Personal responsibility sorely lacking

Have you heard the one about the woman in New York City who tried to kill herself by lying down on the subway tracks, then won a lawsuit for over nine million dollars for being hit by a train? What about the engineer who accidentally ran over and killed his co-worker, then sued the railroad for his own mental anguish? And who could forget about the guy who pressed charges against a bunch of fast food restaurants for making him obese?

With stuff like this going on, is it any wonder that the term "personal responsibility" has become completely alien to many Americans?

Considering that a significant number of people probably don't even know what personal responsibility means, allow me to clarify. Personal responsibility means that you take responsibility for your own actions and that you accept the consequences of those actions.

I'm not saying that if a doctor accidentally amputates your foot, it just sucks for you. But it seems that nowadays when people do something that turns out bad for them, or if life just doesn't go their way, instead of accepting it as their fault or the way life works, they turn to the courts to solve their problems and try to put the blame on someone else-not to mention score a couple million bucks.

Looking back over my years, I am deeply troubled at the vast number of potential lawsuits I could have taken advantage of that might have left me set for life.

For example, when I was in fifth grade, one of my classmates brought chocolate bunnies to school and distributed them to almost everyone in the class, except for about four kids, myself included. Clearly, I should have seized the opportunity to sue the girl for all she was worth, on the charges of emotional distress and mental anguish. Heck, I also could have sued my teacher, the school, the county and even the company that made the chocolate!

And why stop there? To think that all of my student loans could already be paid off if I had just thought like so many other Americans.

This is how the insane lawsuit process seems to work. First, the "victim" hires a lawyer and presses charges against anyone in any way related to the bad thing. Then, he presses some more charges against anyone in any way related to the first group. The idea is to sue as many people as possible so as to increase your chances of getting money from someone.

Sometimes the plaintiffs don't even care about the money-they say they're just suing to "prove a point." Funny how these crusading spirits just happen to be suing for millions, though. And you can bet your bottom dollar that their lawyers aren't interested in proving anything-they're much more interested in paying for their vacation houses in Majorca.

It's no wonder that people hate lawyers so much, as, unfortunately, a number of them are in some ways responsible for this phenomenon. What the first lawyers approached about a stupid lawsuit should have done was laugh the potential clients out of the building.

Unfortunately, lawyers are human, so when people come up to them with an idea for some insane and/or frivolous suit, they recognize that it might just help pay for their retirement (seeing as in most cases, they get paid whether they win or lose the case).

I'm not saying that the lawyers are entirely to blame. It's really more of this attitude that people seem to have nowadays-"nothing is ever my fault." People will-and do-go to ridiculous lengths to avoid accepting the blame for the consequences of their actions. A couple in New York tried to sue a health club for "loss of consortium" and "emotional distress" because (I'm not making this up) the man supposedly cut his hand on a towel dispenser in the club's bathroom, leading to a temporary affair with a woman he met online while he was forced to stay home recovering.

I think this "nothing is ever my fault" state of mind comes from the predominantly American belief that we're more powerful, hence, better, than all the other countries. People seem to have taken this belief to the individual level, at which they think, "I'm better than everyone else...and if I'm better than everyone else, then there's no way that anything bad is my fault." Well, it's time for a lesson in humility, folks, because the consequences of our actions are our fault.

It is the responsibility of the individual to be aware of the risks inherent in performing certain actions (such as, oh, say, lying down on train tracks), using certain products, etc. While it is true that corporations do have some responsibility to provide information about their products so that consumers can make themselves aware of any major risks, it is still the job of the individual to apply common sense and take the obvious precautions. If you do something dumb, it's your own fault.

People love to read about these crazy lawsuits. They're so absurd that it's hard to believe they're for real. But that's the really scary thing-they are real. This ridiculous phenomenon needs to be stopped before it gets out of hand-well, any more out of hand. But in case you don't agree-and if you're reading this article while walking to class and you trip and break your ankle-I'd just like to say that I have a good lawyer just in case.