If you were knocked down and injured by flying body parts after a horrible accident, would you try to sue the victim?
what a wunnerful world we live in....
I guess I can see how she could be allowed to sue his estate, but, it is definitely weird. I can easily see insurance companies fighting over who is going to pay for her medical expenses.
Liability
The plaintiff's attorney was quoted as saying, "If you do something as stupid as this guy did, you have to be responsible for what comes from it.."
Does him not prethinking where his body would wind up make him negligent?
Man, if we're going to be held liable for our own stupidity...there's a lot of us that better lawyer-up right now.
Liability
Next they will discover he had AIDS and has endangered everyone involved in the incident and the cleanup.
Think of it this way.....if he was running to catch a train and instead of being killed, he just ran into her and knocked her down, causing the same injuries, would he be liable?
Liability
Could he have reasonably foresaw that his behavior would hurt someone?
I don't think he would have to foresee exactly how it would happen or what the nature of it would be to be negligent.
She was injured by his negligent behavior and is entitled to damages. It's not her fault she has to sue a dead teenager. In our system that is how she recovers her damages.
For the sake of argument, counsel; your client chose to stand in that particular spot. She could have very well stood in a different spot.;-)
dang you got me!
You really Perry Mason?
YES YES I DID IT, I'M GUILTY!!!
Hmmm...
I wonder if the attorneys in Reno are looking at this?
The Reno Air Race COmmittee is going ahead with ticket sales for this year's race, even though there are major hurdles with permits, etc.
This case might put an interesting wrinkle in the law suits pending in that case.
I never fully understood the reasoning behind allowing suits of estates of dead people. Especially something as horrific as this. But some slimeball lawyers will do whatever it takes.
Plus how many teenagers even have an estate, unless maybe as a beneficiary in their parents will.
She should try suing the airlines too, since she is afraid to fly and that forced her to take a train. Yea.... that's it. And the travel insurance vendor for excluding damage from "carbon based projectiles". Not to mention the train station for not providing a people proof sneeze guard type cover. And why is a train going 70 mph in a train station? Must be their fault too.
I don't know the particulars, but my best guess is that the train victim's family probably has some sort of law suit against the operators of the rail...and then the lady that got hit by the decedent's remains might get in on some of the cash that gets smeared around.
who knows?
Suicide Prevention
Actually, in this particular case, the court ruled that the railroad was NOT liable, saying the railroad had no duty to warn about what the judge called such an "open and obvious danger" as a moving train.
However, one of the reasons police (and others) try to prevent or interupt suicide attempts is because of the possibility of danger to bystanders. It is recognized that in the act of causing one's own death, there may be danger to others around you.
A person throwing a brick or rock off a bridge or tall building is endangering pedestrians and drivers below, and if damage, injury or death occurs, that person is held both civilly and criminally liable.
Likewise, a person jumping from a tall building (or in front of a train entering a station, intentionally or not) is endangering people around them. Just because he or she died in the process doesn't make them any less liable.
Why shouldn't this be proper grounds for a lawsuit? Dying doesn't absolve them of liability.
Suicide Prevention
A Railroad is only liable for damages when injury occurs exactly at a legally-defined RR crossing if and only if the warning signage (and signals) are in a state of gross misrepair.
I did one a number of years ago; the Railroad refused to negotiate a settlement. We went to court and it cost Union Pacific $106,000,000. The RR crossing lights were totally out of adjustment - proved with terrestrial photogrammetry from Union Pacific photography of the accident scene.
um
I think the defendant will have a go at it, pro se!
(No sense throwing good money, after bad)
🙂
N
