Posted on 12/02/2008 1:43:54 PM PST by BGHater
Two customers are suing Wal-Mart for negligence after being injured in a mad rush for post-Thanksgiving bargains that left one store employee dead, the men's attorney said Tuesday.
Temporary Wal-Mart worker Jdimytai Damour, 34, was crushed to death as he and other employees attempted to unlock the doors of a store on Long Island at 5 a.m. Friday.
Attorney Kenneth Mollins said Fritz Mesadieu and Jonathan Mesadieu were "literally carried from their position outside the store" and are now "suffering from pain in their neck and their back from being caught in that surge of people" that rushed into the Wal-Mart.
New York Newsday reported that the Mesadieus are father and son, ages 51 and 19.
The lawsuit alleges that the Mesadieus' injuries were a result of "carelessness, recklessness, negligence."
In a claim against the Nassau County police department, the men also contend that they "sustained monetary losses as a result of health care and legal expenses ... in the sum of $2 million."
"This is a tragic situation that could have and should have been avoided with the exercise of reasonable care. There are very simple measures that could have been put in place to avoid this, such as barriers along the line to spread people out, extra security and a better police presence," Mollins said.
He said his clients and others who were at the scene contend that the police "were there ... saw what was happening, and they left."
Calls seeking comment from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. were not immediately returned.
Lt. Kevin Smith of the Nassau County Police Department said, "it's our policy that we don't comment on open litigations" and would not respond directly to Mollins and his clients' claim that officers left the scene.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
I agree with that.
Some of the issues involved regard crowd control, design of the facility, crowd management, operational policies of the store, the chain, and possibly municipal code enforcement as well.
In the design of auditoriums, the safe egress and ingress of patronage is to the advantage of the management as well as the patron. The same might be said regarding retail space planning.
Here are a few architectural rules of thumb for right sizing foyers and alcoves.
From www.iaam.org/CVMS/IAAMCrowdDyn.doc
Occupancies. In waiting areas, 20 square feet per patron will allow relatively free movement; 10 square feet, movement on an “excuse me” basis; and 5 square feet, standing without touching others-but with little ability to move freely. This is about the occupancy level that you see in most normal waiting situations, such as approaches to a busy escalator or stair. At approximately 3 square feet per person, involuntary touching and brushing against others will occur, a psychological threshold that should generally be avoided in most public situations. Below 2 square feet per person, potentially dangerous crowd forces and psychological stresses may begin to develop.
From the same site,
Numerous incidents have been recorded in which uncontrolled crowding has resulted in injuries and, in some instances, death. The 1979 “Who” concert disaster in Cincinnati, in which 11 persons were killed, dramatically emphasized the lethal potential of uncontrolled crowds. These deaths occurred when 18,000 eager rock fans rushed the entrance of the Cincinnati Coliseum. Other similar incidents show that such disasters can happen in any type of group or environment. Seven persons were killed in Forteleza, Brazil, and another seven in Kinshasa, Zaire, by crowd rushes during Pope John Paul II’s 1980 tour. There is a long list of crowd fatalities at international soccer stadiums, including a 1970 incident in Glasgow, Scotland, that resulted in 66 deaths and 200 injuries.
The article at that site lists four major interacting functions in crowd control, which are time, space, information, and energy.
Arguments may easily be made that once the ads had been made to the public indicating massive great deal sales were on a first come, first serve basis, even had they not opened the doors, the crowds which would form in anticipation of the opening might have been uncontrollable to prevent human waves from crushing down the front doors.
There might even be liabilities which now exist for any large retail establishment to reverse public expectations to exercise crowd control. For example if everybody thinks Best Buy is going to hand out free DoorBuster specials to the first 50 customers, on 40 different products, in the first 10 minutes, one only per customer, then BestBuy has an anticipation of 2000 customers being queued into their store and handled within 10 minutes.
Now if 4000 people show up, and they can’t see the front door or how they are being managed, a crowded wave of people might force their way into the building at about 2 minutes before to 7 minutes after the time the doors had been publicized to be opened.
So who is more liable for the resulting crowd? The store manager who is trying to unload inventory and advertises a great deal to seize market share and attract large crowds, or the guy in the crowd just transmitting the human wave which he is unable to control because he wasn’t cognizant of the advertising campaign?
Problem solved.
Too funny!!!!
I believe the way BestBuy handles this is by stating on their handouts that the voucher is good for the first several hours the store is open, and even then all they have to do is to report their number, not pick up the merchandise in that time frame.
There are quite a few other trial lawyer liability angles which are played and argued against with stadium managers and large event management firms.
For example, if crowds are lining up at night, with limited lighting, who becomes liable for robberies and vandalized property in the area?
Also many codes conflict regarding public safety lighting.
Fire and public safety codes mandate higher luminosity densities, while energy conservation and green building codes prohibit higher lighting densities. In order to get one building permit, you fail to comply with codes to get the other permits,...go figure.
Other issues arise such as restroom facilities, water, loitering near other properties, etc.
To add insult to injury, those municipalities and landlords who might enforce policies to make sure tenants are responsibly managing their crowds, sometimes lose the business to adjacent cities who provide tax breaks and incentives to businesses to ignore such policies, simply to attract marketshare.
Such situations might give impetus to socialized policies and a black eye to ‘greedy’ capitalism. Hence the cartoonish lambasting of capitalists as the greedy thoughtless bad guy characterized in old Soviet Socialist Pravda cartoons of yesteryear.
No one has a claim against Walmart, it is their customers that are 100% at fault.
The cops ahould have cited every customer that entered the store and the DA should have filed manslauter charges against every one of them.
I fail to see how WalMart created the animals that stomped one of its employees to death.
There maybe multiple liabilities. Read post 62.
Only the animals responding, doing the rushing and crushing should br responsible!!
I can’t see how a store can be responsible for the actions of people that are acting like stupid animals.
I doubt that anybody in attendance was forced there at gunpoint.
Maybe WalMart should set up machine gun nests to defend their property and employees against such rabble.
Let me get this right....
The people who stomped this poor guy to death are suing Walmart for THEIR injuries?....Dear God , I wish I could be the judge in this case.
Walmart was stupid to try to even pull this off again but anyone who risked themselves by attempting to rush the store has themselves to blame. Did anyone check to see if these clowns bought anything at the sale before they found out they had back and neck pain?Hummmmm wanna bet ?
My friends in Amsterdam tell me you can bring a frivolous law suit to court in Holland but if the judge deems it frivolous you get a mandatory 90 days in the slammer for wasting the courts time. They actually have a common sense clause ( so if you spilled hot coffee all over yourself because you had it between your legs while driving you couldn’t sue McDonalds. Common sense would dictate that you don’t do that ) . It really cuts down on bullsh*t lawsuits and ambulance chasers.
This is one Euro law we should have here.
You left out one factor , the greedy , rude , crude SOB who was gonna get himself a “big ass TV” no matter who the mutha f*cka was in his way.
Judging by the pictures of the crowds it was about 98 percent Bozo voters.
That Dutch law is a carryover from the Reformation which emulated Old Testament law. In Jewish Law, if one bore false witness, the penalty was exercised against the accuser. Somebody was found guilty in the trial, either the accused or the accuser.
Actually, my position allows for that factor. There maybe more than one guilty party involved.
The people at the front of the line didn’t get there when the size of the crowd was obvious. Likewise, those who entered the crowd at the end of the line didn’t enter the line at a density of greater than about 5SF/person. Instead, the crowd dynamics began to take effect as the opening time approached.
The sidewalks outside the building are generally only designed to handle egress of personnel to meet fire codes when the building is evacuated.
In order to handle mass ingress, crowd control measures such as those at a theater or stadium are employed.
In a large line of that sort, there also are likely to be friends and family members holding the place of others who show up at the last minutes, as there are some who decide 10 minutes before the opening, that they really don;t want to be a part of it and leave.
Those two dynamics might be obvious to people near the exit/entry of others from the queue, but to people in the back of the line, it might appear as though the doors are opened and the line is finally starting to enter the store.
When that happens, the crowd as a whole begins to move forward. If the doors are closed, they begin to compress.
Frequently, that compression is somewhat irreversible. The people in the rear don’t perceive why they are compressing, and if they do back up, others are likely to take their place.
Is it greed or is it simply the laws of supply and demand?
Mass behavior is discernible from individual behavior.
The best way to control such incidents to to focus on the leadership of the mass. In this case, the store is making the offer and publicly announces it with the intent to attract a large crowd. They have also accepted responsibility for the mass behavior they have attempted to form.
People that act like that deserve to all be crushed and die!!!
I never wrote this. go back and see who wrote this.
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