Posted on 01/18/2007 5:09:34 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Lawyers for the family of a woman who died after drinking nearly two gallons of water in an on-air radio contest said Thursday they will file a wrongful death lawsuit to make an example out of the station and attempt to curb the recklessness of shock jock radio.
"We believe we can get a judgment that people across the country will have to pay attention to," said Roger Dreyer, a personal injury lawyer who accused radio station KDND-FM of knowing of the dangers of the water-drinking contest but continuing anyway.
He charged that the contest that preceded the death of 28-year-old Jennifer Lea Strange, a mother of three from the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova, was nothing more than a ratings stunt designed to boost profits.
"Outrageousness at any cost has become the industry standard - the trashier and more humiliating the better," Dreyer said. "It's time to stop the recklessness."
Dreyer said the lawsuit would likely be filed within days, after a private memorial service for Strange this weekend, and following a determination by lawyers about which station employees - and perhaps which companies in addition to the station - should be named in the suit.
He would not specify how much in damages the suit would seek.
Charles Sipkins, spokesman for KDND's parent company, Entercom/Sacramento, declined to comment on Dreyer's remarks since a lawsuit has not yet been filed.
Thursday's announcement followed revelations Wednesday that the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department had launched a criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding Strange's death.
Authorities decided to pursue the investigation after listening to a tape of the Jan. 12 "Morning Rave" show that was obtained by The Sacramento Bee. On the tape, disc jockeys can be heard joking about the possible dangers of consuming too much water. They even alluded to a Chico State University student who died during a hazing stunt in 2005 after drinking large amounts of water.
At one point a listener called in to warn the DJs that the stunt could be fatal.
"Yeah, we're aware of that," one of them responded.
Another DJ laughed: "Yeah, they signed releases, so we're not responsible. We're OK."
The object of the contest was to see how much water contestants could drink without going to the bathroom. The top prize was a Nintendo Wii gaming console. The DJs called the contest "Hold your Wee for a Wii."
Several hours into the program, Strange was interviewed and complained that her head hurt.
"They keep telling me that it's the water. That it will tell my head to hurt and then it will make me puke," she said.
"This is what it feels like when you're drowning," responded one of the DJs. "There's a lot of water inside you."
Eventually, Strange gave up and accepted the second-place prize, tickets to a Justin Timberlake concert.
Dreyer, senior partner of the Sacramento law firm Dreyer, Babich, Buccola & Callaham, said he had requested a copy of the release DJs spoke of on the radio but had not yet received it from Entercom.
Sipkins declined to comment on the status of that request.
KDND on Tuesday fired 10 employees connected to the contest, including the three "Morning Rave" disc jockeys. The company also took the show off the air.
Dreyer said the family is devastated by the loss of Strange, whose children are ages 11 months, 3 years and 11 years old.
"They're without their mother," Dreyer said. "One of their motivations in coming to me is they don't want to see this happen again."
That's interesting. I just know that hass always helped everyone I have ever known under those circumstances. I wonder the likelihood of a lawsuit if the d.j.'s had acted like they cared at all and tried to help the woman out when she said she was not feeling well. They made no effort and even joked about it.
" I just know that hass always helped everyone I have ever known under those circumstances."
The concern is to not bring the electrolytes up to normal too quickly in a chronic condition, or what might be a critical level. It doesn't appear that correction rate is too impotant in acute, < 24 hr duration cases. Only that correction, or overcorrection be avoided. Maybe Polybius can comment.
Imagine the guilt her kids -- whom she was ostensibly trying to win the system for -- must feel.
You didn't state it anywhere that I saw, but it sounds as though the most important thing you needed to do was get inside, out of the sun.
Please, don't toss this off as an anonymous Internet fruitcake thing. Take care of yourself and learn when to let discretion be the better part of valor.
Thanks, spunkets. I'm not medical enough to know all the technical details, just enough to know that he was bordering on potentially severe trouble.
This was not a kid. This was a 28 year old woman. That's the part I don't like. "Fly out the window like Superman, lady!" If she does it, why shouldn't she be held responsible for her own stupidity?
What is the difference between a young child that might not understand the difference between fantasy seen on TV and the reality of gravity and an adult that might not understand the complex and, to the non-medical layman, rather esoteric topic of serum electrolyte homeostasis?
Not much.
Each case does not constitute “stupidity” but an age-appropriate lack of knowledge about a particular subject.
You yourself stated that the activity “was not inherently dangerous”. That does not make you “stupid". It only makes you uninformed about a specialized subject I deal with professionally for a living.
Whatever you do for a living, I am certain that there are several aspects of it that are obvious to you that I will be completely clueless about. Again, that is not an example of “stupidity” but a lack of specialized knowledge.
If someone encourages others to engage in a dangerous activity, they are liable as the danger may not be at all apparent to the averagely intelligent adult they are encouraging.
Take, for example, an eating contest to eat two pounds of liver cooked as liver and onions in less than two hours:
Sound reasonable? Dangerous?
Since I am an avid hunter, I give each contestant a choice of beef liver, duck liver, lamb liver, elk live, deer liver, black bear live, polar bear liver, grizzly bear live, buffalo liver, zebra liver, antelope liver or cougar liver.
Sound reasonable? Dangerous?
Which liver would you pick?
Does the choice make any difference at all?
Are you "stupid" if you do not know the answer or if the question never even occured to you?
The answer is that if you pick the polar bear liver you will have ingested twice the lethal amount of Vitamin A at one sitting.
If I know that and allow the liver eating contest to proceed, I will probably be prosecuted for murder. My victim would not be "stupid". He would merely be uniformed about an extremely esoteric but potentially deadly subject.
A serum sodium of 140 mEq/L is normal and a serum sodium of less than 120 mEq/L becomes symptomatic in acute cases.
In chronic hyponatremia, compensatory mechanisms come into play and rapidly reversing of the sodium level back to normal leaves those compensatory mechanisms unopposed and that causes damage itself. Rapid correction can cause demyelenation. (The myelin sheath insulating the electrical function of nerve axons is damaged or destroyed.)
So, in chronic cases, the correction is made slowly at a rate of 0.5 mEq/L/hour.
In an acute case, the compensatory mechanisms have not kicked in and the goal is to raise the serum sodium 4-6 mEq/L over the first 1-2 hours.
In this particular case, we need to consider that, as I noted before, two healthy kidneys going full steam ahead can only clear 0.24 gallons of free water per hour. So, if this woman drank the two gallons over a one hour period, she had 7 quarts of free water diluting her electrolyte stores.
That is one royal screwing of the electrolyte pooch so, in such a case, the potato chips should be used only during the ambulance run at full speed to the nearest Intensive Care Unit
Thank you for the clarification, doctor. I understood enough of what you said to at least appreciate that the concern I voiced to HungarianGypsy was on the right track. I don't know why I paid much attention to the whole sodium discussion that was carried out in the media many years ago, but at least a few things stuck for HungarianGypsy's story to raise some red flags.
Thank you for the clarification, doctor. I understood enough of what you said to at least appreciate that the concern I voiced to HungarianGypsy was on the right track. I don't know why I paid much attention to the whole sodium discussion that was carried out in the media many years ago, but at least a few things stuck for HungarianGypsy's story to raise some red flags.
Thanks! Sad for the woman and her family.
And she is a medical professional? There's a degree of relaxation a person does when they assume that a professional radio show undertaking a contest will look out for their safety. The onus is on them to provide a safe environment. Had they consulted a medical professional they'd have saved her life. They didn't and criuminal negligence certainly applies here.
'They offered an opinion, NOT medical advice'
A nurse called in and told the DJ's that what they were doing was not dssafe and can kill them. The DJ blew it off and stated as if he was absolutely sure that this could not kill her.
The onus was on them to guarantee a modicum of safety to their contestants. Just like I assume my employer performs regular maintenance on my work truck there's a degree of assumption a person makes every day concerning possible fatal things which are completely reasonable.
Bingo! Thank you!
I'm all for holding a person responsible for their own stupidity but we have to understand that not everyone can be an expert in every field. It's why we have jury trials consisting of one's "peers". Had we assumed the lady knew beforehand of the dangers of this then by all means should there be no lawsuit. But when a layman who doesn't know the danger of a contest places faith that the contest holders have taken basic precautions to safeguard their health is killed... well that's not their fault.
'Also, a medical examination after the contest is pointless without having conducted a medical exam of all contestants prior to starting the contest period.'
Absolutely incorrect. Millios of medical diagnoses are made each day based upon symptoms exhibited by the patient with the doctor having no knowledge of their previous medical history.
Any medic could have caught this and known that this woman was in grave danger. It was incumbent upon the station when having any contest that involves risk of injury to have at the very least 1 EMT or medic.
Someone could have walked in and an exam would show they're already compromised, they could be on meds that compromise them. That's hypothetical since the contest amounts to a race to death anyway and should never have been held.
An anonymous, disembodied voice on a phone line is meaningless. Those DJs have no way of verifying whether that voice belonged to a real nurse or not. When we have the anonimity of the telephone . . . . or the Internet . . . . any of us can assume any persona that we wish. That's why you are Bogey780 and I am DustyMoment and not Ralph and Ashley. We can assume whatever identities we choose - but it doesn't make either of us experts in the fields we claim.
On this point, we'll have to agree to disagree. You can choose to believe what you wish, the facts don't support you. Many pre-existing conditions are discovered AFTER a medical event . . . or death! Doctors who treat symptoms and not diseases or medical conditions, may be doing more harm than good. Most doctors that I have ever seen - including the so-called "Doc-in-the-Box" - want some level of medical history before providing treatment. Good doctors want fact to support their diagnoses (such as physical exams, X-rays/MRIs, and/or lab work) before providing treatment in order to avoid killing you or making your condition worse.
For a simple understanding of the role that competent and complete medical examinations can provide, you have only to look at some recent cases involving thrill rides at Disney World. Several people, spanning a large age range, have died after ridng one particular attraction at the Magic Kingdom. Autopsies and civil suits against Disney later, have shown conclusively that each of the people who died on this attraction had an undiagnosed, pre-existing condition that, had they known, would have prevented them from riding the attraction.
You see, Bogey, knowledge is power!
Not in a case like this. It's the content of what was said, that's important. In this case it was a warning that the act could kill someone. That statement is what's to be evaluated, not the claim of authority. In general, claims of authority are meaningless, only what is said matters. The truth of what is said is not determined by authority in any event. Only trust is extended.
The DJs didn't address the claim of being a nurse. They addressed the matter that the action could result in death. They took on the role of authority and indicated they knew someone might die and indicated, that they didn't care.
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