Louisiana family who says they were mangled by that escalator at Back Bay sues, asks that it not be repaired until they can have their own expert examine it

No, no, it isn't. That's not what "ironic" means.

Adding insult to injury.

As somebody who lived in New Orleans for several years, I freely attest that Louisiana is a mess, albeit an oftentimes loveable mess.

That being said, your comment has a whiff of Trump's "shithole countries" comment from several years back--it implies that some places are just fundamentally broken in a way that people from those places might find insensitive.

Hurricane Katrina hit not long after I arrived in the Boston area. For several weeks, while I was busy trying to reestablish contact with my friends in New Orleans to make sure that everybody was okay, I overhead these bon mots from strangers in Cambridge:

• "A hurricane hit New Orleans? How could they tell?"
• "They should just bulldoze the place."
• "New Orleans provides no value to the modern economy. I mean, Jazz?!"

Somehow, I missed the wit in such comments. Even now, a good friend of mine is feverishly working to restore both his house and his office after damage from Ida rendered them uninhabitable. When I asked him what I could do to help him and his family, he asked only that I donate to help those less fortunate then they are (which I promptly did).

I don't mean to be confrontational, but this comment struck a nerve with me.

Louisiana has problems, no disagreement. But it sounds like you just want to kick people who are already down.

It's possible that escalators already have that fail-safe protection. It's not as if escalators fly into reverse very often. For all I know, escalators fly into reverse as often as elevators drop 30 stories.

I don't know anything about escalators but agree the family should be compensated, whatever safety mechanism failed or wasn't in place.

"multiple fractures of the upper and lower extremities; extensive facial, scalp, head and body lacerations and other injuries" happening to children doesn't sound minor to me. If there's permanent disfigurement or incapacity involved, damages will, and should, be in the millions.

There's no way to get around the MBTA's duty of care to these passengers. This is not a "ride at your own risk" escalator. I'd wager it's an escalator the majority of people reading this have gone up.

The judge should stipulate that the MBTA is on the hook for whatever value can be placed on those injuries (and then the MBTA can sue the maintenance company, their insurance company, or whoever else they want), and let the escalator be fixed.

This term has a wide range of legal definitions. It can be any injury that doesn't require medical attention (which couldn't be the definition they're using, since the stories said people were taken to the hospital for these minor injuries) up through anything that isn't life-threatening.

In my professional life, I've sat through extensive hearings on what constitutes "minor injuries," "life-threatening injuries," and "condition likely to cause lifelong harm." We all know people who have a messed-up tendon in their leg or a back injury or something that never quite goes back to normal. This would be an injury that is lifelong. Does it massively affect quality of life? Probably not. It might, if functioning suddenly changes sometimes or it involves pain. Is it major? Is it minor? Who knows. Would someone be liable for causing it if their equipment massively failed or they allowed someone to do something with complete disregard for industry safety standards? Probably. Should a parent be found to have neglected their kid if the kid sustained it doing a totally normal childhood activity? Most of us don't think so, yet court cases even debating the issue happen more than you might think.

Same deal with the debates that occur as to "life-threatening" -- are we including a simple flesh wound that could have bled out but was easily stopped with first aid? Are we including something that could have easily gotten a massive infection but didn't? Are we including something that got a massive infection but it wasn't apparent, and was treated successfully? Are we including all eating disorders since the statistical rate of death is high? Are we only including really severe cases?

So yeah, people could have something that's not life-threatening, but also doesn't go back completely to normal easily. They certainly have medical bills. And I can tell you that I don't think I'd be emotionally OK after seeing my kids chucked down an escalator in an unfamiliar city.

Some people are sue-happy. This doesn't immediately jump out to me as that.

Being able to make reasonable judgement based on the facts and evidence presented with prior experience is. I've been inconvenienced by the T on several occasions but I don't believe it would impede my ability to impartially hear the evidence in a case like this.

Of course, I'm not currently a resident of Suffolk County (and have served my civic obligation in the Commonwealth within the last 3 years) so I'm off the hook for sitting on this one.