66-year-old Daniel Ernst was paralyzed from the chest down when drunk-driving Timothy Beauregard hit him with his Oldsmobile while making a left turn. “Beauregard admitted to a criminal charge of drunken driving, seriously bodily injury resulting, the next year and received a 10-year suspended sentence with probation from Superior Court Judge Edwin J. Gale.” Beauregard wasn’t visibly drunk when Chen’s Restaurant served him a mai tai and a beer, but a jury found the restaurant 25% responsible for the accident, which puts Chen’s entirely on the $15.2 million damages hook under Rhode Island law, a detail the press account omits. (This assumes, of course, that one who drinks mai tais in Chen’s Restaurant in Westerly, Rhode Island, is not capable of paying a 75% share of a $15.2 million judgment.) (Katie Mulvaney, “Veteran hit by drunken driver nets $15.2 million”, Providence Journal, Feb. 14). Rhode Islanders Against Lawsuit Abuse will be seeking to reform the state’s joint and several liability laws this legislative session.
Deep pocket files: Ernst v. Chen’s Restaurant
66-year-old Daniel Ernst was paralyzed from the chest down when drunk-driving Timothy Beauregard hit him with his Oldsmobile while making a left turn. “Beauregard admitted to a criminal charge of drunken driving, seriously bodily injury resulting, the next year and received a 10-year suspended sentence with probation from Superior Court Judge Edwin J. Gale.” Beauregard […]
5 Comments
“a jury found the restaurant 25% responsible for the accident, which puts Chen’s entirely on the $15.2 million damages hook under Rhode Island law, a detail the press account omits.”
I suspect that this is a detail that the jury wasn’t told, either, which makes the whole thing even worse (if that’s possible).
One of the Suzuki Sideflip lawsuits occured locally (St. Louis). The jury here found that the drrunken driver of the vehicle was 2% responsible for the rollover, the passenger/plaintiff 2% responsible for not wearing a seatbelt (in violation of state law) and the Suzuki corporation responsible for the rest.
The assignment of responsibility is an absurd excercise by the legal system.
If that “makes the whole thing even worse,” then we ought to have a uniform rule: juries always find out who’s paying.
So plaintiff lawyers would be free to tell a jury about any applicable insurance policy. And in 1983 actions, we can dispense with the fiction that the individual defendant pays and inform the jury that s/he is actually indemnified by his or her public employer.
No, that’s not what I said, but nice attempt at twisting it.
What I said is that the jury should be informed of the ramifications of joint and several liability, which amounts to the “assignment of responsibility” becoming a joke (that is, they assigned the restaurant %25, but in reality, that often becomes %100).
In this case, it probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference; I suspect 25% of $15 million will equally bankrupt Chen’s. It still makes no sense to apportion fault between an intentional tortfeasor and one who was, at worst, mildly negligent. This isn’t the case of two hunters simultaneously firing carelessly.