Personal Injury News: Pick Of Last Month: September-2021

New Hampshire’s youth detention center faces another lawsuit from a man who alleged that he was sexually and physically assaulted by the staffers at the center.

As per the court documents, the plaintiff has spent three years in the detention center in the 1990s, where he was beaten and exploited sexually by the staffers. The plaintiff sued 11 men from the center, of which five have been arrested. The accused men are alleged of sexually assaulting or acting as accomplices to the assaults of the teenagers in the center.

The lawsuit states that the assaulters used to bring the kids down to the ground with a knee on the back of the neck, dropping elbows, kicking and dragging them. The plaintiff even alleged that he was held in solitary confinement for as long as three months apart from being physically and sexually assaulted.

The attorneys for the plaintiff even stated that sometimes the staffers removed everything from the room, including the mattress, and kept him in underwear. The victims were threatened with physical retaliation if they report the matter.

Many lawsuits, including similar allegations from more than 300 men and women, have been brought against the 150 staffers of the center.

A federal jury has announced a $5.5 million settlement to a man who got paralyzed due to an accidental shooting in Poconos.

The incident took place at Threat Assessment and Tactical Solutions (TATS), a Stroudsburg shooting range that is closed post the episode. The 48-year-old plaintiff was a target, and the aggressor shot him as a part of the simulation. The aggressor shot him from behind the car, and the bullet got lodged in the plaintiff's spinal cord.

The suit claimed that the host and the organizers of the event failed to follow standard safety procedures before the exercise, which resulted in the mishap. The plaintiff's lawyer argued that the $5.5 million settlement is comparatively less, as compared to his lifetime care and lost earnings which are estimated at more than $11 million.

Earlier in a similar lawsuit, the family of a man who was shot by police in Louisiana has agreed to receive a $4.5 million settlement after five years of his death.

The deceased man was a 37-year-old father of five who got killed on July 5, 2016, outside a convenience store by Baton Rouge police officers. The man's death resulted in nationwide protests. Attorneys for the man sued the city, its police department and former police chief, and the two officers for the incident.

The officer who shot the man was fired in March 2018. Another officer was suspended for three days who wrestled the deceased to the ground. 

The lawyers of the family said that the settlement would provide financial stability to the man's family. Earlier, three settlement offers were rejected by East Baton Rouge Metro Council, and the final agreement was approved in February.

The family has even alleged that the shooting was a part of racist behavior and excessive force by Baton Rouge police. The Mayor of the city said that the settlement is important for the community and will also ensure that no such offense takes place with any other family in Baton.

East Baton Rouge Parish’s insurance reserve funds will be used to pay $1 million to the deceased children, whereas the remaining money will be paid in installments from the annual operating budget over the next four years.

A Philadelphia woman who was pulled from her vehicle and beaten by the police will be paid $2 million by the city.

According to the court documents, the incident took place on October 27, 2020, when the woman, her 2-year-old son, and the 16-year-old son of a friend were driving through West Philadelphia. While driving, she came across the protesters who were blocking the street. The police officers ordered her to turn back her vehicle. While turning the vehicle, the woman stopped to make sure that she does not hit any of the protesters.

Eventually, the police officers swarmed her car, broke the windows and opened the door to pull out the woman and the 16-year-old with her and started hitting them. Her 2-year-old son was taken away from her during the incident.

The settlement does not include the teen. The woman even accused that the police used the photo of her son for pro-police messaging on social media. The post was later taken down after the real story was revealed.

The woman suffered from swelling on her face, body and trachea. The incident was captured on a cellphone camera that helped the incident to come to light. Officers involved in the incident will undergo disciplinary actions, and two of them have been terminated.

Earlier, a jury awarded a $5.9 million settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit to the family of a man who died in police custody.

The victim was a 38-year-old man living with his parents in the City of Pleasanton. He was suffering from a mental health crisis. His parents notified Paranoid personality disorder of him to officials as they were afraid that their son might encounter police officials and be killed in their custody, considering that some individuals died in such circumstances.

As per the court documents, PPD officers responded to a call where the victim was talking to himself at a grocery store. The victim had broken some bottles at the shop and was cooperative at the beginning, but suddenly stopped responding and just stared blankly at a distance. The officers responded to the situation by handcuffing, punching and piling on the victim.

Additional forces of officers entered the scenario and piled up on the victim. The victim started screaming and resisting the arrest as it can be heard on the video footage of the scenario. Eventually, the victim started to suffocate from the force of eight police officers. Suddenly, the victim stopped responding, and the officers realised he was no more breathing.

The jury showed grief over the victim's death and even showed concern over the unimaginable loss of the family, but the city's settlement agreement will surely give some relief to the family.

A man who was wrongly convicted of killing his girlfriend in 1998 has been paid $11 million by a California county as he spent two decades in the prison.

The plaintiff, who is 63 years old, now sued Riverside county and its sheriff’s department in 2019 for wrongly framing him in the murder of his girlfriend. He was freed after DNA testing of the crime scene that highlighted that the woman's divorced husband and her nephew executed the murder.

The attorneys of the plaintiffs could not be reached to get further details about the case, neither the Riverside County Sheriff responded.

Earlier in a similar lawsuit, a man from the Bronx was awarded $11M by the New York City (NYC) for the wrongful conviction of murdering his mother, for which he had to spend 19 years behind the bar.

New York Police Department (NYPD) used pressure tactics on the man that led him to wrongly confess the fatal stabbing of his mother. The incident took place in the year 1989 when he was a 16-year-old teenager.

As per the authority, the man, who was wrongfully accused of stabbing his mother, was a cracked-crazed teen at that time who committed the crime to pay off a drug debt. He was charged with second-degree murder and had to spend 19 years in jail. The man was released from jail in the year 2009.

Ten years later, the District Attorney of Bronx vacated the man's conviction because NYPD police used forceful technique to get the confession from mam, which was wrongful. The man filed a lawsuit in October 2020 for the wrongful conviction, and the letter filed in the federal court of Manhattan verified that the state had reached a deal with him.

The spokesman of the City Law Department, while making his statement on June 17, said that NYPD officers were using standard practices at that time to obtain a confession; many of these techniques are no longer used by the department. The Bronx man has accused the other man, who was his fellow tenant, of the crime. The man who used to live at that time just below the plaintiff's family had a violent criminal history and was on parole at the time of the murder.

At that time, the man who was on parole told police that he and the plaintiff had plotted the crime scene to look like a rape and robbery case. The man on parole was caught driving the victim's stolen car a week later, and he was murdered before the plaintiff went on trial.

The Bronx man wrongful conviction is not a unique occurrence. A non-profit organization, The Innocence Project, which focuses on getting a fair judgment for wrongful convictions, had more than 365 DNA exonerations in its record alone in the U.S. itself as of January 2020.

A jury awarded an $8.25 million settlement to 17 shipyard workers in Albama who got seriously injured while using a miller saw at work.

As per the lawsuit, the plaintiffs blame manufacturer, Metabo and distributor Southern Gas & Supply for the incident, as they knew carbide toothed circular saw blades used in the miller saw are dangerous.

The attorneys for the plaintiffs argued that the manufacturers focused on the profits rather than the safety of the product's usage. The attorneys made the arguments by making a relevant study of the products. The attorneys traveled across the United States and Europe to collect evidence and testimonies from around twenty different witnesses, which included salesmen, managers, engineers, and high-level executives.

The attorneys presented a precise study and investigation report that resulted in the verdict falling in the favor of the shipyard workers.