Janet Koval Case
 

Has anyone heard of an outcome or progress on the Janet Koval Lawsuit?
First and foremost, we are wondering if she has healed, and then, we need to
ask if this suit has been settled out-of-court with a non-disclosure clause.
https://www.outsideonline.com/231181...dents-lawsuits

https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Il...LE_INC_et_al./

-mr. bill

Looks like it was quietly "brushed under the rug". That's a disappointment. I hope that soon, someone will refuse to settle.

She had no case. The bike was used! She might have had a better chance suing the previous owner vs suing Giant. Even then the likely outcome would have been some kind of settlement. What would you want to see? Jail time for Giant executives? Carbon bikes pulled from the world market? I'm not understanding your obvious pique over this. I ride a bike with a carbon fork. So do thousands of other people. Mine is a name brand. What? Any product can be made shoddily and known as such or can have an excellent pedigree despite a hidden defect. Boeing 737 Max's were deemed to have a high degree of airworthiness. Now, not so much. I think it should take more than one lawsuit by someone who bought a USED model of carbon bike to inform an opinion that all carbon bikes are accidents waiting to happen. If you really feel that way then don't you suppose the thing to do would be not buy one?

If she could prove defective design, then she had a good case, resold or not. We don't know whether she could have or not, and we have no idea what the terms of settlement were.

But, yes, the likelihood that this one case would have much of an effect on the industry as a whole is really far-fetched. At most, it might have affected whether that particular model of fork would have had to come off of the market.

I do find some of the anti-carbon hysteria pretty funny, I must say.

Quite similar to my reaction to the hysteria posted in reference to bicycles without an LBS provenance (death is just around the corner!) Emotional if not financial agenda seems to be a factor in some cases.

No, not similar at all. You post the same humorless diatribe over and over again as soon as someone says anything negative about any department store bike. I'd hate to know how many hours you've spent rearranging the same sentences and phrases.
And if no one's discussing it, here's you bringing it up just to stir things up (perfect example right here).

I haven't forgotten being called a "bike snob" by you just for suggesting that a poster might get a better deal at Dick's than Walmart. I don't think that was hysteria on my part.

I'm pretty sure I haven't posted on this exploding carbon thing more than about 5 times.

I have posted about this elsewhere before, bit it seems it might bear quickly repeating here. I had one of my insurance agents over to my place for a little meeting not terribly long ago. He saw my Orca in the corner and asked if it was carbon fiber. I told him it was. He then proceeded to tell me that they had just been working on a death claim of a US man who died due to some sort of catastrophic CF wheel failure. He did not, obviously, identify the state. They had had two more recently, these, frame failures, he stated, also resulting in death claims. Also Americans. This is one of the largest life insurers in the world.

Insurance companies actually know more about how and why people die and what all the particulars are than almost anyone. They are not about to pay a multi-million-dollar benefit unless it meets all policy criteria. Big, detailed investigations with all manner of experts are not uncommon. It reduces their liability. These companies are fully aware that CF technology on bikes is not without potentially life-threatening risks. I suspect, as the article above referenced, we will be seeing more and more of this as older and older CF tech remains on the roads beyond its safe life--whatever the hell that is.

I have three CF frame bikes. Ride 'e, almost everyday. No CF wheels. You gotta go sometime.

Are you alleging an international conspiracy to send defective carbon bicycle components to the US to reduce our population with malice a forethought? This is indeed troubling. Happily I am never going to be in the income category of someone who might consider a full carbon bike. Certainly not carbon wheels. Don't you think a multi-national underwriter has more claims resulting from front tire blow-outs of both name brand and Chinese import clinchers? And, now that you mention money ... don't you find it odd that Koval's lawyers didn't seek more money from Giant USA? I mean ... $50001.00?? If there had been 10 or 20 of these fork failures out of hundreds of thousands sold they might have had something. As it was they were after a settlement. They got exactly what they wanted.

Well, lets hope Janet Koval is all right. Unfortunately, the discussion on carbon fiber is far-from-over.

I don't practice in IL, but my understanding is that the discovery is limited in cases under $50,000. Obviously the plaintiff didn't want that.

And no, it isn't odd that she would be seeking that little if her damages weren't huge.

I don't suppose it would be of any use to ask you to let it go.

Eiher that and/or the case would have gone through compulsory arbitration. That's what happens here in Philly. The threshhold to avoid CA used to be over $25,000 back in the mid-90s. Just looked it up. It's now $50K. I'll bet that's why they pled what they did. Just looked up some jurisdictions in IL. In Cook County, $30,000 or less requires mandaoty arbitration, but in Will County, it's $50,000:

https://www.willcountycourts.com/Cou...ry-Arbitration

So you plead $1 over the maximum to avoid CA.