>No doubt. I have a friend that worked for a large grocery store chain - and his sole job was to maintain a database of lawsuits against them. Some of the stuff was so stupid ...for example one of the stores had a small floral section where they sold a few flowers and plants. This one lady ended up suing the store because there wasn't a "do not touch" sign on a cactus plant and she supposedly poked herself witht. Naturally the store just paid her off instead of going to court. There were 1000's of things like this in the database - although that one was one of my favorites.

My take is that these people aren't stupid. They actually invent new ways to make everyone else's lives more complicated. This is a full-time occupation for that kind of people, the wider range of ambulance chasers. Once you get into that mindset, of pushing the envelope in that direction, you bring the "in this country you can sue a ham sandwich" closer to truth.

OTOH, it's also the legislators who feel the urge to justify their own existence (social pressure, perhaps), so they keep writing new laws, somehow imagining that's what they're supposed to be doing. Since they can't touch the important stuff (corporations, banks, anyone with enough money to lobby against that touch), they'll piggyback on anything the popular science finds as dangerous and then invent laws against that.

They'd be more effective going over the books and revoking obsolete laws.