Woman sues dead teen whose severed body parts struck her

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• What a bunch of crap. As long as the woman had her medical bills taken care of, by the kids family or the rail company, she has no gripe and should shut her face and get a life. F-cking lawyers and lawsuits like this are a huge part of why our insurance rates are so high and both should be done away with for the most part.

  I think I'll sue myself for a million or so. I just paid my homeowners insurance for the year, so I am covered if some dumb ass sues me while trespassing, and the next time it snows I'm going to slip on the front porch and "hurt" my back. Me, the injured party, is going to sue the negligent property owner, also me, for not providing a safe walkway on the property, also owned by me. In other words, it is my fault I fell because I was too lazy to shovel the snow off of my porch and I should be compensated for it.

  If I get a big chunk of cash out of my insurance company my rates may go up but I won't care because I'll sell the defective house and spend the winter in Cabo San Lucas, where it never snows, instead of freezing my ass off and shoveling snow all winter.

  • Whiskey-can you give me the name and # to your attorney? I need a good topgun to represent/sue me too.

  • Whiskey, you're a genius.

• Wow, a clear case of being railroaded. The teenager was loco.

• Call the morgue and have them give her a portion of his ASSet. Case closed.

• . Rosen added, "If you do something as stupid as this guy did, you have to be responsible for what comes from it.”

  As a lawyer -something I am not always proud of- I can =kinda= see this. It was the stupid kid that jumped out in front of a train. I'm not saying I agree with it, but I do see the reasoning.

  1) Lady gets hurt.
  2) Not her fault.
  3) Somebody's fault.
  4) Train? Why? Is it the train's fault an idiot runs in front of you and gets killed? Nope. If the train is liable for injuring her, it is liable for killing him.
  5) Therefore - idiot's fault.

  • Not a lawyer here. But it seems that no one could have forseen than 1) his body would disintegrate on impact (well, I would have, but ya know) and 2) that she would happen to get hit by a flying body part and 3) That she would be injured by said body part/ And after all, the kid died, whereas she got a sprained wrist. Personally, I think she should be snatched baldheaded as she is thrown out of court, and the appeals court that ok'd this should be fired. Just saying.

    • I think that is why they call them accidents. No lawyer here either but I think one is liable for an accident too.

      • What the issue would ultimately come down to is foreseeability and the chain of causation. Yes, he may have been negligent as a matter of law by throwing himself in front of a train, but if I recall my negligence classes correctly, it would be a question of fact, and therefore a matter for a jury, as to whether his flying body parts could have been reasonably foreseen to go flying off and injure someone.
        The "classic" case in law school involved a passenger who was injured waiting for a train - the train got blown up by a passenger carrying dynamite I think, and the concussion knocked over a a big baggage scale onto the plaintiff. I believe the court ultimately found that the chain of causation was too remote and unforeseeable for the railroad to be liable. ("Proximate cause.") Yeah, trains, huh?

        As I read it (again) I think the appellate court ruled correctly - appellate only addresses questions of law, not of fact. Since the law is settled, appellate is bound to send it back down for trial to decide, as fact or not, the causation. Personally, I don't see it.

        • the laws are all well and good, and as PD stated so well, they don't necessarily equate with the truth, which is where, imo, justice comes into the equation of fairness.

  • Got to say, PD, I kind of thought the same thing. The lady got hurt by another's actions. The case seems stupid on the surface but after thinking about it, she probably should get something from the kid's estate.

    Makes more sense than some of the vicarious liability laws that I sometimes have to deal with at work.

    • But did the kid have an estate? Unless the kid received some sort of trust fund, or other money he inherited, what does he really own at 18 that's worth hiring a bunch of PsychoLawyers to get from him? And if a broken wrist is worth a fortune, we have some messed up courts.

      • Good questions. If he had a car or other things that could be sold that would cover her medical, that would be a fair settlement, IMO.

• Okay whats she gonna get, his X-Box? His underwear? So she got kicked and slapped at the same time by a couple airborne limbs.... someone needs to take their limbs and slap and kick the attorney till he quits.....

  • The lawyer probably told her that she's not suing the kid, but his (evil) insurance co. What he didn't tell her is that she's dragging his grieving parents into court and they'll have to pay legal fees and the kids insurance probably won't cover what she's suing for, so his parents will be on the hook for the rest.

    • I'm not a lawyer but I've read about the "deep pockets" principle in other cases, at least in NJ: if the teen bears 95% responsibility and the "deep pockets" railroads bear 5%, the plaintiff can still collect big money from the deep pockets even though their responsibility in the case is minimal. So the real objective here may have been to assign SOME responsibility to the railroads in order to access their deep pockets. It sounds from the article that the judges have ruled that out, assigning them no responsibility, so the plaintiff may be outta luck.

      • Here's wishing she walks to her attorney's office and someone jumps off the building and she gets hit with the whole body not just the limbs...

• Where's Judge Judy when we need her? Ri-diculous!

  • imo she's layin' low til a real American can nominate her for the SCOTUS.

• If we only had some form of Tort Litigation Reform. But Noooooooooo.......! Instead of fixing the problem, lets pass a hideously expensive Health Care Reform bill, that nobody has read, much less understands.
  Beginning to think that being a lawyer should automatically disqualify you from running for public office.

  • "Beginning to think that being a lawyer should automatically disqualify you from running for public office."

    huh,... and here i thought it was a prerequisite...

• Is there any wonder people are wanting tort reform. The lawyer needs to be disbarred for taking the case and the woman forced to pay the teens family for pain and suffering. Yea the kid tried to be the train and he paid for it with his life.
  Cold hearted ass holes both.

• Do I even have to say that we seriously need tort reform in this country.

  • Yes, obviously you do as no reform is on any horizon that I can see...