More Family of Dead People Going After Deepest Pockets

[Andara Bledin]

I keep posting about this trend as it comes up in the news articles I get while at work: People who bring lawsuits against the deepest pockets available for events that were completely out of their control.

In this case, three women, aged 19 and 20, brought alcohol to the pre-concert festivities at Gillette Stadium, got drunk, then left the stadium, where he driver proceeded to go off the road less than a mile away, hit a tree, and kill herself and one passenger and injure the other.

The family of the driver is not suing, but the families of the two passengers are both doing so.

However, rather than sue the family of the woman responsible for the accident, they're going after the Kraft Group, which owns the stadium, claiming that it is somehow their fault that they allowed barely-underage girls to consume alcohol that they or other visitors had brought themselves in the parking lot and then proceed to engage in driving while under the influence.

While I agree that the site should have verified that people entering the lot had tickets, it is not their job to enforce whether or not people bringing their own alcohol onto the premises are of age. And, while I also agree that turfing the tresspassers who were partying without tickets to the event contributed to the circumstances that led to the accident, it is also not the site's duty to ensure that the drivers were not intoxicated.

The three girls (and potentially whoever supplied them with alcohol) are the culpable parties, but as the girls themselves don't have any money and the providers of the drink are not findable, the site itself becomes the target of the cash grab.

It is terrible that the accident happened, but the people in the car were the architects of their own circumstances and a third party should not be held liable and made to pay for someone else's mistakes.

Article at the Boston Globe

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[bara]

So, let me get this straight.

Girls brought own alcohol. Girls drank own alcohol. Girls die in tragic, yet easily foreseeable crash caused by drinking said alcohol.

What the hell were supposed to do? Search every car and person to check for underage drinkers? I feel if anyone could be sued for damages it would only be the responsible party. In this case the driver is deceased so it would go to her insurance company I guess.

Now, if the stadium had served the alcohol, that would be different. But like it or not, these girls were adults and had to know the possible consequences of their actions.

[hinakiba777]

I can't tell if the parents are just in the "blame shifting" step of the grieving process, or if they are just money grubbing opportunists.

Honestly, I don't understand how this could be attributed to the Kraft Group at all. I mean, the girl's were drinking alcohol they brought themselves in the parking lot. By that logic, every liquor store, grocery, store, mall etc is responsible legally and financially for anything that happens to someone who was in their parking lot and left.

[Andara Bledin]

From what I could tell of the satellite imagery of the field in question, the lots aren't even gated.

The only reason I think this hasn't been thrown out without consideration is the fact that the security working the site let people party until the crowd got particularly stupid and destructive, and then systematically evicted all of the trespassers who were only there to party in one huge mob.

However, considering that the woman who was driving veered off the road and no other vehicles were involved, the manner in which security rousted them should be considered irrelevant.

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[Seifer]

I doubt the families will get anything from this lawsuit. The stadium didn't sell the alcoholic drinks to the underage girls, so it's not their problem. The girls brought the alcohol with them, drank it on their own accord, chose to drive drunk, and got into an accident. It's not the stadium's job to police every person who comes inside to make sure they're not drinking illegally.

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[Andara Bledin]

It's worth noting that the suit mentioned with the party got thrown out, which is, honestly, almost exactly what should happen in this case.

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[Panacea]

The lawyers are hoping to settle out of court. They might succeed; Kraft Group might decide its easier and cheaper to settle with no admission of wrongdoing.

Or they might fight tooth and nail.

[Rapscallion]

I'm hoping they fight tooth and nail.

We wholesale wholefoods - grains, nuts, pulses etc. We had a trial worker who was basically shite. Didn't last more than two months - I won't give you details, since they are lengthy and she was one of the laziest people ever, but suffice it to say even our personnel team were taken aback by how bad she was.

She eventually left with a bit of a struggle - was always off sick on review days when we were looking at dumping her etc. A month or so later, she lawyered up, something she'd done with so many other employers before we found out. Apparently she'd become allergic to nuts, I think the term 'hyper' was in there, after being exposed to our stock for a couple of months.

Our insurance company was willing to cave until our management accounts dude stared them into submission and made them fight. We won, easily.

Constant failure and publication of this humiliation is going to be the only way such leech-like behaviour ends.

Rapscallion

[bex1218]

I had a cashier tell me they got fined for selling alcohol to an of aged person that went to a party and someone underaged got alcohol poisoning. Thats out of their control after it leaves the property.

People are sue happy. They will even use death as an excuse.

[Rapscallion]

Fined suggests that the forces of law and order were involved as a criminal matter, rather than this as a civil case. The only way they could have done that reasonably is if the (of age) customers had said that the plan was to take the booze to a party where underage people were going to consume it. I can't see any other culpability to attach to a cashier.

That would require some fairly solid proof.

Rapscallion

[BlaqueKatt]

The only way they could have done that reasonably is if the (of age) customers had said that the plan was to take the booze to a party where underage people were going to consume it. I can't see any other culpability to attach to a cashier.

That would require some fairly solid proof.

We have that law in Wisconsin.

If I would make a sale to an of age individual, and said individual then serves a minor, who is involved in an automobile crash, or has "adverse health effects", The of age individual AND myself are culpable. However the law provides a manner to absolve my culpability, proof, in the form of a logbook* signed and dated by myself and the purchaser, that the sale was made in "good faith", that they represented themselves to be of legal age, and were not serving anyone not of legal age. Anyone buying a large amount of alcohol from me, signed the book, or I could refuse the sale. It's usually only enforced in smaller towns, or since my town is a college town, it's likely that there will be underage persons at some gatherings, and in small towns everyone knows "that guy" who is known for having keggers with high school kids.


*simple notebook, with the Name and ID# written down, two signatures(seller and purchaser), and on the cover was the laminated statement "by signing this register, I certify that I have reached the age of 21 years, and can therefore legally purchase Intoxicating Beverages, I also certify that this purchase will be consumed only by myself or other of age persons."

Constant failure and publication of this humiliation is going to be the only way such leech-like behaviour ends.

difficulty, the press rarely if ever does any kind of follow up on the failure, or if they do it's buried because no one cares by the time the case makes it to court, they got their sales through the initial outrage, and the failure isn't considered "news". The McDonald's coffee lawsuit is a prime example(link goes to the facts of the case, no she did not get three million dollars for a minor burn, and all she wanted was the $20,000 for her medical bills, yes her injuries were THAT severe-3rd degree burns on a 79 year old woman), everyone knows about it, but not that many people actually know the details and consider it to be "frivolous"-it wasn't, unless you consider requiring skin grafts to be "frivolous", or minor.

[Rapscallion]

"I only wanted a six-pack, not the Spanish Inquisition!"

Bloody hell - you really have to cover your arses over there, don't you? Just because people aren't able to be responsible for themselves, right?

Rapscallion

[crashhelmet]

difficulty, the press rarely if ever does any kind of follow up on the failure, or if they do it's buried because no one cares by the time the case makes it to court, they got their sales through the initial outrage, and the failure isn't considered "news". The McDonald's coffee lawsuit is a prime example(link goes to the facts of the case, no she did not get three million dollars for a minor burn, and all she wanted was the $20,000 for her medical bills, yes her injuries were THAT severe-3rd degree burns on a 79 year old woman), everyone knows about it, but not that many people actually know the details and consider it to be "frivolous"-it wasn't, unless you consider requiring skin grafts to be "frivolous", or minor.

It was very frivolous. Your own link fights your argument.

While Stella was awarded $200,000 in compensatory damages, this amount was reduced by 20 percent (to $160,000) because the jury found her 20 percent at fault. Where did the rest of the $2.9 million figure in? She was awarded $2.7 million in punitive damages -- but the judge later reduced that amount to $480,000, or three times the "actual" damages that were awarded.

If it hadn't been for the judge reducing the amount, she would've gotten the full $3 million.

And as far as her injuries and the required treatment is concerned...

Even in the eyes of an obviously sympathetic jury, Stella was judged to be 20 percent at fault -- she did, after all, spill the coffee into her lap all by herself. The car was stopped, so she presumably was not bumped to cause the spill. Indeed she chose to hold the coffee cup between her knees instead of any number of safer locations as she opened it. Should she have taken more responsibility for her own actions?

If I drop a Zippo and burn myself, can I sue them too?

Here's the Kicker: Coffee is supposed to be served in the range of 185 degrees! The National Coffee Association recommends coffee be brewed at "between 195-205 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal extraction" and drunk "immediately". If not drunk immediately, it should be "maintained at 180-185 degrees Fahrenheit." (Source: NCAUSA.) Exactly what, then, did McDonald's do wrong? Did it exhibit "willful, wanton, reckless or malicious conduct" -- the standard in New Mexico for awarding punitive damages?

This is why it's frivolous. She ordered a scalding hot drink. A drink she knew was served scalding hot. She had an accident and injured herself. It was at no fault of McDonald's at all. There were no other reports of burns from that batch of coffee on that day or the days after it to show any kind of defect in the machine causing it to be hotter than it should be. McDonald's got railroaded by a frivolous lawsuit and a sympathetic jury.

[Panacea]

"I only wanted a six-pack, not the Spanish Inquisition!"

Bloody hell - you really have to cover your arses over there, don't you? Just because people aren't able to be responsible for themselves, right?

Pretty much. Americans are the most litigious people on earth. But I think the reason for it is because we are the most reluctant people to apologize on earth. We hate to be told we're wrong . . . about anything. And when we can't get satisfaction for wrongs, real or perceived, we rely on the only system we have to get redress: the courts.

Dueling went out of style over 150 years ago.