The 14th street station is three station stops away from Times Square, heading towards Brooklyn.

Got it. So it's like hearing "Ashmont train approaching South Station" when you're at Park Street, then.

Williams was supposed to be on the show, McGee was goaded into calling Williams ugly, and the suit contends that McGee committed suicide because Williams was dropped from the show?

As I understand it, the suit contends that McGee committed suicide because she said all these awful things about her sister and then her sister didn't even get anything out of it.

The plaintiffs would argue that you take your victim as you find him or her; the exact mechanism by which your harmful act results in injury is irrelevant as long as you could have foreseen that you would cause harm

There must be a threshold of harm, though, right? I mean, if they would have put her in a bad mood, no big deal. If they thought they'd only put her in a bad mood, are they on the hook for suicide?

and then her sister didn't even get anything out of it

That's judgeworthy.

Huh.

There must be a threshold of harm, though, right? I mean, if they would have put her in a bad mood, no big deal. If they thought they'd only put her in a bad mood, are they on the hook for suicide?

If they put her in a bad mood, there still might be harm. It depends if their behavior could be categorized as intentional infliction of emotional distress, which requires extreme and outrageous behavior. For negligent infliction of emotional distress the plaintiff needs to make a showing of actual physical damages. Death meets that threshold.

There must be a threshold of harm, though, right? I mean, if they would have put her in a bad mood, no big deal. If they thought they'd only put her in a bad mood, are they on the hook for suicide?

We are really getting into the heart of tort law here. Your culpability, or liability, depends on what you should or could reasonably foresee as the consequences of your actions. As for the bad mood question: most tort cases involve defendants who *didn't* foresee the harm they caused (that's why it's a tort and not a crime), but they should have. Perhaps in this case they hectored and goaded her mercilessly; perhaps it was obvious that she was mentally unstable. So it could be reasonably foreseeable that a mentally unstable woman would commit suicide if forced to do a horrible thing.

I'm not saying, of course, that her claims have merit, just that they don't seem legally unjustifiable to me at first glance.

Rita just hit Category 5.

But my confusion, Wolfram is -- sure, they might have known they were going to cause her harm. But teensy little harm. Turns out she commits suicide instead of posting in LJ. Do the plaintiffs have to prove it was evident she was going to react over the threshold, if the defendants maintain there was no reason to expect it, since the stimulus would provoke reactions way below it in "normal" folks, and they couldn't tell she wasn't one of them.

eta: Never mind -- I think bon's cleared it up for me.

There's a rumor it's Sophia's birthday. Felicitations, Sophia!

oy. dumbass on craigslist posting about how credit checks are going to cause the downfall of society and credit card companies always lose his payments on purpose so they can get late fees and that is why he is going to be homeless and you people all suck for doing credit checks.

Dude. I know. The world is totally out to get you.

goes back to apartment hunting