Family wants $990,500 for student's 'severe' basketball injury
 

Family wants $990,500 for student's 'severe' basketball injury
Corona del Mar High School boy suffered deep cut to hand, claim says.
By JEFF OVERLEY
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Comments 128| Recommend 0

NEWPORT BEACH – A high school student and his parents are seeking nearly $1 million as compensation for a "severe laceration" they say the boy suffered during a freshman basketball tournament.
The injury, according to a legal claim filed against the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, occurred during a game at a Corona del Mar High School gymnasium.
The boy's right hand hit a "protruding electrical outlet with a dangerous, oversized sharp-edged metal faceplate located on an unpadded wall directly behind the basket," according to the claim, which must be filed before a lawsuit can be pursued.
A deep cut as well as "scarring and possible nerve damage" resulted, the claim says.
Laura Boss, district spokeswoman, said review of the claim is ongoing but that she could not comment on specifics of the case.
Because the student is a minor, the district redacted the names of the boy and his parents from a copy of the claim. An attorney for the family did not return a call for comment.
The injury occurred in December, and district is liable because it "violated its duty to take reasonable steps to protect students and its duty not to increase the risks inherent in the game of basketball by placing, or allowing to be placed, dangerously sharp obstructions close to the basketball hoop, where it can be reasonably foreseen that participants are likely to fall," the claim says.
The boy is seeking $785,000, of which $35,000 is for current and future medical bills, $250,000 is for lost future earnings and $500,000 is for damages.
The parents seek $205,500, mainly for damages linked to what the claim calls "emotional distress arising from witnessing the harm to their child." All told, the family is seeking $990,500.

Sometimes you just have to shake your head and say....WTF???

Orange County...not surprising.

Surprised the officials aren't named along with the district.

Don't think that a lawyer won't ask if the officials noticed the safety hazard.

I think the last four remarks were a bit cavalier.
The gymnasium was screwed up and unsafe.
A kid was hurt.
Someone must pay.

But $1mil? I don't understand how this kid wants $250k for lost future earnings. I'm no lawyer but I don't understand how they prove he would have made money playing basketball when he's a 9th grader. And let's say he was guaranteed to be a pro, $250k is nothing for a pro player. Sounds like a totally arbitrary figure.

I don't know how severe his injury was, but an injury to the nerves in the hand can be pretty debilitating. It doesn't necessarily mean he was going to play pro ball. Not having the use of your hand can mean you can't do a lot of stuff.

For example, maybe he can't be a hand model. :D

While the $ figure does seem a bit arbitrary, fiasco is right.

Do you know how expensive it is to live in Orange County?

...35k for medical bills. Not necessarily 990k.

That is still negligence. You shouldn't get away with just medical bills.

It's also easy to jump to conclusions. No one knows how bad the kid was hurt or if he actually suffered any long term damage. No one knows if the accident was a freak accident or there really was a piece of metal jutting out from the wall just waiting for someone to rip their hand open on it. I can see paying the medical bills and maybe a little more if it really was an accident waiting to happen, but not a million dollars. Seems a tad excessive. Stuff happens. Sometimes an accident is just an accident.

The number means nothing to me.
I am guessing the $990K will not be the final number. The number is irrelevant to me, because I am thinking that number will find it's own level either in court, or out of, court.

Someone was derelict and someone must pay.

If you want to sue for a million dollars for an injury to your kid, that, too, is fine with me.

A million $$$ in Orange County is not the same as $1M in other parts of the country. Million $$$ homes in Orange county would be $150-250K in other parts of the country.

Aye, like a typist, or a machinist, or...hmmm...plenty out there, just can't think of it all. For me, it would be the end of my teaching career since I teach sign language, and I definitely need my hands for that. But this whole thing brings a good point, how does one figure future potential income from the loss of use of the hand, etc.?

...By guess, and by golly....

I'm pretty sure the school district (assuming it's a public school) is in pretty dire straits right now, since California is basically bankrupt.

That's a good enough reason to apply a proper face plate.

I wonder if the kid left the court legally....

Name your price
 

Just remember the old saying that anyone with a pencil and a filing fee can sue. Collecting is another matter.

(And once a jury does decide on a guilty verdict, if it gets that far, there is absolutely no science to whatever damages it grants, and no reference they can refer to -- except, of course, they have the plaintiff's suggested price tag. Very head-in-the-sand approach in that aspect, bordering on the bizarre.)

And face it: With just one newspaper article as our information, for now we have to call this one a HTBT.

And dang it, Mick, that was going to be one of my lines, before I took time to tap out the above.

Guess I'll be doing a much better job of inspecting the court prior to tip-off this season. I can't recall ever checking the walls, padding, etc. :eek:

I would hope this is the site administrator's job. I will do a cursory check around the court, but I'm not checking every outlet along the walls.

I love this. The best experts in basketball rules trying to discuss legal issues!

It makes for interesting dialogue, but in this arena we are all fan boys.

Unless one of you happens to be an ambulance chaser as their day job...

I'm not a lawyer. I work for a living. :rolleyes:

I imagine there's been a lawyer or two who has discussed certain hoops issues in their time. No harm, no foul.

Anyone know if this kid was any good??

Yeah, I'm sure every NBA player has an agent and a lawyer. I bet they discuss hoops issues every day, like how to leverage contracts to get more money.

And there's no certainity that the jury's award will hold up. Some states are screwy enough that if the judge thinks the jury is wrong, he/she can just throw the verdict out completely. Of course, there's always the appeal process, in which a higher court can screw it up even more for one party or the other.

Not necessarily. The state is broke. There are talks about the state borrowing money from counties and municipalities. Orange County has a pretty wealthy tax base.

Lawyers
 

Q: What do you call 10,000 lawyers at the bottom to the ocean?

A: A good start.

Q: How do you keep a lawyer from drowning?

A: Take your foot off his head.

A lawyer and a coach are both drowning. You have a big decision to make - lunch or a movie?

Both...the longer I'm absent, the less complicit I am. :D

He was damaged and it wasn't his fault so..
 

The amount mentioned in a civil suit as "damages" doesn't necessarily have to comport with reality. Most suits settle, but as in any negotiation, neverleave money on the table. Insurers love it when you negotiate against yourself.

Lost future earnings is generally proved with expert testimony from vocational experts

Assuming a 9th grader has any idea what vocation he wants to pursue. Your typical 9th grader is going to be a doctor AND a fireman AND a policeman AND drive a garbage truck AND ...

As for the "somebody was negligent, somebody has to pay" mentality, that's just messed up. "Little Johnny is hurt, quick somebody call the lawyer. Oh, and call 911, we need to get this documented." What a sad, pathetic society we've become.

Your beautiful granddaughter got cut on that plate from ear to chin....

That, too, was messed up.

AND, if you ask his parents, an NBA superstar. :o

Well, then we better raise this $990K up a bit, as that kind of "coin" doesn't even equal "guaranteed money" or a "signing bonus" anymore! :rolleyes:

And Maybe Rock Star, TV Star, Movie Star, And Professionbal Athlete ...
 

You forgot astronaut.

What if that 9th grader's goal is to be the next Bill Gates! What a settlement that would be!

Now wait just a gosh darn minute here......
 

Aren't we taking this a bit too far? :eek:

I thought the point of most of this money was to help for lost future wages and damages....... i.e., now the player can no longer be a basketball superstar because he has a bad/possibly scarred hand.

Please to be explaining - How does that disqaulify him from discovering an IT company, or becoming an astronaut, or even movie star (minus a hand model of course)?

How does it disqualify him from being a handyman? :D

He can still become a basketball referee

No kidding! It takes a lot more $ to drop out of Harvard these days.

Yes, that is sad. And it's reasonable that if the facility was negligent they should paying the medical expenses. But life is a dangerous business, we have no expectation that we're never going to get hurt, and the pervasive and cancerous mentality that "somebody's gotta pay!" is nothing more than wanton vengeance, greed and opportunism. In most cases we'd all be a lot better off if Little Suzie's folks got a life instead of a lawyer.

Just my $0.02

With the threat of great pain comes an incentive to do the right thing.

"located on an unpadded wall directly behind the basket,"

I do not find a rule in the NFHS rule book that addresses padding behind the basket. Is there such a rule at any level?

Check Local/State/National building codes.

True, but when that threat gets too high, the incentive to even provide the service goes away.

Covered in general terms Rule 2-4-1.

Part 4.0.1 C Facility Conditions (Appendix for Game Management) (not Officials' responsibility)

You are writing of incentive to provide a disservice.

If ya wanna dance, ya gotta pay the fiddler.

yeah, sure. :)

Responsibility.
 

Anyone who is running an event at a gym with an unpadded wall directly behind a basket with a protruding electrical outlet is responsible for any injury to a player. The injury is absolutely foreseeable and the cost of preventing the injury is relatively small. The venue cannot hide behind National Federation Rules to claim that it does not have the responsiblity to make the facility safe.

We will never know how many injuries this lawsuit prevents -- because insurance companies may well decide after inspecting a gym that they're not writing insurance unless and until an obvious hazard such as that described in this suit has been fixed. There are lost future earnings, even for a kid, if an injury forecloses certain types of occupation -- but it isn't proved because Lawyer A says so, it's proved through expert testimony from expert witnesses, and insurance companies will spend many times what a plaintiff's attorney can spend on its own experts, to testify in their favour.

Blame Trial Lawyers all you want for whatever you want to blame them for. The fact is everything from toys to automobiles are safer because people responsible for instruments of harm are forced to answer for their negligence.