“Gail McDoe admits her 16-year-old son never should have been driving that car in 2005. He was the one who set off the chase with police, ending in a fiery crash that killed him.” Nonetheless, her $5 million lawsuit against the city of Newburgh, N.Y. alleges that cops should not have been so aggressive in chasing Dionte Jones and should have acted more quickly to attempt a rescue after he flipped his car into a gas field full of fuels and hazardous chemicals. The city’s in-house lawyer says an investigation indicates Jones died instantly and would not have been helped by a rescue attempt. (John Doherty, “Mother wants Newburgh police to share burden of son’s death”, Middletown Times Herald-Record, Jan. 6).
Posts Tagged ‘personal responsibility’
AP on Wacky Warnings
The wire service reports on this year’s M-LAW competition (see Jan. 4) (David N. Goodman, “Keep People Out of Wash, Label Warns”, AP/MyWay.com, Jan. 5). Aside from the ones mentioned by Ted the other day, a notable entry was the second-prize winner, found on a personal watercraft, “Never use a lit match or open flame to check fuel level”. Burma-Shave got there decades earlier:
He lit a match/
To check gas tank/
That’s why/
They call him/
Skinless Frank
Bob Dorigo Jones’ new book Remove Child Before Folding is here.
Deep Pockets File: 19-year-old dies moshing, family sues homeowner
A handful of teenagers were moshing at a New Year’s Eve party; 19-year-old Calvin Harris was apparently struck in the chest and died of concussion of the heart in a freak accident. Harris’s family is suing William Conklin (who allegedly hit Harris), and Conklin’s mother, who owned the house where the party was held, though she wasn’t home at the time. It’s not clear from press coverage if William Conklin was an adult at the time of the party. (Anthony Lonetree, “Lawsuit filed over New Year’s party death”, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Dec. 29 (via Romenesko); inconclusive Harris family video of collapse).
Deep Pocket Files: Jason Lapp and Andrew Brzyski
Mary Brzyski worked for Skidmore Inc., in East Aurora, NY, where she drove a company car that was leased from Chrysler. In 2003, Brzyski loaned the car to her 19-year-old son, Andrew, who rear-ended Jason Lapp’s car, severely injuring him. Longtime readers know what happened next. Irrational New York law (Jul. 14, 2003, Apr. 2, 2004, Feb. 2, 2005) holds the lessor liable, even when, as here, they are three transactions away and never anticipated that a 19-year-old would be driving the car. Skidmore and Chrysler have settled for $8.2 million. (“$8.2 million settlement accepted in crash suit”, Buffalo News, Dec. 15). Congress has stepped in to the breach (Aug. 4, 2005), at least until the litigation lobby undoes that reform.
Potter v. Ford Motor
Betty Potter, who weighed 230 pounds, was driving her Ford Escort in the rain on bald tires, lost control of her car, and collided backwards into a tree at 30 mph. Her seatback collapsed in the impact, rendering her paraplegic when her head hit the back seat. She was allowed to argue to a jury that the design was “defective” even though her lawyers could not identify an alternative design that would have prevented the harm; Ford was held 70% liable for $10 million in damages. The Tennessee Court of Appeals affirmed the state trial court verdict. Of course, it’s impossible to design seatbacks to handle all conceivable combinations of collision direction and driver sizes; as the plaintiffs’ expert admitted, using a rigid seatback instead of a yielding seatback to withstand this sort of collision makes other types of injuries much more likely, and low-speed collisions where the yielding seatback has benefits are far more likely than high-speed collisions. The jury (and Tennessee court) is essentially punishing Ford for failing to have perfect foresight in matching its cars with the accidents the cars’ drivers will have. (Potter v. Ford Motor Co.; concurring opinion; via Products Liability Prof. Blog).
In other rigid v. yielding seatback lawsuit news, the Illinois Court of Appeals released on the web the Mikolajczyk v. Ford Motor Co. opinion for the case we discussed Dec. 1, 2006 and March 21, 2005. The same issues apply in that case, except there, the accident was caused by a drunk driver plowing into the back of a stopped car at over 60 mph.
Killer’s mom sues high school
Birmingham, Ala.: “Felicia Reynolds, the mother of former Hoover High School student Ricky Reynolds, has filed a $5 million claim against the city of Hoover, saying her son would not have fatally stabbed classmate Sean Joyner had her pleas for help been heeded. Ricky Reynolds is in a Louisiana prison serving a 20-year manslaughter sentence for the November 2002 incident at the high school.” (Robert K. Gordon, “Killer’s mother sues Hoover”, Birmingham News, Dec. 7).
“$102,009.17 buys an awful lot of pants”
“That is how much the Long Island Rail Road and the Metro-North Railroad have paid over the last four years to customers who have torn clothing” on the armrests of their M7 trains. I’ve torn pants pockets on armrests that weren’t on M7 trains, but never thought to ask for compensation for something that was my own damn fault. I’m apparently a sucker, but at least no one is seeking to add this claim of damages to the obesity lawsuits. Yet. (William Neuman, “M.T.A. Gets Bill When Armrests Chew Up Pants”, NY Times, Dec. 6 (h/t W.F.)).)
Nancy Grace sued for guest’s suicide
I’m not a big Nancy Grace fan, but this lawsuit by the parents of Melinda Duckett seeking to hold Grace liable for Duckett’s decision to commit suicide is ludicrous. One hopes that Deratany is not unethically raising the hopes of his clients in bringing a lawsuit with no hopes of success for his own publicity-seeking benefit, under which circumstances mentioning the lawsuit here only furthers that problem. The parents’ lawyer, Jay Paul Deratany, was previously in the news for threatening a parasitic lawsuit seeking $1 million from Knicks player Antonio Davis because Davis went into the stands to protect his wife from being attacked by an aggressive Chicago fan, even though Davis made no physical contact with anyone; the dispute settled within a week without actual litigation after bad publicity for Deratany’s client (the son of a prominent political operative) caused the attorney to backtrack from the million-dollar damage claim. (A Jay Paul Deratany is also the author of the poorly-reviewed Chicago theater production “Two Grooms and a Mohel.” Perhaps a coincidence.)
Letter from a new father
Reader Greg Dwyer of Oregon sends the following:
Yours is the website I have been continuously reading the longest and the one I most identify with. So I figured I’d tell you something. I recently celebrated the birth of my first son, Michael Gabriel. And he will not go through life padded in Nerf.
He is going to play dodge ball and tag.
I will let him eat trans fats and foie gras.
He can play Grand Theft Auto when he is old enough.
He will know that medicine is a risky business that doesn’t always provide perfect cures.
He is going to be able to shoot a gun well by the time he is 21 and I will take him to get his gun license myself.
Most of all, I will teach him that life is what you make of it and if he fails at something, he will have no one to blame but himself.
Loving father and non-victicrat,
Greg Dwyer
Warning: do not apply directly to forehead
The Metafilter folks aren’t especially impressed with a mother’s complaint that her son’s rubbing “Magic Eraser” on himself caused a rash and that more warnings are needed on the package:
“Also, don’t let your kids drink Round Up. Or put Tide in their eyes.”
“It seems to me that if a product is known for scouring markings off of nearly any surface, some degree of it not being like Oil of Olay moisture rich foaming face wash should be assumed.”
“I just checked my box of SOS steel wool soap pads and they don’t have any warning either! Won’t somebody think of the children?”
“The kid didn’t rub his face with the eraser, Mom did. She cleaned his face with sandpaper that didn’t look like sandpaper to her, and his face got all red, and she freaked out that he was “burned”, because she still doesn’t believe the erasers are sandpaper. Not a chemical burn. A friction burn. Caused by Mom.”
“Things I have learned today on Metafilter: 1. Do not rub your kid’s face with a cleaning pad that can take permanent marker off a hard surface with only a couple of mild scrubs.”
To the mother’s credit, she says she isn’t interested in suing. (h/t Slim.)