“A jury in state Supreme Court Saratoga County has awarded a woman $800,000 after suing her brother over a serious trampoline injury at his Clifton Park home.” [Paul Post, The Saratogian]
Posts Tagged ‘deep pocket’
“Should I sue?”
Dear Prudence: “I hit a child with my car and have to sue his parents in order to afford therapy….What would you do in my situation?” [Slate]
“Mom sues Target over ‘hazardous’ giant red balls outside store”
“A New Jersey mom is hitting Target right where it hurts with a $1.6 million lawsuit that claims her son was seriously injured while playing on one of the large, red, concrete balls that are situated outside many of its stores.” [New York Post]
More from B. Hill, in comments: “And then someone will sue Target for removing the balls and not having devices in place to prevent cars from crashing through the front doors.”
Jury agrees: crashes of cars into stores are stores’ fault
For some time trial lawyers have been promoting the theory that when runaway cars smash into convenience stores and other retail locations, it is the stores’ fault for not installing protective bollards. This theory has now taken a big leap forward in a case in which a Western Massachusetts jury has told Cumberland Farms to pay $32 million over a crash in which a motorist who’d had a stroke careened off a road and into a Chicopee store. [Springfield Republican; more at Fair Warning, which as is its wont takes the plaintiff’s-bar side]
“CTA pays $4.3 million in wrongful-death settlement”
The Chicago Transit Authority in September “approved a $4.3 million payment to the family of a Pilsen woman who in 2009 was killed by a hit-and-run driver and then struck again by a CTA bus following the car.” The driver who struck Martha Gonzalez in a pedestrian crosswalk sped off and was never caught; the bus driver who subsequently hit Gonzalez’s body, who has subsequently retired, was not issued a traffic ticket in the incident. [Chicago Tribune, September]
Great moments in foreseeability
“Kid Throws A Cinderblock Off Balcony, And Landlord May Be Liable” [Daniel Fisher, Forbes, on Connecticut Supreme Court’s ruling in Ruiz v. Victory Properties “that a landlord may be liable for allowing a 10-year-old to throw an 18-pound cinderblock from the balcony of his mother’s apartment … [because] the landlord should have known the construction materials and other junk laying around behind the building could become deadly missiles in the hands of a child.”]
Pa. jury: inadequate curve signage partly at fault
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania: “A jury in a Luzerne County civil case ruled that PennDOT was partially responsible for a deadly crash in 2011 that killed a 15-year-old girl, even though the driver of the SUV was driving at roughly twice the speed limit and did not have a driver’s license.” While the driver admitted he was going nearly 90 miles an hour when he lost control, the family’s lawyer “told jurors in closing arguments that PennDOT’s own manuals showed Suscon Road needed more so-called chevron signs that reflect light and warn of an upcoming sharp curve.” [WNEP]
Brother at wheel in accident, recovers $18 million
Pennsylvania: “According to police, Kyle Piper, then 17, lost control of his car on a wet Route 422 in Union Township and struck a steel pole.” His 15-year-old brother Stephen, a passenger, was catastrophically injured. “At the time of the accident, according to court documents, the family was insured through Erie Insurance Exchange and believed $200,000 in uninsured motorist benefits and another $100,000 in liability coverage was available for Stephen.” Several legal twists later, Erie has agreed to pay $18 million. [New Castle (Pa.) News]
Driver sped through work zone into one-car crash
And has now been awarded $18 million on the theory that although there was some warning signage, there should have been more. The 23-year-old driver was traveling “admittedly 15-20 miles per hour over the speed limit” when he encountered a rough patch of roadway at a resurfacing project. The claimant’s attorney, Gerald A. McHugh Jr., “a current nominee for U.S. district judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, declined to comment on the case.” [Philadelphia, Legal Intelligencer]
N.J.: auto insurer told to pay for social-host liability
Quest for deep pockets: the homeowners’ insurer had already thrown in its policy limits over an accident in which an 18 year old guest allowed to consume alcohol at a private home had injured himself in a car crash. Now an Ocean County, N.J. judge has ruled that the party host’s auto insurer can also be obliged to provide coverage under a general liability endorsement, ruling it irrelevant that the accident had nothing to do with the insured’s own cars. [New Jersey Law Journal]