This is one of the most odd stories I've heard in awhile, but it is also one of the most outrageous lawsuits I have ever heard of. How can anyone find it a legal right to sue the grieving family for the injuries caused by 'flying body parts' which injured a bystander,breaking her leg&wrist&injuring her shoulder?? It's not like these were life altering injuries and most likely she is fully recovered by now. I can't believe the Illinois appeals court would overturn the original decision to dismiss the lawsuit. The appeals court overturned it based on the argument that the accident was foreseeable&was negligence on the part of the teen killed while running to catch the train??!!

The Chicago Tribune reports the following:

An appeals court in Illinois....[rules] in what it called a "tragically bizarre" case, an appeals court found that the estate of a man killed by a train while crossing the Edgebrook Metra station tracks can be held liable after a part of his body sent airborne by the collision struck and injured a bystander. In 2008, Hiroyuki Joho, 18, was hurrying in pouring rain with an umbrella over his head, trying to catch an inbound Metra train due to arrive in about five minutes when he was struck by a southbound Amtrak train traveling more than 70 mph.  

 

A large portion of his body was thrown about 100 feet on to the southbound platform, where it struck Gayane Zokhrabov, then 58, who was waiting to catch the 8:17 a.m. train to work. She was knocked to the ground, her leg and wrist broken and her shoulder injured. A Cook County judge dismissed Zokhrabov's lawsuit against Joho's estate, finding that Joho could not have anticipated Zokhrabov's injuries.  

 

A state appeals court, after noting that the case law involving "flying bodies" is sparse, has disagreed, ruling that "it was reasonably foreseeable" that the high-speed train would kill Joho and fling his body down the tracks toward a platform where people were waiting. Leslie Rosen, who handled Zokhrabov's appeal, said that while the circumstances of the case were "very peculiar and gory and creepy," it ultimately was a straightforward negligence case, no different than if a train passenger had been injured after the engineer hit the brakes. "If you do something as stupid as this guy did, you have to be responsible for what comes from it," she said.

As The Stirs blog, Lindsey Mannering, says so bluntly...You think you've heard it all until I tell you that an appeals court in Illinois recently ruled that a woman is allowed to sue a dead teen's estate for injuries caused by his flying body parts. The 18-year-old boy was running across the Amtrak tracks to catch another train but didn't make it -- he was hit by an oncoming train going 70 mph and his body was torn apart by the force and flung onto a nearby passengers' waiting platform. The woman, 58, was struck by a sizable chunk of the boy's body and was knocked to the ground, breaking her leg and wrist. The court ruled that the boy's death was "reasonably foreseeable" and that his estate can be held responsible for his negligence.

I'm sorry, but who goes around suing a dead teen whose body was ripped to shreds in one of the most gruesome ways imaginable?

I can't say that my first or even fiftieth instinct after being pummeled to the ground by half of a bloody torso would be to raise my fist in the air and declare that whoever had the nerve to let their body explode and land on me will most certainly pay in court. Even if my leg was shattered, I still can't imagine going after the dead teen's estate.

The family of the deceased has suffered enough -- their son was blasted by a train. It doesn't get much worse than that. And to think that they have to endure a woman nitpicking her way into their bank accounts is disgusting. It's not like this kid had millions -- what is she hoping to gain from this lawsuit?

It won't make her leg any better. I can't imagine it'd help her heal in any way, shape, or form. I don't think a normal person would feel good about suing for injuries caused by a dead teen's flying body parts. Yeah, he did something incredibly stupid, but I think he paid the price. He's dead. His body was blown to bits. No need to drive the point home with what seems like a frivolous, greedy, and hurtful lawsuit.

If you were in the injured woman's shoes, would you sue, too?

 

How do you feel about this case??Do you think the woman will drop the case or continue to try and collect any settlement?

©2008 Patricia Garza

Labels: Children and Youth