Kendarik said:
Treblaine said:
Kendarik said:
Treblaine said:
Kendarik said:
Treblaine said:
Kendarik said:
Treblaine said:
And he thought his day couldn't get any worse.
I feel real sorry for the kid, but I imagine it must have been instantaneous and relatively painless. Course he got denied a future and frankly this whole lawsuit is monumentally trivial in comparison. I mean he was 18, that means he is his own man and not his parents responsibility. But how much money does could this 18 year old have left? Is this woman going to claim his old Xbox?!?
My prediction: this will go to trial simply so the lawyers can do their circus, demand to get paid for not achieving anything and the (relatively un)injured woman will get precisely jack and shit from this ridiculous lawsuit. This is just lawyers justifying their existence. Hell, it could all just be a publicity stunt for the law firm:
"yeah, I'm such a good lawyer I was able to sue a teenage boy who was already dead! Sure, I was only able to claim his Limp Bizkit CD collection as damages but I consider that a victory for what an awesome lawyer I am"
Does no one on this forum understand the concept of liability insurance? In North America at least, many homeowners/renters insurance policies cover general liability. That could be easily what they are going after. Unless the lawyer is just trying to make case law for the sake of case law (which sometimes does happen), cases don't move forward if someone is judgement proof, the lawyers have rent to pay...
(I think we understand Liability insurance as a concept but I just don't think anyone considers its relevance as a rail road is pretty far removed from a household.)
Distance from the home makes no difference on many general liability policies. That's the point of it.
Well wouldn't this fall more under the domain of the railway company's insurance?
Not directly, no. Of course after the Estate is sued, you can expect the respondent to also name the railroad responsible due to poor signs/safety procedures/layout/train speed/etc.
If we take this to car liability it is the equivalent of: 1) I sue you or rear ending me at a stop light, 2) You agree you hit me, but say it was only because of defective brakes and you sue GM who made your car, 3) In the end, if you are found responsible for my damages, a court will decide if you(your car insurance) or GM is responsible (or will apportion damages between the two of you). In some cases where joint liability is expected, the person filing suit may file against both parties directly as both parties may be seen as directly liable, but the first person in the chain is always sued even if the target is the second because its easier to prove direct responsibility than indirect.
Well that's pretty inefficient and surely wastes the court's valuable time.
Wouldn't it make more sense for The Judge to throw out this case and tell the woman she should sue the railway company directly instead of trying to go through the bereaved parents who are caring for their lost son's estate and will be forced to not only defend themselves but then pursue a lwsuit against the train company.
All this does is inflate the work for lawyers and inconvenience more people.
No, because its two separate cases to make. We know the kid's action had consequences. That's case 1. The kid (or his insurance) then has to prove that there is anyone besides himself responsible. Odds are, either the kid(his insurance) would be found responsible OR it would be a % split in responsibility. The odds of the kid getting off the hook is pretty low.
For the car example, if the court says YOU are liable for rear-ending them then that utterly scuppers any chance of suing the car manufacturer as there ALREADY exists a court ruling placing liability for this incident personally on this individual.
No, that's not how it works. Before you are found guilty you name the car manufacturer and the court decision is split in responsibility between you. Alternately you can still sue the car manufacturer after the fact because your tort with them is that their negligence caused you financial harm and the accident was the predictable result of their negligence.
To your general complaint about "this is a bad way to do it", in the case of car insurance many jurisdictions now pay on a "no fault" basis, and then go figure out fault with lawsuits after you have been taken care of, but the lawsuits still happen.
That's largely based on the assumption that this poor young man (who had recently become an adult) even had insurance that would cover injuries caused by his body parts being propelled by a train. So many people don't even have third-party car insurance, what are the chances this young man does? How much might be invalidated by him turning 18 for coverage he might have had all through his younger teenage years as his parent's child but not once an adult.
If there are two separate cases to be made, why go after the dead young man's bereaved parents who have to defend his estate?!?! Why not first go after the train company to see how much responsibility (if any at all) they can offload onto the young man who was torn to pieces. Why is the operator of extremely dangerous machinery not the FIRST line of liability?
The train could have hit anything that was on the track like a wild animal or someone without any estate like an unknown vagrant. How do you serve a notice-of-process to a guy who left nothing but a pot of beans and no family? Or if a completely anonymous person carelessly left something on the track that when propelled by the train hit someone, will the train company say:
"nope, can't sue us, gotta find that unknown person first".
Then there can be no doling out of percentage of responsibility.
It's not like this kid hijacked a train and ran it dangerously, the train company was running everything as they wanted it. It is an entirely foreseeable danger to the company that a person might be on the tracks, danger for how a fast train can approach too fast to them react, and the train cannot turn nor stop in time. So what do they do to keep people off of their lines when trains are passing at high speed. And what reasonable person would worry about their shattered body being propelled with enough force to injure any one.
Surely it makes sense to primarily sue the entity who is most responsible for the injury and that is the operators of the device that imparted such great velocity on these body parts, and who have a responsibility to keep people from being killed on their property.
If the brakes suddenly go out on your car when you need them then how can it be any percentage of your fault? If the plaintiff of the hypothetical rear ending scenario somehow refuses to listen to this fact then the judge most certainly will and will throw the case out as it's quite clear that no reasonable person can stop a car it the brakes suddenly stop working. Sure, I suppose someone exceptional could if they were very quick thinking find a way to stop the car safely but you can't expect that.
The next stage is for BOTH to sue the car manufacturer as each had their cars were damaged/destroyed (and themselves injured) because a car failed to do its job of having working brakes. Now the car manufacturer could have a good excuse like warning the brakes would go after X-amount of time, or prove that someone else was responsible for affecting the brake system inappropriately.
PS: "guilt" is for criminal court surely? It is found liable in civil court, right?
The odds of the kid getting off the hook is pretty low.
Yeah. On account of him being dead.
It's the bereaved parents who "won't get off the hook" here, as if it is so cut-and-dry that there is any hook to be on here. As if the train operators have only a small percentage of responsibility for the gruesome death of a young man and severe injury of a woman on their property involving their equipment.
