I just found this story in this kind of thing makes me so mad I get sick to my stomach. The small town of Miami Oklahoma had a company in it called Blitz which manufactured 75% of the gas cans we buy to store fuel for our lawnmowers and cars. At one point they employed over 350 people in the small town. Several years ago they started getting lawsuits claiming that their gas cans were exploding causing harm to people.
They were told that the cans were exploding while pouring gasoline on an open flame to either accelerate or start a fire. The number of these lawsuits increased to the point where they were actually defending themselves against 40 cases and the cost of legal fees and increased insurance bankrupted the company. According to the documentary not only did Blitz USA have to pay to defend themselves from these frivolous lawsuits but they actually lost some of them due to jury members seeing plaintiffs disfigured from gasoline burns and feeling sorry for them and awarding them money.
One of the things in the documentary that really bothered me was that on the day the company was closing there was a meeting in Chicago of lawyers where one of the rooms at the event was to teach lawyers specifically how to sue companies like Blitz USA. In my opinion lawyers like this are as bad as the trolls and give good and honest lawyers a bad name.
From what I understand is the company went through bankruptcy and its assets were put up for auction, it was acquired by a Canadian company which will resume limited production but does not seem to be offering former employees their jobs back.
The original article comes from the website Faces of Lawsuit Abuse and may be found at the following link:
http://www.facesoflawsuitabuse.org/2012/12/the-last-week-how-lawsuits-doomed-an-american-icon/
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