“Not good,” Specialized’s attorney responded by email. “He sold his friend the allegedly defective bike? Interesting. It is also a spoliation of evidence. Once you filed suit, you and your client had a duty to preserve the bike.”
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incredible funny, like step 1 of suing over a defective product is “don’t get rid of the thing you’re suing over”
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Specialized has always had the best lawyers in the bike industry.
- sue Specialized for $175,000
- sell defective bike for (at most) $6,000
- ???
- PROFIT!!!
(step 3 is “lose legal case”)
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how was the response to “ok fine we’ll give you $175k, we just need the bike back” not “sure thing, give us a shipping address”?
like man that lawyer should have advised his client “run, don’t walk, and buy it back from your bud for what you sold it for TONIGHT” and never admitted that it left the client’s hands
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It’s so funny. It feels like a Curb episode. Larry “tomahawks” himself on an e-bike he decides to sell it to Leon because he’s now afraid of it. The next day at lunch Jeff convinces Larry to meet up with his lawyer to sue the bike manufacturer. Larry gets a settlement approved but now Leon will not give him the bike back because “a deal’s a deal Larry!” and something about women loving the e-bike.
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Must be a good friend if he’s willing to sell them a defective bike
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Saw this in the rich suburban town neighboring mine:
I agree with every word but somehow still resent the energy of it.
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I feel this way about a lot of the current e-bike panic and I think it’s because CARS, especially those driven by teenagers, are so much more destructive and disruptive than teens on e-motos but nobody is talking about taking the car keys from 16 year olds or putting up driver safety reminders. Shartmo
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there are already laws regulating how cars are used, and comparatively few for e-bikes. I’m in the same grudging agreement camp
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Oh yeah. It’s clear that people think these e-motos exist in some sort of legal gray zone (I’d disagree but oh well) and there needs to be a push for something, whether it’s clearer regulations or age limits or licensing/insurance etc. I’m not happy with the current e-moto situation but I get why teens in car dependent suburbs love them
I still prefer them to cars. The root cause of problems is still impoverished car-centric infrastructure.
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Cops hate dealing with bikes and they’re not going to rebuild all the roads to accommodate toys and cbp isn’t going to start blocking containers full of scooters so I don’t see this going away anytime soon
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I still prefer them to cars, but having a bunch of powerful 2 wheeled deth musheens piloted by teens with an underdeveloped brain is a recipe for getting kids killed
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When I was 12 I had a tote goat with a little Briggs and Stratton. I used my paper route money to buy the neighbors “broken “ rototiller with a 5hp Honda on it. I swapped it over and cleaned the carburetor and eventually figured out I could reach between my legs and adjust the idle on the fly to get more top end.
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It’s interesting how we got here though (or how it appears to me). These e-motorcycles have performance of maybe a 125-200cc gas motorcycle. So not super duper crazy but definitely not nothing, especially for a teenager. I don’t think any parent (except maybe the real dirt bag hick types) would say a kid doesn’t need a license or insurance or registration for a 200cc gas bike, but they seem very open to the idea of these e-motorcycles as “bicycles” that don’t require any paperwork.
A Surron is probably like $5k after shipping, a teen could earn that certainly but I gotta imagine it’s parents paying for these most of the time. I’m sure it isn’t much different than the kids who were bought cool and/or fast cars when I was in high school. And $5k is so much cheaper than any dependable car you buy these days, especially if you decide it doesn’t need paperwork.
OTOH I dunno how dumb of a parent you’d have to be to confuse a Surron and a Radwagon but who knows. I feel like Class 1 ebikes have to be total game-changers for teenage mobility but as tends to happen we have gone straight to the stupid option
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That’s a good description of Wellesley in general.
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MA requires plates and registration on ebikes now? Is this a town requirement? Or is it only applicable to certain classes of bikes?
edit: okay I re-read. Only if you are going >20mph
Gonna test ride the ALSO (Rivian) ebike tomorrow, if anyone’s got questions about it let me know
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