Dangerous condition at Walmart Part 4

First a disclaimer. I am not a lawyer, so don't take any of this as legal advice.

It turns out Colorado is a "Modified Comparative Fault" state. This means if the plaintiff is 50% or more at fault, then they can't get any damages. So let's try to calculate comparative fault.

There are three things that have to happen for this accident to occur.

1. The floor has to be slippery
2. The protection measures have to be flawed
3. Someone has to decide to ride a skateboard in the aisle

Let's start with 33% for each part and adjust from there. I would argue 2 should be increased to 50% as Walmart has an important duty to think carefully about the safety of its customers. If the accident victim were an adult, that would put the plaintiff's fault at about 25%. But my daughter is not an adult. 3 should be reduced due to the expected maturity level of a 14 year old.

At what age would we expect a kid to stop skateboarding in Walmart? The best evidence is from actual behavior. We know kids do it, because we see skateboards on the floor. Unfortunately I did not witness any of those kids, so you will have to use your imagination. My personal guess is teenagers do stuff like this all the time. If a 14 year old has half the maturity of an adult for this type of thing, that would bring her fault down to 12%.

Ultimately it is a matter of common sense. Is it ok for stores like Walmart to leave a dangerous situation in place when they know kids will get hurt.

Dangerous condition at Walmart Part 3

To their credit, Walmart must have recognized the danger. Some of the skateboards have packaging, making them impossible to ride in the store. There are some clever plastic wheel locks on about a third of them. The locks are specially sized to fit the wheel, and they are held in place with the axle nut. I was not able to remove one in the store, although I didn't try very hard.

Unfortunately, about two thirds of the skateboards do not have locks, so kids ride the skateboards. Nearly every time I go past that aisle, there are one or more skateboards on the floor. Obviously the staff knows this is happening since they have to reshelve the skateboards. I don't know whether some of the skateboards come without locks, or if those ones are returns, but it doesn't matter. As soon as they put an unlocked skateboard on the shelf, they are negligent.

The store where my daughter had her fall has since put up a paper sign asking patrons not to ride skateboards and bikes. If this makes a few kids change their minds about riding it is a good thing. But there are still skateboards and bikes on the floor, so some kids are ignoring the sign.

Dangerous condition at Walmart Part 2

This is part 2 of a series on my attempts to get Walmart to fix a dangerous situation in its stores.

The dangerous situation has two elements. First, the floor is slippery.

It's not so bad if you are walking around. Shoe soles seem to stick just fine. But skateboard wheels slide sideways easily. To make things worse, it's misleading. The floor is made of concrete. A kid might think it's the same material as the sidewalk, and feel confident of his skills. But it is very different and surprising. My daughter says her accident never would have happened on the sidewalk or pavement.

To see just how different it is, I measured the coefficient of static friction of a skateboard on various surfaces. I used a hand scale to measure the greatest sideways force I could put on the skateboard without slipping, and then divided by the weight of the skateboard:

Here are the results:

The friction in an aisle is about half what a kid would expect from prior skateboarding experiences.

In my next post I'll describe what Walmart has done to prevent injuries and why it is inadequate.

Dangerous condition at Walmart

I was in Walmart a few weeks ago with the family when my daughter went to the next aisle, found a skateboard, and promptly took a nasty fall. By the time we got home, it was clear it was not a bruise, so we went to the hospital and found out her elbow was broken. She is now the proud owner of three titanium screws in her funny bone.

Obviously I was not happy with my daughter, who at 14 should know better. So at first I did not hold Walmart responsible. But after thinking about it and inspecting the scene, I changed my mind. There is a dangerous situation here, and I've decided to see if it is possible to get Walmart to do more to protect kids.

My first attempt was to ask them to take financial responsibility for her medical bills. I filled out a form at the store that looked like it was designed for employees' workers compensation claims. A few days later I got a call from their insurance company. There were some calls back and forth, I gave them all the details, and ultimately my claim was denied. Their reasoning was a variation on the "she should have known better" argument. They told me the 'age of culpability' in Colorado was 7. There are several things wrong with this statement. First 'age of culpability' refers to criminal responsibility, and skateboarding in Walmart is not a crime. Second, the correct age for Colorado is 10. Third, this is just a lower limit. The law recognizes that children gain maturity for different actions at different ages. And I'd love to know if they have paid any claims for 9 year olds!

I'll describe why I think Walmart is responsible in upcoming posts.

I should point out that everyone has been respectful and sympathetic. This takes some effort as a corporation and it is appreciated.

What's up with MtGox?

MtGox and certain bitcoin developers have been sniping at each other over MtGox's problems with bitcoin withdrawals. Here's a non-technical summary of the problem. For years it was known that there was a potential vulnerability in the bitcoin protocols. A certain piece of data could be changed to cause a double payment. The bitcoin developers worked around this by telling all the bitcoin client software developers to have their clients ignore this piece of data. All was well.

Unfortunately, MtGox, due to its unique high volume, had to have its own custom client software. And they didn't have time to keep up with this issue. Someone figured out they were vulnerable, and started to take advantage of them.

In a way, MtGox and the developers are both wrong. The developers should have fixed this issue, instead of working around it, and MtGox should have paid more attention to the accepted workaround.

The MtGox fix needs to happen now. The wider fix will take more time. But both need to happen.