Tag Archives: personal injury

Assault with a Deadly Weapon, aka a Child’s Wild Pitch

Justice

Can we not step out of our house without worrying about being mauled in the face by an errant baseball?  This is a fear that must haunt Ms. Elizabeth Lloyd, a Manchester Township citizen in New Jersey.  Ms. Lloyd is suing Matthew Migliaccio, a thirteen year old Little League player, for throwing a baseball that hit her in the face while young Matthew was warming up his pitcher.  Elizabeth Lloyd was simply minding her own business at a picnic table right outside of a fenced in baseball field, when Matthew Migliaccio “intentionally” threw the baseball that hit her in the face.  Matthew is now faced with a lawsuit with over $150,000 in damages to cover Ms. Lloyd’s medical bills and any suffering Matthew’s throw may have caused.

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The Most Sued Mascot in Sports Sued Yet Again

Root, root, root for the Phillies!

The Philly Phanatic, mascot of the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team, is one of the most loved and absurd among sports mascots.  It also holds the dubious honor of being the most sued mascot. Most recently, he is being sued for an incident that occurred at the Golden Inn Hotel and Resort in New Jersey in 2010. The victim of this case is Suzanne Peirce, who was at the hotel to attend a wedding.  While sitting around the pool and enjoying the comic routine of the big furry green weirdo, the Phanatic allegedly approached Ms. Peirce, picked up the lounge chair she was sitting in, and threw her and the chair into the pool.  Unfortunately for Ms. Peirce, the Phanatic threw her into the shallow end of the pool, where she hit the bottom and suffered “severe and permanent injuries to her head, neck, back, arms and legs, bones, muscles, tendons, … and other injuries, the full extent of which is not yet known.” Ms. Peirce now must walk with a cane.  Along with the Phanatic, Ms. Peirce also sued the owners of the hotel, and the Phillies baseball team. Both Tom Burgoyne and Matt Mehler were named in the suit, as both share the duty and burden of the Phanatic cowl.

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“Transformers 3” Extra Awarded $18.5 Million for On-Set Accident

X-ray required

A young aspiring actress who was disabled permanently in an on-set accident for the movie “Transformers 3” has been awarded $18.5 million in tort.  In 2010, Gabriela Cedillo was acting as an extra in the movie and her particular part was during a stunt scene set on a freeway.  The producers had about 80 extras driving cars (their own cars, actually), with the main filmed action being an elaborate explosion and flinging of props/characters in whatever happens at that moment in the movie.  If you’ve never seen any of the Transformers series, know that explosions and stunts and general shock-and-awe forms the bulk of the plot.  The day before the accident, the filmmakers had tried and failed at the same stunt.  Cedillo’s lawsuit claimed that the day of, shoddy welding had caused a bracket to snap and an extremely taut cable to whip Cedillo’s blue Toyota Scion, pierce right through the frame, and strike Cedillo’s skull.  The accident caused Cedillo to lose a third of her skull and part of the right side of her brain.  She has limited cognitive ability and has lost all movement on the left side of her body.

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Woman Wins $300k Due to Personal Trainer’s Negligence

Seems legit

When you purchase the services of a personal trainer, you hold an expectation that they have an idea or two about what’s good for your health and that their supervision over unfamiliar workouts comes with a certain expectation of safety.  A New York woman found out the hard way that this is not actually true.  The woman was exercising with her personal trainer, presumably pumping mad iron, when the trainer advised her to try out a new exercise using strange equipment or on a machine of some sort (the press release from which I found this story is a bit lacking in specific detail).  She was hesitant at first because she had never done the exercise before, but continued anyway after the reassurance of her trainer.

Read more to find out how this all went wrong, and quick

NJ School District to Pay $4.2 Million to Student Paralyzed by a Bully

Protect our students

Sawyer Rosenstein was twelve years old when a bully punched him in his stomach hard enough to cause a blood clot in the artery that supplies blood to his spine.  Two days later, the injury paralyzed him from the waist down, permanently, in a series of events declared “incredibly rare”.  There is a certain heart-tugging sympathy we feel for the boy, because everyone has experienced a bully either as a victim or an agent or a powerless onlooker, and because in our experience bullying is merely “something kids just do”, and because this time it was more than that.  Imagine being confined to a wheelchair for the better part of your entire life all because of the baseless anger of a violent child.  Imagine no consequences to said child’s actions (the bully in this case, who was known to be one and had a history of violence, received only a few days’ suspension) and having to look him in the eye daily from your new wheelchair you’ll never leave.  Try to imagine — and this is the difficult part — whether a $4.8 million check would make that prison any better.

Read more to learn the facts behind this case