By a 4-3 vote, New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, has voted to uphold a $1.4 million jury award against the New York City Transit Authority on behalf of Juan Soto, who after a night of drinking with friends decided to trespass on the elevated subway roadbed at Queensboro Plaza and then failed to outrun a #7 train that came up behind. (Pete Donohue, “Loses to train & wins big”, New York Daily News, Mar. 25). Per a New York Daily News editorial, “To justify paying him, the court credited Soto’s testimony that he could tell how fast he was running because he often ran on a treadmill, and based on that speed some hired expert said the motorman should have been able to stop before hitting him.” (“A court runs off the rails”, Mar. 25)(Soto v. New York City Transit Authority, PDF).
Tried to outrun subway train, wins $1.4 m
By a 4-3 vote, New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, has voted to uphold a $1.4 million jury award against the New York City Transit Authority on behalf of Juan Soto, who after a night of drinking with friends decided to trespass on the elevated subway roadbed at Queensboro Plaza and then failed […]
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Is it ethical for Overlawyered.com to list the names of the four judges who voted in favor of the plaintiff and which governors appointed them? Do the judges have any connections to trial lawyers?
Is it ethical for Overlawyered.com to list the names of the four judges who voted in favor of the plaintiff and which governors appointed them? Do the judges have any connections to trial lawyers?
Well, the opinion is there for you to read, so I supposed if you wanted to find out, you could.
as a moderate user of a treadmill, the typical treadmill overstates the speed and distance by approx 25%.
For New York plaintiff’s bar connections to the New York Assembly, check out some of Walter Olson’s writings… needless to say, it’s pretty gross. Many downstate legislators are plaintiff’s attorneys themselves, and I doubt the defense bar is even close to represented. If anyone’s got the breakdown, pass it along.
What makes it so offensive is that in achieving tort reform, you’ve basically got to get past a bloc of people who have a direct and personal financial interest in not letting it happen. Tort reform is money taken directly from the pockets of many of these people. Obviously, as legislators, their duty should be to the public good, which is obviously not served by lawsuits like Juan Soto’s. Instead, they’re concerned with their own piles of dubiously-gotten gains. These legislator/plaintiff’s attorneys are in breach of the public trust.
Because the guy driving the train should certainly expect there to be a guy running on the train tracks in the middle of the night.
Maybe all of the New York trains should simply run at 8 mph all the time, you know, in case someone is on the tracks.
What’s interesting about this case is that the jury felt the plaintiff was 75% responsible for his injuries. As a plaintiff’s lawyer I have to tell you that there are not many jurisdictions where this guy would have been able to recover. In Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C, if a plaintiff is 1% negligent he loses. In most states that do compare the negligence of the parties a plaintiff can still only win if he is not more than 50% at fault. I do find it rather amazing that one could be 75% at fault and recover anything.
That having been said, the criticisms of the judges on appeal is rather unfair. They correctly state what is clearly a liberal law. It’s not their “fault” that this case turned out with this result. The simply applied New York’s law to the case.. as did the jury, apparantly.
This case gives me an idea of how to award “damages” in situations like this.
Since no one is more able than ourselves to judge the value of our lives, the jury should be asked to decide how much the deceased valued his own life. In this case, the answer is that the deceased felt his own life was worth zero dollars (or he wouldn’t have done anything so stupid), 25% of which is also zero.