What happened to accountability???

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/baseball/mlb/05/24/hancock.lawsuit.ap/index.html

Unreal! It's a real shame that Josh Hancock was killed. It should be a crime that his family is suing everyone they can think of because Hancock chose to drink too much and drive. Some of the claims being made by Hancock's father are outrageous. Pitiful. Comments?

 

...............Lawyers..................

 

Then there are drivers of the tow truck and car he hit. Now they have to defend themselves in a lawsuit because they were there "for an exorbitant amount of time".

 

Unbelievable...

 

Everyone who is being sued should countersue for the disruption in their lives, and for the costs of having to defend the suit.

This is a case of a father who doesn't want to admit his son was an irresponsible drunk and he paid for it with his life. Maybe if the DONT DRINK AND DRIVE lesson had been instilled in his child a little better, he wouldn't be dead.

If we're going to play the game of connect the dots of responsibility and make such great leaps of (il)logic in the accusations, we may as well go to the root of the matter - that the moron didn't know that drinking and driving was a bad idea. Who should have taught him that, if not his parents?

 

> .20 BAC, cell phone in use, no selt belt and some pot....

THIS suit is off to a hard start there.....LOL!

 

Hmm, if the guy was a regular at the bar and was that sauced I would have to think he had a drinking problem. The bar would at least know his limits. Due to his status they probably overlooked it and let the guy continue to drink and eventually hop into his car when there's no way he should have. I think that the right thing to do would be to cut the guy off, take his keys, offer him a cab, call the cops or whatever. They didn't do any of that and now the guy's dead. IMO some of the blame falls on the bar for continuing to give a known patron drinks to a blotto stage. We'll see how it plays out.

 

Wow, it's like society created the perfect storm for an alcoholic to kill himself behind the wheel of his car. They forgot to go after the Missouri DOT for failing to install SAFER barriers along all public roads. I noticed that the father didn't name himself in the suit for raising a careless alcoholic of a son. Maybe I'll sue him for pissing me off.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Hancock
Police report Hancock was intoxicated at the time of his fatal accident with a blood-alcohol level of 0.157, nearly double the legal limit in Missouri. Police also found 8.55 grams of marijuana along with a glass pipe used for smoking in his rented Ford Explorer. In addition, Hancock was on the phone when the accident occurred and not wearing a seatbelt. An accident reconstruction team determined that Hancock was driving 68 mph in a 55 mph zone.
...

Three days earlier, his teammates were worried when they couldn't reach Hancock after he had overslept and had not shown up for the game on time, likening it to the events leading up to the sudden death of Kile. Hancock didn't answer until the "20th call", having thought the start time was later than it actually was. Hancock was expected to be fined by the Cardinals after the incident.

On May 1, 2007, it was reported that Hancock had been involved in another minor, likely drunken, accident involving his GMC Denali three nights before his fatal crash involving a rented Ford Explorer. Additionally, witnesses from the restaurant he visited the night of the fatal crash claimed that Hancock "[could] barely put a sentence together".

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Ya just can't sue Mike "You can't sneak the Sun past the Rooster" Shannon, Mofo...

 

Wow. I'm amazed at how many litigants were overlooked by Hancock's dad:

Ford. Avis. You're on the list.

Sprint, Motorola. Call your lawyers.

Teammates, St. Louis Cardinals, Anheuser Busch, AT&T, manufacturer of crappy hotel alarm clocks. You are all guilty.

Sorry, GMC.

Add "Hooked on Phonics" and Sesame Street.

 

I have to agree with you, they should know after serving him his 20th drink that it may have been a bit much.

But the tow truck driver, driver of the other car, none of them should be involved at all.

 

It's very common in these law suits to drag everyone into it not matter how ridiculous it seems. That's how these weasel attorneys work it

 

The fact that his family is even THINKING of taking this to litigation is beyond me. His family should be ashamed to do such a thing. They're lucky that their careless son didn't take any innocent lives out when he blatantly broke the law on many levels.

For those that think that the bar should have stopped serving him, I really don't think that it's the establishment's place to decide whether or not they could continue to serve him drinks. The last time I checked, he was over 21, and is considered an adult under any jurisdiction. He should be held accountable for the choices that he made.

It's so ironic that the people that had nothing to do with the accident are the ones that have to pick up the pieces, we the tax payers. Think about how many tax dollars have been lost and will continuously be spent through this entire ordeal?

 

Which is the irony, because if this had been the case, the lawsuits would have come from the other direction.

 

It's my understanding that the person serving Hancock at the restaurant tried to get him a cab, but Hancock refused.

 

It probably boils down to how far should the establishment go? I know of a guy(not me) that was sauced and when he hopped in his car after the establishment tried to stop him and was promptly arrested by the cops. The guy's still walking around over a year later because he lost his license on a second DUI offense. The other thing they could have done because of his celebrity and them afraid to do anything, is manhandle him into one of their cars and drive him home. IMO the establishment didn't cover their @ss enough in this case.

 

20th drink?! He'd been doing this for a while.

 

Suicide by stupid is not a constitutional right. At least now, sadly, he won't kill anybody else. The death penalty works!

 

...I owned two liquor stores. From one of them, a 22 yr. old purchased a keg of beer and provided it to her 16 yr. old brother. Said sibling and his yahoo buddies proceeded to drink the beer and see who could run in front of moving vehicles without being run over. I don`t have to tell you how that worked out do I ? Thankfully, I kept records of keg sales w/ adress, phone and drivers lic. # along w/ the purchasers signature. Spoiled all sorts of fun for the dead kid`s trailer-trash mother, the sperm donar and their sleaze ball mouth piece, but saved me a ton of grief. Rant off J.B.

 

Wrong. I am told that it is a constitutional right. As an architect I was pressured to provide a place for wheelchair bound patrons to be in the most dangerous place (the base of the hill seating area). I refused based on the foreseeable accident when a crowd push would endanger the lives of those in that particular area. I was told by an ADA expert that I could not do that, it was the right of the patron to put themselves in harm's way if they chose to. I said "Sue me" and refused it. Since I had no real money they did not bother pursuing me, but the law says it is okay.
About the drunk driver crashing, it is clearly not really his fault. I think the grain producers that grow the hops, etc... are partly to blame. Also, the liquor delivery driver, and the maker of the delivery driver's truck... The list could go on forever.
Really dumb.
BT

 

Yes, and that's the real issue I see in this case. At what point do you take the responsibility away from the individual and put it on the bar/restaurant? Do you (the restaurant/bar) make each patron take a breathalizer before allowing him/her to leave your establishment with keys in hand? Do you train your staff to conduct field sobriety tests before serving drinks? Obviously these are extreme examples (err...maybe they are??), but we're walking on a very fuzzy line here.

 

Here in CA anyway, a bar that serves alcohol to a drunk that goes out and kills himself or others is liable. If someone is a lush and can't control themselves IMO it falls on the establishment to cut the guy off. Most places abide by this and in this case the guy's celebrity clouded their judgment. Having a celeb ball player hanging out was good for business, or so they thought.......

 

There we go passing responsibility to other people again. I won't fault you though, it's the American Way (TM).

 

It is fuzzy. Not all maintenance alcoholics exhibit overt symptoms to the average person. I only found out about a friend's wife being an alcoholic after he told me. Since We don't drink Gin, we never realized she was nipping the Gin and replacing volume with water. It was a shock and was never expected.

 

So how does the bar employee know that the guy is going to drive? Do you ask him? If he lies are you still liable and heading to court? Don't you have the right to get sloppy drunk if you want to?