Horrible Story - but who's at fault?

[Zoom-boing]

I can not believe it has been five years since this happened.

Whose responsible? Who didn't lock the car and the trunk so the kids couldn't get in? Would the owner of the car also have left a refrigerator with the door on sitting in the yard?

 

[Granny]

Why? Because the settlements were agreed to by the city. Local governments are notoriously bad at such things. It's easier to capitulate to public opinion to Blame Somebody than to say no.

Settlements are based upon perceived trial outcomes. Civil defense attorneys are not idiots. They know when a plaintiff's case is not worth very much. If your remarks are directed at my comments on how did the settlement get so big, I don't think you have hit the nail on the head. It doesn't matter what public opinion is, if the case isn't worth the bucks, they aren't going to settle for the bucks.

As a former legal secretary I have to agree with you on this. Defense attorneys are not idiots - but a hell of a lot of them will sue for anything that comes down the pike - like the Solkolov Firm and The Johnson Group. You see their ads on TV all the time. Bringing suits for gnat bites has become the American Way.

People have NO idea how much these cases cost. You generally have a supervising partner (whose hourly rates are $300-$400+) for any number of associate attorneys working on the case (each at perhaps $150-$200 per hour); paralegals cost because their time is billable (sometimes up to $100+ per hour, plus overtime pay when necessary); then you have approximately one Giant Sequoia going through the photocopy machines each day (funny how computers were going to cut WAY DOWN on paper use); there are all the phone calls, all the faxes, all the courier costs, all the expert witnesses (whose hourly rates do not come cheap by any stretch of the imagination); secretarial and other staff hours are part of the firm's overhead and factored into fees, but overtime rates for secretaries are billed separately at 1-1/2 times base salary to 40 hours and then double time kicks in (ex.: I think my hourly pay for regular time was somewhere around $22-$23). And I'm probably forgetting a lot of other stuff.

I can't figure out for the life of me how the police OR the car manufacturer would have any liability at all for this tragedy. The parents should be responsible for this mess.

This is why tort reform is SO, SO necessary when it comes to medical/insurance costs. Too many of the malpractice suits are absolutely unnecessary. And after taxes, fees and costs are deducted from the settlement amount - the plaintiff doesn't realize all of the award.

 

[jillian]

There's not much info in the link, I wonder if there was a question of a defect or something to that effect which led to the Toyota settlement?

As far as the police owing the family, I'm racking my brain trying to come up with a semi-reasonable explanation for that, but not coming up with a scenario. The only thing that comes to mind is the police telling the parents that the car had been thoroughly searched, leading to them not checking themselves; even then I can't imagine them not checking anyway, but it might be enough to justify a penalty against the police department.

Other than my stretching for explanations, I agree with the sentiments expressed here already, the fault (if blame is to be assigned for what sounds like a tragic accident) lies with the parents for not checking themselves.

well, given that the children didn't die immediately, damages would have been for pain and suffering, not for future loss.

in terms of toyota, every trunk has an inside latch to release the trunk lock which generally glows in the dark. it may well be that there was a defect in that safety latch which led to the children's inability to open it from the inside.

i have no idea about why the police settled, but it could have been for a lot of reasons. settlements are not an admission of liability.