My Chicken Is Dry: And Other Consequences of an Over-Litigious Society

I couldn’t help but to chuckle a little bit when I read the news about Nalgene. Nalgene has always been represented to the most eco-conscious mountaineers/sportspersons as the consummate water bottle. In the Pacific Northwest, the humble Nalgene is equated with fashionable drinking. But right before faux-stone studded Nalgene hit the shelves at Nordstroms, I was awakened from my tree hugging revelry by the shocking headlines: “Nalgene Sued Over Toxic Claims.” I felt like a felled Sequoia.
Are we really surprised though? Everywhere we look, something once touted as healthy, eco-friendly or just merely popular falls to the axe of litigation. From the lead-based paints from our forbearers’ childhoods (can you tell that Uncle Joey chewed the windowsills?), to “Hot Beverage” on the side of a coffee cups (when was coffee ever supposed to be served luke- warm?), and let us not forget, all of the beautiful explosions: Pintos, catalytic converters, Firestone tires, cruise controls, laptop and cell phone batteries, airplane wiring, just to name some of the notorious and recent. Parents now hyper insulate their tykes from danger in state of the art car seats, shopping cart pads, and the ever-ready bottle of disinfectant gel just in case they should engage in any of the myriad of now unsafe behaviors that the generations before us miraculously survived (except Uncle Joey, of course).
We live in a culture of fear induced by consumerism. We expect to be warned of all potential hazard, seen and unseen. Every lurking danger and its consequence must be addressed by manufacturers or Sokolove and his vanguard team of lawyers stand ready to produce their next late-night ad letting us know we’ve been duped in ways we never even imagined possible. I see an American dilemma arising. We all know the drill, as we created it: we crave cheaper items, companies are sending their labor overseas in order to produce them under less stringent standards than many Americans would like to preserve profit margins. We want to have our cake and eat it too. Being cheap is killing us. If an extra dollar means that a product was made in the United States, or at least in an approved factory overseas, than I would say that the extra dollar is worth it.
In the meantime, defective products are not a conspiracy by companies or nations trying to rise into global primacy. The most dangerous products are the frivolous lawsuits that generate greed and useless fear, result in higher costs, and hurt manufacturers with perfectly functional products. The world isn’t perfect: our chicken is dry, our paint peels, our airplane probably wasn’t inspected properly, our coffee cups continue to sport insulting and obvious warnings, my future kids will probably eat some dirt when I’m not watching, and as I write this, my battery may explode. Thanks a lot.