I couldn't disagree more. Schools & cities both ought to live in fear of lawsuits to stop this kind of nonsense from occuring as a kneejerk reaction and give common sense an opportunity to prevail.

Living in fear of lawsuits is why we don't have climbing equipment in parks and diving boards in pools anymore. Lawsuits need to be scaled back and commonsense returned.

You have to admit; simply taking the casing off a store bought 80's clock, putting it in a suitcase and bringing it to school could easily be grounds for a bomb hoax.

Well, it allows certain opportunistic individuals to claim he's just in it for the money (and it does look rather bad, although I'm certainly not that reactionary). It comes as a charge to taxpayers, as well.

Also, I find the phrase "live in fear" to be a little... strong. Is that really what you meant?

At 15 mil, how is it anything but opportunistic?

Living in fear might be too strong. There needs to be a monetary deterrent discourage abuse. For example, the Internet often claims police brutality will drop if the settlements were paid from their pension.

This punishes tax payers who didn't do it. To discourage abuse those that did this should be fired. We need personal accountability.

thank you for making my point better than I could have.