Keep your hands and torso to yourself!

An Illinois woman will be permitted to present her negligence claim to a jury, according to a state appeals court ruling this week.  Gayane Zokhrabov was injured in a bizarre accident while waiting for a train on a rainy day in 2008.  Another passenger, in an attempt to catch a train, dashed across the railroad tracks into the path of an oncoming train.  The train struck the passenger at approximately 70 miles per hour and sent a large chunk of his body flying into Ms. Zokhrabov.  She was knocked off her feet and suffered a broken leg and wrist.

Now Zokhrabov has filed a lawsuit against the estate of the passenger, Hiroyuki Joho, who was killed in the incident.  Her claim is that Joho acted negligently by running in front of the train.  In order to prevail on her claim, she has to prove that Joho was negligent and that the injuries she suffered as a result of his negligence were reasonably foreseeable by him.  

Proving negligence should not be too terribly difficult, given what happened to Joho.  The other part of her claim, however, may be a little more difficult.  Believe it or not, there is not an abundance of case law in Illinois - or any other states, for that matter - that deals with airborne body parts.  Her lawyer, however, thinks that they have a good chance of prevailing.  She likens the case to one where a train passenger is injured when the conductor yanks the emergency brake to avoid hitting someone on the tracks.  Bottom line, she says, is that "if you do something as stupid as this guy did, you have to be responsible for what comes from it."

Zokhrabov has received a lot of criticism for her lawsuit, but it's important to recognize that she suffered some pretty severe injuries and may not have the money to pay for treatment.  What happened to Joho is tragic, but it does not take away the fact that had he not acted so carelessly, Zokhrabov would not have incurred the cost of medical treatment, nor would she have suffered the agony of broken bones.  

Because of our adversarial system, there is a tendency to take negligence lawsuits very personally.  But in reality, negligence suits are about making amends financially for accidental behavior.  It does not mean that the person being sued was a horrible person; it just means they made a mistake and someone suffered for it.  

(Originally published January 15, 2012)

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