A prisoner at Bullingdon near Bicester, Oxfordshire, “is suing the Prison Service after he cut himself falling from the top bunk in his cell”. The inmate told a prisoners’ magazine that bunk beds were “an accident waiting to happen”. (BBC, Aug. 27). As Ted noted Aug. 16, a New Jersey appeals court recently overturned a jury verdict awarded to a student who fell from a loft bed, ruling the dangers obvious.
U.K.: “Inmate sues for falling from bunk”
A prisoner at Bullingdon near Bicester, Oxfordshire, “is suing the Prison Service after he cut himself falling from the top bunk in his cell”. The inmate told a prisoners’ magazine that bunk beds were “an accident waiting to happen”. (BBC, Aug. 27). As Ted noted Aug. 16, a New Jersey appeals court recently overturned a […]
4 Comments
Much more than bunk beds, prison is an accident waiting to happen, so if you don’t want to have accidents, you should avoid being a criminal.
If “the danger is obvious”, that would seems to support the prisoner’s case. After all, it was the Prison Service who put the dangerous bunk beds in place, not the prisoner.
If the incident is accurately described, that’s a quite bogus lawsuit. OTOH, when I was in the service, I once had one of my men on limited duty after a defective bunk bed collapsed in the barracks. The guy in the top bunk was mainly just shaken up, but the guy on the bottom was covered with small cuts and bruises. Worse, there went half of the linemen for the squadron football team!
Not that anyone thought of suing.
Perhaps they should have hammocks?