http://desmoines.injuryboard.com/property-owners-liability-slip-and-fall/whose-fault-is-the-walmart-stampede-its-too-easy-to-just-blame-walmart.aspx?googleid=252816December 11, 2008 - 10:35 AM
Whose fault is the Wal-Mart Stampede? It's become too easy to blame everything on Wal-Mart. After all if you want to know who to blame just look in the mirror in the morning.
To prove Wal-Mart is liable for the stampede that trampled the greeter to death, there has to be proof of a legal defect. Something about their business model has to have made the incident more likely. Let me go out on a limb by saying, no defect in Wal-Mart caused or made the stampede more likely. In fact if there is a defect it's not in Wal-Mart's business model at all. The defect is in the shopper. Wal-Mart’s Black Friday stampede is our entire fault. Yes, yours, mine and ours. We collectively are to blame.
As you probably know, on the day after Thanksgiving 2008 at a Long Island store a security worker or greeter at a Wal-Mart was trampled to death by a group of Black Friday shoppers all trying to be first inside to take advantage of store bargains. Police and EMT's were pushed by shoppers while other shoppers refused or got angry when asked to leave the store while Wal-Mart shut down to secure the store and attempt to save the man's life. This Wal-Mart is at Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, NY. I'll almost bet the lease makes the mall is in charge of mall security as well as the rules governing tenant use of the property.
How can we blame Wal-Mart for what amounts to a defect in the customers?
The Shoppers DNA Code: Buying that next pair of shoes will make you feel a lot better about yourself. In fact better than you've ever felt in your life and certainly better than that last shopping trip.
It’s too easy to pick on Wal-Mart on this instance. In fact its way too easy to blame Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, easy credit, credit card companies, our own government and every shopping mall that opens at midnight the day after Thanksgiving. To simply blame Wal-Mart is to ignore the real problem. It’s all of us and the buy-buy-buy mentality that Wall Street and Madison Avenue foster each and every day of the year. My guess is there are advertising executives in some board room toasting how well this season's advertising campaigns worked; in fact are working so well that shoppers at Wal-Mart totally lost control of their emotions. You think I'm jaded don't you? Well I disagree.
MORE at link.
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