(audience applauds)
Who's ready for The Doctor's Court?
Judge Travis presiding.
(gavel slams)
Court is in session starting with this case.
What do you all think of this one?
A 59 year old Alabama man
is now seven and a half million dollars richer
after a lawsuit claimed
he tripped and broke his foot
and hip while buying a watermelon
at his local Walmart.
He told the court his foot became trapped
in a pallet beneath the watermelons,
causing the spill and injuries,
and he won seven and a half million dollar judgment
This was his seven and a half million dollar lotto ticket.
That's what it is.
Right here on this watermelon
Lawsuits have become the new lottery.
Right?
I mean I wanna drop it now,
maybe I'll own the whole studio.
You never know right?
That seems like a high judgment
I guess these were being stored
on one of those moving pallets
which you've all seen.
He caught his foot under the pallet.
Now any one of us
Who does that?
if we stubbed our toe
or caught our foot in the pallet,
would we have even said, aw it's sore, it'll go away?
Did the watermelons fall on his foot
after he got it stuck in the pallet?
Apparently he broke his foot in some context
and his lawyer alleged
that he used to play basketball three times a week.
Now he needs a walker.
It's absolutely changed the quality of his life
but I just think that this is going to incite more and more
ridiculous nuisance lawsuits.
And people need to also take some personal responsibility
when we injure ourselves
or something goes wrong.
Well you should be, I have no complaints
with someone being compensated appropriately.
Well for all the medical bills, lost work,
making someone whole again
but you're talking a scenario here
where if every time someone slips and falls
we're giving a seven and a half million dollar judgment,
we're not going to be able to afford groceries.
Listen, some of my best friends are lawyers
but there's something also wrong
with the judicial system
when a lawyer works on
a certain percentage of commission.
You know?
Right, that lawyer's making point.
That lawyers making 30 percent of that.
So he has an incentive to ...
Sure could you imagine
if we got a percentage of the new worth
of people whose lives we save?
You know there's a lot of things
we gotta think about here
but it all started with an innocent--
With nuisance lawsuits done,
just against physicians,
but hospitals, institutions
In states where they have put caps
on malpractice lawsuits and nuisance lawsuits,
the amount the number of lawsuits goes way way down
and it tells you
that a lot of lawsuits are just basically
you're rolling the dice, why not?
Well here's the sad reality
when it comes to negligence lawsuits,
often times the people who deserve it the most
don't get what they deserve
and I think that's the big take-away for me here.
Which is, if you're injured
and there's negligence,
you deserve to be take care of.
And sadly what happens is
there's a few of these glaring lawsuits
that make the headlines.
Meanwhile other people out there
who do hurt themselves,
a lot of times they in obscurity
struggle, don't get the help they need.
What I would love to see
is just some sort of system in place.
Almost, you know, courts in place where
you could just make sure
people are appropriately compensated
when something like this happens
so it doesn't become this adversarial
watermelon type of relationship
because apparently Walmart still maintains
the display is not dangerous.
And I think, could be wrong on this one,
but I wanna say
these same displays are still out there
And they're appealing this judgment
so it's just going to drag on.
Drew?
Price of watermelon is going up buddy
so let's hold on to that one.
Okay.
You could maybe create The Doctor's Court
where that could happen.
(gavel slams)
(audience cheers)
Court is now out of session.
