Ambulance chasers before the bodies or plane are discovered: 1st lawsuit over MH370

[stranger81]

202. Yes, it probably is an American attitude -- because the American regulatory system is broken.

There may be regulators, but at least in this country, regulators (FAA included) work for what we call "captive agencies." They listen and respond almost exclusively to the corporations they're ostensibly regulating, instead of being guided by the public interest. There's also what amounts to a revolving door between the regulating agencies and the industries being regulated, such that the "regulators" are either industry insiders before they take their government job, or are angling for a lucrative industry position when they leave government.

Regulation without litigation may be an appropriate solution in other corners of the world (particularly Western Europe, which has a very strong regulatory regime). In the U.S., though, leaving it to the regulators without additional external pressure, through litigation or otherwise, is nothing more than a wish and a prayer.

In this case, it's not unfair Monday morning quarterbacking to insist that MAS did something legally actionable when they decided to skimp on satellite services that would likely have avoided losing the plane somewhere in the vast Indian Ocean. It's perfectly forseeable that choosing not to subscribe to such services would lead to exactly the result we see now in the event a plane goes off course. The legal negligence standard in the U.S., of course, would be the benchmark for whether that forseeability rises to the level of a tort -- e.g., whether a reasonable person or company would have acted the same way under the same circumstances.