Irresponsibility Earns Someone $2.3 Million Verdict
There are different things that can frustrate someone including yours truly. For me, one of those things is seeing irresponsibility being rewarded. This was the case when a drunk man won a $2.3 million dollar verdict from MTA NYC Transit after losing a leg in a subway accident. The highly intoxicated man fell on the subway tracks & had his right leg torn off by an oncoming train. Erin Durkin & James Martinez of the New York Daily News have more in this report:
A Brooklyn man whose right leg was ripped off by a train after he drunkenly ended up on a subway track has been awarded $2.3 million by a Manhattan jury.
“It will go mostly to my future medical expenses,” said Dustin Dibble, who secured the verdict last week after taking NYC Transit to trial.
His lawyer argued the train’s motorman had time to stop when he caught a glimpse of the man on the tracks from 180 feet away.
“He thought it was garbage,” said lawyer Andrew Smiley.
Dibble had a sky-high blood-alcohol level of 0.18 and didn’t recall arriving at Union Square, where he was hit by an N train.
Click here for the complete report.
This verdict is outright ridiculous. The MTA will definitely appeal this decision & hopefully in the end, they do not have to payout for this incident. Why should this man be rewarded when he was the main reason the accident took place. Why should they & ultimately the taxpayers be responsible for paying a guy who was too drunk to wait for the train without ending up on the tracks?
If this kind of responsibility is rewarded, why should I or someone else not end up on the tracks due to being drunk & cash in? Well because I & others would have common sense to not put ourselves in such a situation. If you are drunk, the subway is not a place you should be in to begin with. However if you must be, it is your responsibility to get to your destination safely. If you can’t handle such a task, it is clear that you should not be drinking.
Only in this country would someone get rewarded for being completely irresponsible. Let me stand up & celebrate this fact…..
xoxo Transit Blogger
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[…] February 2009, I wrote a scathing entry on how irresponsibility earned someone $2.3M. The someone in question was Dustin Dibble, an irresponsible drunk who fell to the tracks at the […]