<p>Surprise, surprise, the father of an 11-year old boy who suffocated to death with 2 others, in the trunk of an abandoned car, has now filed a lawsuit against the City of Camden and Toyota!!!</p>
<p>I am simply confounded by this. The 3 kids have barely been buried, a report came out Aug.1, spreading the blame on parents and police alike, and here’s the lawsuit. They must have started working on it the day the boys were found.</p>
<p>The parents just turn it over to the lawyers. The lawyers act quickly because the public is still interested, and it is easier to press for an out-of-court settlement while it is still in the news, and also requires less in the way of work on the part of lawyers on both sides to gather evidence, etc. Might save the taxpayers money, and use up less time in the legal system as a result.</p>
<p>Don’t read anything into the timing one way or the other. The reality is that the choice of the timing might not have been the parents’ at all. </p>
<p>If you’ve got a problem with the idea that the police should share any of the responsibility, that’s another issue in its entirety, and may also not relate to the lawsuit. Guilt or blame may play less into the ultimate settlement than public relations.</p>
<p>Basic answer: If the blame is in fact shared between the parents and the police, but the loss is borne entirely by the parents, then the basis for the lawsuit would be for compensation based on partial fault. It doesn’t take a long time to draft a lawsuit. As to who is to blame, and in what proportion - I wasn’t there. I’ll leave it to the legal system to figure it out. I don’t have a problem with using the legal system to do that - that’s what it’s for. Beats making a snap judgment based on newspaper reports.</p>
<p>Choc:</p>
<p>Many years ago, my H was hit by a car at 1am as he was walking home from his lab. He suffered a concussion and a broken jaw. He was lucky to have surgery the very morning after it happened and he remained heavily sedated. By next morning, some lawyer had contacted me wanting to talk to my H about suing. That’s what’s called ambulance chasing.</p>
<p>I have been on the defense side of many cases like this, which is one of the reasons I am so burned out on the legal profession. I don’t have enough facts in this case to determine if the police made mistakes in the search which would lead to damages for the family, but I hope Toyota doesn’t fork over any money. I guess the allegations against Toyota will include an absence of a inside release in the trunk.
I had a case where the plaintiffs were severely burned using my client’s wet/dry vacuum to suck up acetone from a fiberglass boat hull they were constructing during the course of their employment. Poof!!</p>
<p>Are there any regulations on keeping an abandoned vehicle on your property? I do know that for an abandoned refrigerator, the door has to be removed. And if one is looking to lay blame, then how about suing the owner of the vehicle? Also, I did not realize that police can be called in to look for missing children that quickly (3 hours?)
I just think it’s a tragic accident, and that no-one party can be blamed any more than any other.</p>
<p>Wasn’t the car on their property? And the children routinely played in it? I think the family may have even owned it. It does seem like poor police work to search the car, but not the trunk, but I don’t see a reasonable lawsuit here.</p>
<p>NJ has become a place where it is easy to win such suits. The courts are very liberal.</p>
<p>nothing surprises me in the courts
if people can sue because their coffee is hot- because eating junk food made them fat-sueing the store because you tripped over a child who was running around ( and it was your kid- won), suing the makers of your microwave because you put your dog in it to dry him off ( but it was really low- dismissed), suing when you were hit by a train because you were drunk and passed out on the train tracks ( won), suing because your kids were missing and the police didn’t check an obvious easily accessible place on your property doesn’t seem that frivolous.</p>
<p>The last two posts are evidence of the effectiveness of repetition as a powerful means of persuasion. EmeraldKity, I’m sorry, but you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. (You fell for the microwaved dog story? Puh-lease!)</p>
<p>Let me repeat - if you weren’t there, and all you know about is what some newspaper reporter chose to write, you’re making a judgment based on incomplete and less than accurate information. I don’t know whether there is any basis for winning this lawsuit - and neither do any of the rest of you.</p>
<p>For those who choose to parrot the propaganda about the (fictitious) flood of “frivolous lawsuits” which you’ve been led to believe result in numerous undeserved windfalls for unscrupulous litigants - you need to be a little less credulous.</p>
<p>I actually saw the video of the father opening the trunk and finding the children. I feel bad because I laughed when I saw it :(</p>
<p>EDIT: And what were the kids doing in the trunk?</p>
<p>Why exactly are the police responsible for finding your own darn kids?? They can try but if they fail I don’t see legal responsibility. There are millions of accidents and crimes that the police “fail” to prevent.</p>
<p>By the way - here’s a link to the “Urban Legend” website about the phony “frivolous lawsuits” - including the poodle, the “cruise control” van, the mother tripping over her own kid, etc.:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp[/url]”>http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp</a></p>
<p>ok ok I was going to check the skeptics website but I know the ones about the hot coffee and junk food making you fat are real 
I didn’t say it is the police responsibility to inusre the safety of children, but I can see parents who have experience the tragic death of a child suing when they enlisted police to help them look for their child and the kids were found on their property in an area that had been searched by the police.
( BTW- if Rush limbaugh and Jay Leno who presumably have employees to research their bits used the same things I did with out having my own assistance- I hardly think I should be faulted for finding similar yet different news stories that seemed credible)
But I found some that are even better!
A rapist is suing the hospital where the rape occured saying that the hospital didn’t protect patients- he is suing for pain and suffering
a middle school student sued the gun distributor, the school board and the owner of the stolen gun which he had used to kill a teacher.
squatters sued the owner of the home they were illegally living in- for “remodeling materials”
An anticircumsion lawsuit is going to trial- this precedent setting lawsuit allows an individual to sue his doctor ( once he turns 18) for circumsizing him even if the result was normal and both parents were in agreement at the time</p>
<p>Yeah, and the “hot coffee” lawsuit was the culmination of 700 incidents and complaints:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.vanfirm.com/mcdonalds-coffee-lawsuit.htm[/url]”>http://www.vanfirm.com/mcdonalds-coffee-lawsuit.htm</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://lawandhelp.com/q298-2.htm[/url]”>http://lawandhelp.com/q298-2.htm</a></p>
<p>I think it is time we gave American citizens some credit, and allow that it is possible that juries know what it is they are doing.</p>
<p>You know what, now that you mention it BrightFuture, how did that video come to be? There just happened to be some family member with a video recorder, randomly taping the father looking for tools in the trunk? What? That is quite odd, that the horrific moment of opening the trunk of an abandoned vehicle, to look for tools that you store there, and finding 3 kids’ bodies lying there, should be on video.</p>
<p>Actually, not to make excuses for the police, but the parents told the police that they had already looked in the car, and that it was always kept locked, so it sounds like they ( unintentionally )diverted attention away from the car by those statements.</p>
<p>also to go back to the microwave- I know that just because people have pets- doesn’t mean that they are intelligent enough to care for them.
There are some amazingly dumb people out there-
my daughters have worked at the local zoo, and they came across some of the most interesting questions about the animals and what they were doing or should be doing.
I really am amazed these people have drivers liscenses.</p>
<p>the video does seem rather odd- I haven’t seen the news reports- I try and avoid evening news- but that just seems odd.</p>
<p>I don’t think that the police should be sued, but I do think that it was a major mistake not to check the trunk when they checked the car, because at that time the boys were not dead yet and could have been saved (probably brain damaged, but thats better than nothing).
Also, I think it’s rather sick for someone to laugh at the sight of a father discovery his son’s dead body. That is just really disturbing…</p>
<p>I read, though I don’t know if it’s true or not, that the parents and others were told by the police to stay away from the car because it was a crime scene. Whether or not you think the parents should have looked in the car ( query: between the parents and police, who has more expertise in finding lost children and therefore should have looked???). An issue might be what degree of control the police exercised over the search, justifying the parents in relying on them.</p>
<p>In suing Toyota, the issue claim will probably be it’s negligence in building a car having a trunk with no means of getting out if one is inside. The determining factor will likely be how many reported instances of people being locked in a trunk there , for one reason or another, there have been and were known to the auto industry. Should they forsee such eventualities and create a way out. At minimum, the outcome will likely be enough fuss that in the future, auto makers will provide some sort of inside lock.</p>