Everyone has their favorite Monty Python sketch, but very few people, it seems, have watched Eric Idle’s 1978 film parody of The Beatles pop group entitled All You Need Is Cash or simply The Rutles. In one of the scenes in the film, mocking the decline of the Beatles’ Apple Empire, every Rutles band member sues the others, their own wives, numerous newspapers, and—in the confusion that ensues—one band member even accidentally sues himself.
Just as the film remains as funny today as it was more than 30 years ago, the litigious nature of this particular scene is as true as it was back then. Unfortunately, this appears to be especially true in America, where lawyers have jumped on a phenomenon known as a class action lawsuit in which a large group of people—generally encouraged by a law firm—collectively brings a claim, generally against a large corporation.
Last year, I was mailed an invitation to participate in such a lawsuit against the Hyundai motor company. The class action documented in the letter I received related to severe corrosion in the sub-frame of certain models of motor vehicles when operated in the so called “Salt Belts” of the United States.
Since my nine-year-old Hyundai Elantra had already experienced numerous unrelated breakdowns over the course of the previous two months, I decided not to participate in the legal action. Rather, I decided it was time for a replacement and purchased a more modern equivalent, fully equipped with antilock brakes, four airbags, XM stereo, and—to my son’s delight—an iPod interface built directly into the dashboard.
Upon returning home, however, I decided to investigate the class action lawsuit phenomenon further. Not surprisingly, simply associating the name of your favorite product, drug, food, automobile, or toy with the words “class action lawsuit” in Google brings an array of such cases. What’s perhaps more interesting is that many of the companies that provide these products use machine-vision systems to inspect them.
Until proven guilty
Although the deployment of these systems has resulted in greater efficiency, lower cost, and more reliable products, system design, manufacturing, and production still do not constitute an exact science. For this reason, one has to feel some sympathy for large manufacturers that are faced with class action lawsuits. One also has to wonder, given the seemingly endless litigious appetite of law firms in the United States, where these legal practices will end.
After visiting a local hospital for an MRI scan, for example, you may discover that the gadolinium-based contrast material used to enhance the visualization of organs and tissue is potentially dangerous to your health. Probably—and not to your surprise—you will also discover that you can join a class action lawsuit against companies such as General Electric, Bayer, and Tyco International Ltd. that manufacture the contrast material.
Taken to the extreme, this litigious infatuation becomes disturbing. Imagine that you have deployed a machine-vision system to inspect your offering as it rolls off the production line. After someone finds any fault in the product, your company becomes the subject of a class action lawsuit.
To deflect this blame, you discover that the problem occurred because of a faulty camera, lighting, software, frame grabber, robot, processor, relay, and/or cable harness that was used in the system to inspect the product. With this knowledge, you march into your legal department, which then sets off on its own legal crusade, targeting, of course, the largest OEM machine-vision companies involved.
I hope that this situation never happens. But I’m sure that some legal wizard somewhere in the world has already realized this potential opportunity. Perhaps instead it’s time to realize that, in the words of English writer Alexander Pope, “to err is human, to forgive is divine.”
