Would be nice to know if she knew he was drunk, or was drunk herself. What percentage was she at fault for getting in the car with a drunk behind the wheel?
The driver was drunk but the utility company is at fault for putting the pole there, they should have known to put the pole further from the road to protect drunk idiots from themselves?
The injured girl got into a car with a drunk driver but it’s Volkswaggon’s fault for not making seatbelts able to protect every person in every instance?
Just goes to show, the deeper your pockets the more your odds of being liabile for something.
Where’s the suit for whoever provided the liquor to someone clearly too stupid to drink responsibly? Must have been a small enough merchant to be insulated from suit… why sue the corner bar with $1000 in the till?
This suit (and others like it) is/are rediculous. The only person or entity that should be sued is the driver who CAUSED the accident.
the sad part about these suits is that OUR commentary does not reach the ears of those who need to be informed: juries. For some reason, our judicial system has been leaning away from personal responsibility and toward……drum roll. please…..MONEY. The banking industry has a big lobby why can’t insurance do better to stop this nonsense. When I was a kid, there was a stigma to being stupid enough to not only drink, drive and get caught; no one in their right mind would have thought to bring a suit like this and incur the unending derision of their friends, neighbors and law enforcement….You were expected to suck it up and play the hand you dealt.
can i put in for a share of the wealth card?! …. but let’s put this in perspective —-
first of all, why did she allow herself to be in the car with a drunk? that in itself is a 100% liab on herself for being in that car.
secondly: what caused the car to lose control and have the accident? the driver who is DRUNK! so, let me see, that makes him 100% responsible. if he was not drunk, then he would have not lost control of the vehicle. if she was smart, she would not have gotten into the vehicle.
thirdly: how can we give a fixed object fault? afterall, it was already in place, it did not move like an animal — or did we purchase an animated pole?!
fourth: seatbelt, glad she wore one, but seatbelts can not always save lives. this was a tragic accident due to the loss of life. but the force generated to produce such wretching experience was caused by whom? the drunk driver for losing control and then hit the pole! seatbelt – is an inanimate object, used to sustain a driver in her position. the failure of the seatbelt – um…was she still in the vehicle? was it now shown that the force of the accident caused the effect? not every situation can be resolved and saved. why should the seatbelt make be responsible? they did not driver the vehicle that caused the crash. the vehicle was made properly but the driver lost control while DRUNK. again, back to the driver.
so why is this society so interested in blaming everyone but who the blame should be? it’s because they know that the JURY can give easily. i know if i was the automaker, i definately would get this tossed out! afterall, i was not responsible for the accident! if we go this far, then why did they not sure the person whom gave that driver a drink? what about the bar and it’s owner or the party host? this is what you call over justice civilly only because people can’t be replaced and i know that it’s hard to lose a loved one. but in reality – the only fault is the driver who was drunk, and partially the her for getting into the vehicle with the drunk driver! DID we forget that issue? afterall, if it is her friend, then she should have made the effort to either take the keys, become the designated driver, or eventually not have ridden in the vehicle.
Wudchuck, your problem is that you are looking at this too sensibly. You’re correct on all counts. The problem is that the jury didn’t see it this way, and sadly, were not capable of seeing it this way. The prevailing thought among most people now is that “someone has to be at fault and someone has to pay for it” and unfortunately this has permiated into the thoughts & minds of jurors. Just becuase they are jurors it doesn’t raise their level of personal responsibility or lower their dislike for large corporations. Everyone loses with verdicts like these.
Minor point wudchuck – she was paralyzed, not killed. But other than that you’re right on.
I am a little surprised they didn’t bring the dram laws into this – which leads me to believe there was nobody to sue there.
I want to know what the make, model and year of the car were (just for yucks and grins). Lap belts in the middle (which is where I’m assuming she was sitting) are still standard on most cars. I don’t even know if VW has a model with center-seat shoulder belts. Since lap belts are and accepted standard, and she was using it, I don’t see how VW comes into play. Since breath-alcohol starters are not standard equipment, I don’t see how VW comes into play. Since VW can’t engineer a seat-belt against drunk drivers going full-speed into a pole, I don’t see how they come into play.
And the pole!? Give me a freakin’ break.
When can we start slapping jurors silly for passing down these ridiculous awards?
The gal has minimal sympathy from me for being paralyzed, but she chose to get into a car with a drunk driver. If anybody pays it should be the driver. Personally, I place 100% on the injured person.
We’re all preaching to the choir. Our legal system is flawed and juries have proven time and time again they are incapable of rendering a common sense, objective, un-emotional verdict. A rear seat belt is neither designed nor intended to be 100% effective when a speeding car slams into a utility pole broadside at a high rate of speed. She was probably hurt most seriously of all because the other un-belted idiots in the back seat got thrown into her. The law of physics does that to you. Money is king.
Pltf attys do this all the time – they have the pltf sitting in her wheel chair sobbing quietly into her handkie all during the trial and then(surprise) the jurors try to do the ‘right thing’ and always get it wrong – VW can and will appeal this to the end of their remedies but will, inevitably pay ‘something’
(which is why Mr. Atty guy took it in the first place) – merits ?? you have GOT to be kidding !
Everyone that has posted so far is correct. But, it’s not the jury’s fault, it’s the legal system. I can hear the girl’s attorney (no doubt Jackie Childs) showing numerous cases brought against utility companies who had been told countless times to move their poles but didn’t. You can also bet that they provided evidence that VW was told to make their seatbelts more adjustable for height or something else ridiculous like that. The bottom line, they plaintiff’s attorneys did a better job making 12 people believe that everyone else was at fault instead of the defense who must not have been as convincing or couldn’t disprove the slickness of who the girl hired. She had everything to gain and nothing to lose. She only had to pay her attorneys “if we get money for you!”
Thanks for supporting the case that juries are incapable of making the right decisions. If they allow emotion and a sales pitch by a personal injury attorney to influence their decision, shame on them. We see it all too frquently; juries CHOOSING to disregard fact over emotion. This is what you get when you end up with a jury pool that is far from any “jury of your peers”. I would NEVER trust my fate to a jury.
OK, enough of these kinds of verdicts that just tick all of us off!! I want to see some defense verdits where the dufus pf’s & their attorneys get NOTHING or very little. Then I might start feeling better about our legal system (opps, sorry, weak moment there).
Don’t hold your breath. Not only is our jury selection process flawed, so are the judges who’s main concern is clearing their dockets of backlogs. I’ve yet to hear a judge tell a plaintiff where to put his groundless case. All you hear is “how can we get this settled?” What they really mean is how much is someone willinig to pay. Attorneys on the contigency fee bandwagon won’t be allowed to go home empty handed by the judges who are also kindred spirit attorneys. In addition, the more compensation that comes from the private sector, the less burden on the public sector.
but are we missing the whole point?! who’s really at fault? afterall, did she not RIDE in the drunks car? did the drunk get behind the wheel? how about, if i draw my share the wealth card and make a civil suit against all the passengers because they allowed him to get behind the wheel. press a civil suit against the party that gave him/her the drinks. we can spin the wheel and point to a variety of faults, but in reality – it was her fault knowing stepping into the vehicle for a ride home with the drunk behind the wheel and knowing that the law states – drinking and driving is against the law. so does that mean the state can no re-charge for negligent assault – conspiracy. can we as (NON) lawyers, think of someone better to sue!…. i think i need to get a law degree and truly sue all those involved. or become a DA and sue everyone that had a partial interest in getting that drunk off the road but did not!… i think that the vw will prevail – there is now way we can keep everyone safe; even w/the new side airbags. so if someone get hurt while the airbags go off to protect them, we are going to sue again?! how far does an automaker have to go? this is one case, where we have gone over the edge. next thing you’ll tell me is that the frame underneath shud have held up against the force that hit the pole. if that frame did not hold, we can sue the maker of the frame – oh, that VW again! truly, i see $$$ i can use various avenues. *** must want to make money and become one of these loving lawyers that are willing to put more money in my pocket no matter the cost to the consumer who hired me…so i can make millions of dollars and live out my life on someone else’s misfortune and company money from VW. so who is the winner, surely not the victim nor the drunk driver – the lawyer, who’ll get a huge portion of the check.
Read the posts in a bit but why wasn’t the driver assigned 100% of the liability as he was drunk and caused the accident. Can’t believe people were as stupid as to assign liability to a stationary pole REGARDLESS of being “too close to the road”. Sorry but unless that pole was right in the middle of the road, it had NO liability in this case.
While I can see your point, there is a defense argument used to defeat subrogation claims by utility companies for poles damaged by vehicles that goes something like this: “you negligently installed your pole within the ways and means of a public thoroughfare, creating a hazard to the foreseeable risk of a vehicle striking it”.
We can’t really say that the girl was at fault for getting in the car w/a drunk driver. The driver apparently owned up to his fault & pleaded guilty–amazing enough in itself–so probably he was appointed/volunteered to be “designated driver” before the others started drinking. As we all know, you can appear sober enough to drive (especially to someone who may have had a few herself) & not be. The passenger probably thought they’d been responsible & named a desig driver & trusted that the driver had kept to not drinking. That being said–the pole??? Gives a whole new slant to all those “I was driving along and a pole jumped out at me” claims. Maybe we should stop holding those drivers at fault, as apparently our poles have the ability to reason & know where to place themselves! And the seatbelt? Did anyone check into whether she would likely be alive at all if she hadn’t worn it? There was no sensational story–for a change, the driver admitted guilt & is apparently paying the cost–so the attorneys and/or whoever started this thing had to look elsewhere to cause a commotion and get enough sympathy for the girl going to get her major money–very, very sad.
Would be nice to know if she knew he was drunk, or was drunk herself. What percentage was she at fault for getting in the car with a drunk behind the wheel?
Let’s see if I understand this…
The driver was drunk but the utility company is at fault for putting the pole there, they should have known to put the pole further from the road to protect drunk idiots from themselves?
The injured girl got into a car with a drunk driver but it’s Volkswaggon’s fault for not making seatbelts able to protect every person in every instance?
Just goes to show, the deeper your pockets the more your odds of being liabile for something.
Where’s the suit for whoever provided the liquor to someone clearly too stupid to drink responsibly? Must have been a small enough merchant to be insulated from suit… why sue the corner bar with $1000 in the till?
This suit (and others like it) is/are rediculous. The only person or entity that should be sued is the driver who CAUSED the accident.
the sad part about these suits is that OUR commentary does not reach the ears of those who need to be informed: juries. For some reason, our judicial system has been leaning away from personal responsibility and toward……drum roll. please…..MONEY. The banking industry has a big lobby why can’t insurance do better to stop this nonsense. When I was a kid, there was a stigma to being stupid enough to not only drink, drive and get caught; no one in their right mind would have thought to bring a suit like this and incur the unending derision of their friends, neighbors and law enforcement….You were expected to suck it up and play the hand you dealt.
Come on Anon… don’t you know those poles move and can jump out in front of you, especially if you’re drunk…
Let’s face it, the reason that the untility company and VW were found at fault is because they have the money…
can i put in for a share of the wealth card?! …. but let’s put this in perspective —-
first of all, why did she allow herself to be in the car with a drunk? that in itself is a 100% liab on herself for being in that car.
secondly: what caused the car to lose control and have the accident? the driver who is DRUNK! so, let me see, that makes him 100% responsible. if he was not drunk, then he would have not lost control of the vehicle. if she was smart, she would not have gotten into the vehicle.
thirdly: how can we give a fixed object fault? afterall, it was already in place, it did not move like an animal — or did we purchase an animated pole?!
fourth: seatbelt, glad she wore one, but seatbelts can not always save lives. this was a tragic accident due to the loss of life. but the force generated to produce such wretching experience was caused by whom? the drunk driver for losing control and then hit the pole! seatbelt – is an inanimate object, used to sustain a driver in her position. the failure of the seatbelt – um…was she still in the vehicle? was it now shown that the force of the accident caused the effect? not every situation can be resolved and saved. why should the seatbelt make be responsible? they did not driver the vehicle that caused the crash. the vehicle was made properly but the driver lost control while DRUNK. again, back to the driver.
so why is this society so interested in blaming everyone but who the blame should be? it’s because they know that the JURY can give easily. i know if i was the automaker, i definately would get this tossed out! afterall, i was not responsible for the accident! if we go this far, then why did they not sure the person whom gave that driver a drink? what about the bar and it’s owner or the party host? this is what you call over justice civilly only because people can’t be replaced and i know that it’s hard to lose a loved one. but in reality – the only fault is the driver who was drunk, and partially the her for getting into the vehicle with the drunk driver! DID we forget that issue? afterall, if it is her friend, then she should have made the effort to either take the keys, become the designated driver, or eventually not have ridden in the vehicle.
Wudchuck, your problem is that you are looking at this too sensibly. You’re correct on all counts. The problem is that the jury didn’t see it this way, and sadly, were not capable of seeing it this way. The prevailing thought among most people now is that “someone has to be at fault and someone has to pay for it” and unfortunately this has permiated into the thoughts & minds of jurors. Just becuase they are jurors it doesn’t raise their level of personal responsibility or lower their dislike for large corporations. Everyone loses with verdicts like these.
Minor point wudchuck – she was paralyzed, not killed. But other than that you’re right on.
I am a little surprised they didn’t bring the dram laws into this – which leads me to believe there was nobody to sue there.
I want to know what the make, model and year of the car were (just for yucks and grins). Lap belts in the middle (which is where I’m assuming she was sitting) are still standard on most cars. I don’t even know if VW has a model with center-seat shoulder belts. Since lap belts are and accepted standard, and she was using it, I don’t see how VW comes into play. Since breath-alcohol starters are not standard equipment, I don’t see how VW comes into play. Since VW can’t engineer a seat-belt against drunk drivers going full-speed into a pole, I don’t see how they come into play.
And the pole!? Give me a freakin’ break.
When can we start slapping jurors silly for passing down these ridiculous awards?
The gal has minimal sympathy from me for being paralyzed, but she chose to get into a car with a drunk driver. If anybody pays it should be the driver. Personally, I place 100% on the injured person.
We’re all preaching to the choir. Our legal system is flawed and juries have proven time and time again they are incapable of rendering a common sense, objective, un-emotional verdict. A rear seat belt is neither designed nor intended to be 100% effective when a speeding car slams into a utility pole broadside at a high rate of speed. She was probably hurt most seriously of all because the other un-belted idiots in the back seat got thrown into her. The law of physics does that to you. Money is king.
Pltf attys do this all the time – they have the pltf sitting in her wheel chair sobbing quietly into her handkie all during the trial and then(surprise) the jurors try to do the ‘right thing’ and always get it wrong – VW can and will appeal this to the end of their remedies but will, inevitably pay ‘something’
(which is why Mr. Atty guy took it in the first place) – merits ?? you have GOT to be kidding !
Everyone that has posted so far is correct. But, it’s not the jury’s fault, it’s the legal system. I can hear the girl’s attorney (no doubt Jackie Childs) showing numerous cases brought against utility companies who had been told countless times to move their poles but didn’t. You can also bet that they provided evidence that VW was told to make their seatbelts more adjustable for height or something else ridiculous like that. The bottom line, they plaintiff’s attorneys did a better job making 12 people believe that everyone else was at fault instead of the defense who must not have been as convincing or couldn’t disprove the slickness of who the girl hired. She had everything to gain and nothing to lose. She only had to pay her attorneys “if we get money for you!”
Thanks for supporting the case that juries are incapable of making the right decisions. If they allow emotion and a sales pitch by a personal injury attorney to influence their decision, shame on them. We see it all too frquently; juries CHOOSING to disregard fact over emotion. This is what you get when you end up with a jury pool that is far from any “jury of your peers”. I would NEVER trust my fate to a jury.
OK, enough of these kinds of verdicts that just tick all of us off!! I want to see some defense verdits where the dufus pf’s & their attorneys get NOTHING or very little. Then I might start feeling better about our legal system (opps, sorry, weak moment there).
Don’t hold your breath. Not only is our jury selection process flawed, so are the judges who’s main concern is clearing their dockets of backlogs. I’ve yet to hear a judge tell a plaintiff where to put his groundless case. All you hear is “how can we get this settled?” What they really mean is how much is someone willinig to pay. Attorneys on the contigency fee bandwagon won’t be allowed to go home empty handed by the judges who are also kindred spirit attorneys. In addition, the more compensation that comes from the private sector, the less burden on the public sector.
but are we missing the whole point?! who’s really at fault? afterall, did she not RIDE in the drunks car? did the drunk get behind the wheel? how about, if i draw my share the wealth card and make a civil suit against all the passengers because they allowed him to get behind the wheel. press a civil suit against the party that gave him/her the drinks. we can spin the wheel and point to a variety of faults, but in reality – it was her fault knowing stepping into the vehicle for a ride home with the drunk behind the wheel and knowing that the law states – drinking and driving is against the law. so does that mean the state can no re-charge for negligent assault – conspiracy. can we as (NON) lawyers, think of someone better to sue!…. i think i need to get a law degree and truly sue all those involved. or become a DA and sue everyone that had a partial interest in getting that drunk off the road but did not!… i think that the vw will prevail – there is now way we can keep everyone safe; even w/the new side airbags. so if someone get hurt while the airbags go off to protect them, we are going to sue again?! how far does an automaker have to go? this is one case, where we have gone over the edge. next thing you’ll tell me is that the frame underneath shud have held up against the force that hit the pole. if that frame did not hold, we can sue the maker of the frame – oh, that VW again! truly, i see $$$ i can use various avenues. *** must want to make money and become one of these loving lawyers that are willing to put more money in my pocket no matter the cost to the consumer who hired me…so i can make millions of dollars and live out my life on someone else’s misfortune and company money from VW. so who is the winner, surely not the victim nor the drunk driver – the lawyer, who’ll get a huge portion of the check.
Amen, wudchuck.
Read the posts in a bit but why wasn’t the driver assigned 100% of the liability as he was drunk and caused the accident. Can’t believe people were as stupid as to assign liability to a stationary pole REGARDLESS of being “too close to the road”. Sorry but unless that pole was right in the middle of the road, it had NO liability in this case.
While I can see your point, there is a defense argument used to defeat subrogation claims by utility companies for poles damaged by vehicles that goes something like this: “you negligently installed your pole within the ways and means of a public thoroughfare, creating a hazard to the foreseeable risk of a vehicle striking it”.
We can’t really say that the girl was at fault for getting in the car w/a drunk driver. The driver apparently owned up to his fault & pleaded guilty–amazing enough in itself–so probably he was appointed/volunteered to be “designated driver” before the others started drinking. As we all know, you can appear sober enough to drive (especially to someone who may have had a few herself) & not be. The passenger probably thought they’d been responsible & named a desig driver & trusted that the driver had kept to not drinking. That being said–the pole??? Gives a whole new slant to all those “I was driving along and a pole jumped out at me” claims. Maybe we should stop holding those drivers at fault, as apparently our poles have the ability to reason & know where to place themselves! And the seatbelt? Did anyone check into whether she would likely be alive at all if she hadn’t worn it? There was no sensational story–for a change, the driver admitted guilt & is apparently paying the cost–so the attorneys and/or whoever started this thing had to look elsewhere to cause a commotion and get enough sympathy for the girl going to get her major money–very, very sad.