Nebraska inmate Randall Robbins II is serving time for strangling his girlfriend and blames the antidepressant pill. He wants millions from Pfizer and a Lincoln doctor. [AP/Forbes]
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Posts tagged as:
third party liability for crime
Springfield, Mass.: The parents’ suit charges that the chain wrongfully sent Corey Lind out to deliver pizza to dangerous and unknown addresses; he was ambushed and murdered in 2007. Noteworthy angle:
According to the suit, prior to 2000 Domino’s had a policy of not making or of limiting deliveries to certain areas.
As a result of discrimination claims against the company, the federal Department of Justice investigated the policy. The result was an agreement between the government and Domino’s establishing procedures Domino’s could use to limit or stop deliveries to certain areas based on safety.
The suit said that Domino’s required all stores to implement a Limited Delivery Service Policy which, among other things, would evaluate each store’s delivery and service area and provide for the safety of delivery workers.
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“The Washington state Supreme Court has ruled that a criminally insane man who murdered his mother should not profit from his crime by pocketing a share of the proceeds from a lawsuit related to her death.” [Heller, OnPoint News; Joshua Hoge, Pamela Kissinger]
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Lawyers for the family of Robert Ogle say it was negligent for David Jaber to leave his running car unattended outside a Queens, N.Y. deli. The Kia Spectra was then stolen by Kenneth Guyear who proceeded to run down Ogle. [New York Daily News via Miller]
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Washington state jails are overcrowded, so—presumably to avoid lawsuits over overcrowding—Washington State Patrol policy is to arrest nonviolent offenders without jailing them. In the case of Bellingham resident Janine Parker, drunk driving in the early morning hours of January 4, Trooper Chad Bosman arrested her, and drove her home, telling her not to drive until she was sober. Nevertheless, Parker, an hour later, found a taxi to take her nine miles to her car left by the side of the road, and drove drunk head on into Hailey French’s auto, causing the innocent 22-year-old driver many injuries.
French sued Parker, of course, but also the Washington State Patrol and Whatcom County (the latter apparently failed to put an ignition-interlock device in her car as Parker’s probation from an earlier conviction provided). (Miraculously, she doesn’t seem to have sued the taxi company.) A Skagit County jury found the two governmental entities jointly liable for $5.5 million. According to press accounts, the two defense attorneys each tried to get the jury to blame the other deep pocket: apparently, making the suggestion the person responsible for the drunk driving was the person responsible was beyond either hope or comprehension, though a web commenter to the article claims that Parker testified that the accident was entirely her fault. (Peter Jensen, “Whatcom County woman’s suit against county, State Patrol in jury’s hands”, Bellingham Herald, Apr. 24; May 1 post-trial press release of victorious plaintiff’s attorney).
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A Queens, N.Y. man has sued Starwood Hotels and American Express, saying that at an Amex-recommended hotel in Sardinia he and his sons were held hostage by hotel staffers, sometimes at gunpoint, and forced to spend upwards of a hundred thousand dollars on hotel, jewelry, boutique and nightclub charges. [Adam Klasfeld/Courthouse News, New York Post] Cityfile expresses a marked degree of skepticism toward Alexander Maryasin’s story and links “13 different lawsuits that [he] has filed in Queens alone in recent years”.
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AP: “A member of the crew on the U.S.-flagged ship hijacked by African pirates sued the owner and another company Monday, accusing them of knowingly putting sailors in danger.”
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So a Tennessee woman is suing McDonald’s, saying it should have known its outlet was attracting a criminal element. She’s also suing a nearby liquor store and the attacker himself. [Nashville Tennessean]
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Massachusetts: “A livery company and its driver are liable in a fatal car accident caused by a drunk passenger after he left the livery van, the state’s highest court ruled yesterday. … The court said [the hired driver] should not have dropped off a drunk passenger at a location where he would probably get into a car and drive.” (Denise Lavoie, “SJC rules livery firm negligent in crash”, AP/Boston Globe, Nov. 27).
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“Israeli and Russian victims of a 2004 terror attack on an Egyptian Hilton cannot sue the hotel in the United States, in part because a judge believed they were seeking a higher recovery from a New York jury sitting blocks from the World Trade Center site. Southern District Judge Peter Leisure found that the plaintiffs, none of whom were Americans, may have been engaging in forum shopping in Niv v. Hilton Hotels Corp., 06 Civ. 7839, and he dismissed the case under the doctrine of forum non conveniens.” (Mark Hamblett, “N.Y. Forum Denied for Suit Over Terror Attack in Egypt”, New York Law Journal, Nov. 19).
Canada: “The family of Tim McLean is suing Greyhound, the RCMP and the man suspected of committing the gruesome killing of the 22-year-old man aboard a bus in rural Manitoba in July.” (CBC, Sept. 2).
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This is the silliest claim I’ve seen in a long while. The shooting victim’s family filed a claim against the school their son attended because it allegedly failed to enforce the dress code. The “feminine-dressing” boy was thusly singled out for abuse. (“Family of shooting victim files claim against Huenume School District”, VenturaCountyStar, Aug. 14).
Update: I revised the title for accuracy.
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The old joke is that chutzpah is defined as the case of the orphan who kills his parents and then begs the court for mercy because he’s an orphan.
A pair of Philadelphia parents, however, may redefine the idea for all time. Danieal Kelly, who suffered from crippling cerebral palsy, was 14 when she starved to death in a West Philadelphia rowhouse, covered in bedsores, weighing just 42 pounds. Her mother, “Andrea Kelly was charged with murder on July 31. Daniel Kelly, who authorities say abandoned his daughter despite knowledge of her mother’s neglect, was charged with endangering the welfare of a child.” (Three friends of the mother were charged with perjury for lying to a grand jury; four social workers were also charged with felony endangerment, which will no doubt screw up incentives further for over-reacting child protective services everywhere.)
The parents responded as any parents would, and sued the city, the state, city and state agencies, and four social workers, blaming them for Kelly’s death, and seeking damages for “love, tutelage, companionship, support, comfort and consortium” as well as the “economic value of her life expectancy”–which couldn’t possibly be anything other than the taxpayer-funded disability benefits. Public outrage has caused the lawyers, Brian Mildenberg and Eric Zajac, to substitute other parties as plaintiffs so that there is no direct hint of Daniel and Andrea Kelly profiting, but the underlying appallingness of the suit remains. (Julie Shaw & Catherine Lucey, “Lawsuit by Danieal’s parents called ‘disgusting’”, Phil. Inquirer, Aug. 13; Nancy Phillips and Kia Gregory, “Danieal Kelly’s parents sue the city”, Phil. Inquirer, Aug. 13; John Sullivan and Craig R. McCoy, “Nine indicted in fatal neglect of girl”, Phil. Inquirer, Aug. 1; ongoing Inquirer coverage).
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In May 2006, 14-year-old Texas girl “Julie Doe” listed herself as 18 on her MySpace profile (so she could circumvent the site’s child safety features) and snuck out of her house to surreptitiously meet with a boy she met on MySpace the previous month. Unfortunately for her, the boy was also lying; Pete Solis was not a high-school athlete, but a 19-year-old that (allegedly) raped her. (Solis claims the sex was consensual and that he didn’t know about the illegal age difference, though knowledge ususally isn’t a defense in statutory rape cases.)
The family blamed MySpace and sued in multiple jurisdictions, omitting Solis from the most recent iteration of the suit. The suit was dismissed under the website hosting immunity protections of the Communications Decency Act; and Friday, the dismissal was affirmed by a unanimous panel of the Fifth Circuit (via Childs). We covered the suit in detail in 2006; for that, and other MySpace litigation, see our MySpace tag.
In April, Solis pleaded guilty to reduced charges of felony injury to a child, and will serve 90 days over the course of five years, and will register as a sex offender. (Jen Biundo, “Buda teen gets 90 days in jail, seven years on sex offender list”, The Free Press (Buda), April 23). His attorney? Adam Reposa, known for other reasons. One presume’s Solis’s even more ludicrous lawsuit against MySpace has met a similar fate.
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New Jersey: “An Essex County jury has ordered Newark to pay $4.1 million to the family of a murdered Seton Hall University student because of mistakes made by a police dispatcher and 911 operator during her abduction. The jury’s verdict came after the attorney for Sohayla Massachi’s family argued that prompt action by the Newark police may have prevented her murder after she was abducted by a jilted boyfriend in May 2000.” The jury attributed 25 percent of its $5.5 million award to Seton Hall and its security agency, Argenbright Security Inc., but those defendants had already settled. (William Kleinknecht, Newark Star-Ledger, May 16).
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