Well, I understand that an out of court settlement was reached late last year before a judgment was handed down and confidentiality clauses prevent the parties to the case discussing the settlement further. So it seems we will never know how a court might have decided on the evidence that was presented.
As my parting comment on this I'll just say that while the case itself was to resolve historic events and their causes, at least the design changes that have developed over the years since (whether or not as a consequence of Russ' accident) such as forward facing drop outs and 20mm/15mm bolt through systems provide excellent alternatives for those that seek some comfort (although wouldnt it have been nice to see a common licenced 20mm standard eh? :)
As Mike Davis of Bike Magic once said, "If any engineer sat down with a clean sheet of paper, they wouldn't come up with a design like the one we have for holding wheels into disc-equipped bikes."
The inertia of legacy systems and designs is strong, but despite the slow machinations of the world of fork/hub/brake development the days are numbered for the QR in sport MTBing regardless of their culpability or not. The arguments, however, may be longer lived!
some links for further reading
http://www.bikemagic.com/news/article/mps/uan/3322
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/julesandjames/home/disk_and_quick_release/index.html
http://www.bikebiz.com/news/21527/Is-this-the-end-of-QRs-for-MTBs
unfortunately some STW links are now dead since their site was borked.
2 comments:
Thanks for following up on this.
My understanding (which may be wrong) is that if an offer is made and rejected and the court's final award is lower, then costs will not be awarded even if the plaintiff wins a substantial sum. Thus the plaintiff will usually be well advised to accept a reasonable settlement unless they are very confident, not just of "winning", but of being awarded more than the offer.
yes I think that's how it works too.
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