cents. Maybe tiger enclosures become an issue in the CA primary and we'll hear what Hillary and Obama have to say?

It comes back to a basic formulae: Story Life x Personal Outrage = Media Time Given. If an editor wants to jig a story or find a new angle there are more than enough to go around. One only need look at Britney and company to see how that works.

The biggest EU-wide story has been the disappearance of a 4-year old British girl from a resort in Portugal. The angles are endless - parents are to blame for leaving her sleeping alone, police are to blame for bungling the investigation, paedophile networks are to blame, media are to blame... and the name of the game is... who to blame today?

Even the Princess Diana inquest (now entering its third month) has its own version of the blame game with news stories coming out each day about the driver, paparazzi, MI5, the Royal family, conspiracy theories, diaries, friend's confessions... The woman is dead, let her rest in peace.

The tiger story goes away if the kids stand up and say we taunted the tiger and the zoo says we should have made the enclosure higher. Because everyone hides behind their lawyers now all there is is speculation, finger pointing and an all too eager media (and blogosphere) to keep it all alive and kicking.

Meanwhile a boy and a tiger are dead and Madeleine is still missing.

(From tbd.com)