Ka-ching! Granny Rolling in it After Getting Rolled
December 12th, 2006 | by Roonil Wazlib |
Justice! Sweet justice!
Dorothy Barnes, a 71-year-old resident of Arlington Heights, IL, has been awarded $4.1 million dollars after an accident last September in which an electrical contractor ran a red light, plowing into her Saturn ’cause he was staring at his BlackBerry.
The contractor, Don Svec, had gotten lost in Barnes’s neighborhood and was utilizing his BB’s navigational functions to get him un-lost. At the time of the accident, Svec was ticketed only for running a red light as his use of the handheld at the time was undeterminable.
Ms. Barnes has undergone five surgeries since. She’s lost a range of motion in her neck ($), has metal pins sticking out of her pelvis, holding it together ($$), and she’s got permanent vision problems ($$$). In his closing arguments, Barnes’s attorney Tim Cavanagh ($$$$) said the number of people getting injured or killed by drivers dicking around with wireless devices is “a growing problem in our society. It happens more and more often.” (Okay, so, he didn’t use the word “dicking.”)
Props to: Textually.org.