- 6 weeks ago
From catastrophic misjudgments to careless oversights, human error can lead to devastating consequences. Join us as we examine the costliest mistakes that landed people and companies in court! Our countdown includes everything from a snail in a ginger beer bottle to tragic airline disasters and medical blunders. Which case do you think had the most significant impact on safety standards and legal precedents?
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00:00In the cockpit, the pilots have survived, but they have no idea how badly damaged their aircraft is.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at human errors that led to disasters, personal injury, and legal action.
00:13We're not including incidents that were teed up by other factors like technical or equipment flaws.
00:17Stella Liebeck spilled just eight ounces of coffee, but she attracted a flood of attention.
00:24Snail in the Bottle
00:25An initially pleasant evening for Mae Donoghue and a friend included a Scotsman ice cream float at Wellmeadow Cafe in Paisley, Scotland.
00:32Everything was paid for by Mae Donoghue's friend.
00:34She had eaten much of the treat when a dead snail came with the last pour of ginger beer.
00:39This was a terrible oversight in the bottling or shipping process by manufacturer Mr. Stevenson.
00:44Mae Donoghue didn't just get ginger beer.
00:46The combination of bacteria and sheer disgust caused Donoghue to fall seriously ill.
00:50The subsequent writ against Mr. Stevenson reached the House of Lords.
00:53Despite there being no visible injuries that constituted damages under British tort laws.
00:58That threshold changed after Donoghue was awarded the modern equivalent of over 40,000 pounds.
01:03This landmark case has been keeping food manufacturers more on their toes ever since.
01:08The decisions of courts in cases such as Donoghue against Stevenson are hugely important and have a significant impact on the development of the law.
01:16The Misdiagnosis of Alan Navarro
01:18Alan Navarro entered the University Community Hospital in Tampa complaining of a serious headache and double vision.
01:24These are signs of a stroke but also a bad sinus infection.
01:27An unlicensed physician's assistant diagnosed the patient with the latter and sent him home with painkillers.
01:32The next day Navarro was rushed into surgery and permanently lost the use of his limbs following a three-month-long coma.
01:37An underqualified diagnostician snafu led to the Navarro family suing Carolwood Emergency Physicians for $116.7 million.
01:46The court awarded them over $217 million in 2006.
01:50After one of the largest medical malpractice verdicts in U.S. history, Navarro donated the entire amount of punitive damages to charity.
01:58He passed away in 2018.
01:59McDonald's Coffee
02:00Because Stella Liebeck's car didn't have cup holders, she had to use her legs to hold a cup of coffee bought at an Albuquerque McDonald's drive-thru.
02:08The 79-year-old ended up spilling the drink in her lap.
02:10Stella Liebeck was a 79-year-old widow sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car when she was burned on February 27, 1992.
02:19It was her mistake, but McDonald's paid the price.
02:21After skin grafts and temporary disability, Liebeck sued the fast food giant for insufficient containment of and warning about their excessively hot beverage.
02:29All I remember is trying to get out of the car. I screamed, not realizing I was burned that bad.
02:35The public debated over whether this was frivolous litigation or if McDonald's really was liable.
02:39Though Liebeck technically caused her own injury, the court ruled that the extent of it warranted nearly $3 million in damages.
02:46McDonald's now has warning labels on hot coffee cups, but still heats the drink to around 180 degrees Fahrenheit.
02:51The size of the award got the media's attention, but it overshadowed the rest of the story.
02:56Pentium FDIV bug
02:58The computer tech company Intel introduced the Pentium microprocessor in 1993.
03:03And the Intel Pentium processor for the next generation of compatible power.
03:09The following year, mathematician Thomas R. Nicely discovered a bug that caused incorrect floating point results in some significant calculations.
03:16The legal fallout was not over the bug itself, but Intel's response.
03:20They decided to not go forward with an immediate recall due to the rarity of the error.
03:24Numbers that fall into place instantly.
03:27The reasoning that it wouldn't be an issue for most users didn't account for industries that rely on esoteric and precise calculations.
03:33Several companies forced Intel's hand with the incident ultimately costing them around $475 million in total.
03:40It doesn't take a computer to recognize the poor judgment in ignoring any flaws in a product.
03:44The Intel Pentium processor.
03:46Comair Flight 5191, a large aircraft operated by the Delta subsidiary Comair, was scheduled to depart Runway 22 in Kentucky's Bluegrass Airport.
03:59However, pilot Jeffrey Clay taxied to the shorter Runway 26.
04:02The plane failed to clear a wall in the adjacent woods, killing 49 of the 50 people aboard.
04:07Comair Flight 5191 hurtles into a field less than half a mile from the runway.
04:13First officer James Polhinkie survived with severe injuries and had to have a leg amputated.
04:18Most of the passengers' families filed lawsuits that ultimately cost Comair over $270 million in settlements and damages.
04:26Comair in turn sued the Federal Aviation Administration for understaffing air traffic control, leaving U.S. taxpayers with 22% of the bill.
04:34This goes to show the potentially huge consequences of a single oversight in commercial aviation.
04:395191 was, according to this veteran pilot, just an accident in every sense of the word.
04:44Asciana Airlines Flight 214.
04:46After traveling from Incheon, South Korea, Asciana Airlines Flight 214 flipped a seawall during its final descent in San Francisco on the morning of July 6, 2013.
04:56More than 180 were injured in the subsequent crash and two children were killed.
05:00A third was fatally hit by a fire truck when SFFD arrived during the frantic evacuation.
05:11The department later settled a lawsuit by the girl's family in confidence.
05:15Meanwhile, an investigation found that the flight crew over-relied on and failed to quickly manage the plane's complicated autopilot system.
05:22First, choosing an autopilot mode rarely used during descent.
05:27Then, pulling back on the thrust levers when that error put the plane into a climb.
05:32Both Asciana Airlines and the plane manufacturer Boeing were hit with more than 100 lawsuits over technology that was too hard to work and a crew that couldn't handle the pressure.
05:41We've talked a lot about over-reliance on automation, but airplanes still fly pretty much the same way they have for decades.
05:48Willie King's Leg
05:49Diabetic vascular disease meant that Willie King's right leg would have to be amputated at Tampa's University Community Hospital.
05:55He awoke to the news that Dr. Rinaldo Sanchez had instead removed his left leg.
05:59But of course, the surgeon was just the last party in a system designed to prevent such awful mistakes.
06:04It was the surgical order that signed off on the left leg, which was prepped accordingly by staff.
06:08Nonetheless, Sanchez was fined, lost his medical license for six months, and paid $250,000 on top of the $900,000 the patient received from the hospital.
06:18There's no real compensation for King having to lose both of his legs.
06:21Systemic safeguards count for nothing once the first domino falls.
06:24Jack-in-the-box outbreak
06:25More than 700 people in the western United States contracted E. coli in two months.
06:30The origin was contaminated beef delivered to 73 locations in the fast food chain Jack-in-the-box.
06:35At first, it was 25. Within a few more days, it was 100, then 150, and then 200.
06:41Of course, that shouldn't be a problem if the meat is fully cooked.
06:43The outbreak truly escalated because so many hamburgers were served undercooked during a special promotion.
06:48Jack-in-the-box's initially successful project to raise customer demand ended with a $50 million class action suit settlement.
06:55They also covered victims' hospital bills.
06:57Jack-in-the-box is running full-page ads in newspapers offering condolences to victims.
07:02After legal action reached the provider Foodmaker, Inc., the federal government tightened food safety measures and raised the standard temperature for cooking hamburgers.
07:11It's just a shame that this took a misguided promo in many careless kitchens.
07:14The USDA for the first time set a zero-tolerance policy for E. coli 0157 in raw ground beef.
07:21American Airlines Flight 587, a regularly scheduled flight from New York to Santo Domingo, had just taken off when it crashed into a neighborhood in Queens.
07:30All 260 people on board were killed, as well as five bystanders.
07:33The already devastating tragedy caused a nationwide panic, as this was just two months after the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York.
07:44This prompted a speedy investigation, which found that 1st Officer Sten Molin overcompensated with rudder input against wake turbulence, breaking the plane's vertical stabilizer.
07:53American Airlines paid confidential, substantial settlements in lawsuits that alleged anything from improper maintenance and training to a design flaw.
08:04The truth is that one pilot's misjudgment brought more trauma to an already terrified world.
08:09They concluded that it was the inputs that were being made on the controls that led to the structural failure and then no other factor.
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08:32Take care of Maya
08:33Viata and Jack Kowalski admitted their daughter Maya to John Hopkins All Children's Hospital for her complex regional pain syndrome.
08:40But hospital staff were skeptical of this rare respiratory, muscular, and skin condition, and concerned about the 9-year-old's extensive ketamine treatments.
08:47Child Protective Services thus took custody of her on the belief that she was being abused by Viata.
08:52And I told her, I miss my mom. I miss my mom.
08:55After months of futile legal action, Maya returned home and continued treatment after her mother took her own life.
09:00Nearly seven years later, the Kowalskis were awarded over $200 million in a malpractice and wrongful death suit.
09:07The six-person jury siding with the family in this major $220 million lawsuit.
09:14With the popular Netflix documentary Take Care of Maya preceding this, the world witnessed how even the most trusted institutions are prone to tragic error.
09:21These families walked in hoping for help for their child, and some of them walked out in handcuffs.
09:27What are some other wrong moves that have big human and legal consequences?
09:31Give your testimony in the comments.
09:33Sometimes it takes all those little things to make the accident happen.
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