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Investigative reporter, author and former federal agent Chuck Hustmyre has seen the ugly side of life, from A to Z. Here he gets the last word on politics, crime, local government and pop culture.

You know what hacks me off? Product liability lawyers treating me like an idiot.

I'm an adult. I have 44 years of life experience behind me. I have a modicum of common sense. I don't need a warning label on every damn thing I buy. Not only are nearly all the warning labels I see moronic, I image they cost money. Someone had to write them. Someone had to produce them. Someone had to affix them to the thing I'm buying.

My guess is the cost of the label is built into the price of the thing, which means the thing's price went up because a product liability lawyer thought I was an idiot and needed to be told not to do something really dumb.

Like the Glad handle-tie kitchen trash bags I buy that come with a printed warning on every single bag -- just in case I forget -- not to let my kids play with the bags wrapped around their faces. Or how about the warning that the objects on the starboard side of my car are really closer than they appear in the slightly convex mirror mounted to the outside of the passenger-side door. Or the one permanently affixed to the sun visor on the driver's side: "Avoid sudden maneuvers at excessive speed."

If I try to cut a donut in a parking lot at 45 mph and flip my car over, can I sue because the warning didn't define "sudden" or "excessive"? You bet I can. This is America, land of the frivolous tort.

Thanks to the lady who burned her thighs at McDonald's, coffee cups now come with a warning that the contents are hot. Imagine coffee being hot. I don't know about hot chocolate. Maybe the word "hot" in the name covers it. I've got to ask a lawyer about that.

My absolute favorite warning was at the bottom of a TV ad for Hummers. In the ad, a guy drives his Hummer toward a dock. Then, in what is obviously computer-generated imaging, the Hummer flies off the end of the dock and in midair the wheels retract into the underbody and the Hummer becomes a submarine before splashing into the water and zipping around below the surface.

And I kid you not, the warning says the video is a dramatization and not to do that with a real vehicle.

Since seeing that ad, I've wanted to track down the lawyer who forced Hummer to run that warning and ask him why he put it there? Did he really think the company would be exposed to liability if someone bought a Hummer and drove it off a pier and couldn't find the submarine button on the dashboard?

In the end, it's not really the corporate lawyers' fault. They are just trying to protect their clients against ludicrous lawsuits. It's judges and juries who are really the cause of all these stupid warnings. After all, it was a jury that awarded Stella Liebeck $2.86 million in the McDonald's hot coffee case.

But please, give me some credit. I'm not going to stick a fork in the toaster. I'm not going to wrap my kids' heads in kitchen trash bags. And I'm not going to go play Jacques Cousteau in my SUV.

And if I do, I promise not to sue.

What do you say?

Chuck out.

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