Reply #241: He's lucky

[GrpCaptMandrake]

no one's taken a ballbat to the back of his skull.

There's not a jury in America that would convict a grief-stricken parent who did that.

In some states (albeit a very few) there still exist "fighting words" statutes that provide an affirmative defense to an attack that followed the use of the same kind of inflammatory language the Phelps uses. Those statutes embody the idea that some words are SO volatile that they have the same effect as a first-struck physical blow.

Meanwhile, you're absolutely correct about the legal system. The "judicial hellhole" argument is one concocted by the insurance industry in connivance with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

As for the McDonald's case, most people know about it because the other side is so VERY far ahead of the good guys in message management. Very few people know that (a) McD's had been repeatedly warned about the temperature of its coffee, but chose to maintain the temperature because it sent the odor of the coffee through the store better and (b) that the victim required massive plastic surgery to her entire genital region as a result of the third degree burns she suffered.