“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” From Shakespeare’s Henry The Sixth
Old William was on to something there. Case in point:
Back in 2008, in Chicago, 18 year-old Hiroyuki Joho was rushing through a pouring rain to catch a train. He didn’t make it. Somehow he stepped into the path of an Amtrak clocking 70 mph. Not a pretty sight. Apparently a chunk of his torso flew a hundred feet and struck 58 year-old Gayane Zokhrabov, fracturing her leg and wrist and injuring her shoulder. Joho’s mother filed a suit against the Canadian Pacific Railway, claiming that they were negligent for not warning Joho that his Metra train was actually as Amtrak express. Okay, maybe she has a case, maybe not.
Zokhrabov then filed a civil suit against the estate of the splattered Joho, but it was tossed by a Cook County judge, who reasonably asserted that Joho could not have anticipated Zokhrabov’s injuries. You think? But now an appeals court has reinstated the case, stating “it was reasonably foreseeable” that a high speed train could kill him, shatter his body, and that his body parts could then harm someone else. I’m sure that’s exactly what he was thinking about as he raced to catch his rain.
I wonder if THIS tragic, bizarre, and, of course, accidental and unforeseeable case will lead to a lawsuit against the other driver’s estate/family or maybe the deer herd.
Whatever happened to common sense?
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