The remaining 3 percent of liability was laid on the men who violently attacked Ward and his friend, Tanner Giesen, 21, in the parking lot of the McDonald’s at 801 University Drive.
This is so bizarre, it defies comprehension.
Does Texas draw jury pools from voter registration records, like most other places?
The next time you decide to sit out an election for purity reasons, remember that every vote possible is needed to cancel out the votes of people like these idiot jurors.
Were they the same jurors who sat on the OJ Simpson trial?
How about personal responsibility...they all four had been drinking...got into a fight??? with someone else...then decided to continue their DUI flight to the hospital because they under aged teens decided not to do the right thing and stop their reckless behavior...and somehow that’s McDonald’s fault???
I must be in Wonderland....but I don’t remember falling into a rabbit hole...or maybe that’s when Obama got elected...and then things got weird....WOW!
Sometimes I am just left wondering what on earth are these jurors thinking???
They can find someone guilty or not, but they can’t handle award amounts at ALL. They are just stupid!
This is the stupid area of Texas, which has both Texas A&M and UT-Austin. It is bordered on the southeast by Sheila Jackson Lee’s congressional district. Enough said.
That's about as nonsensical and as disconnected as one can get in my opinion. JURIES and voter demographics have nothing to do with each other except that juries are usually pulled from voter registrations. You cannot keep registered voters OFF juries simply because your side might win an election somewhere. The problem of uneducated and ignorant juries goes much deeper than this.
When you say "purity" what you really mean are conservatives with principles that refuse to vote for RINOs. And, when they don't, instead of working against Democrats, Liberals and RINO politicians, it's "attack the purists".
The lawyers for the plaintifs are scum. Note well that they did not sue the people doing the beating because they could not get money from them. The one and only reason McDonald’s was added to the lawsuit is because they have insurance and could pay the huge amounts awarded. This is actually stealing, a small amount from you and me, in that McDonald’s will have to raise prices slightly to cover the increase in their insurance.
McDonald’s had nothing at all to do with the kid’s deaths.
Juries are made up of potential lottery winners!
I have a feeling the McDonald’s lawyer was so certain of a win, he fumbled the ball and the plaintiff’s lawyers were pretty polished. Add that to poor jury instructions and STUPID LAWS that allow such idiotic suits in the first place, the idea it is the insurance companies who pay and they realy deep pockets, and you have a formula which nearly guarantees juries will never get it right.
So, the existence of the parking lot was 97% to blame.
So now due to this verdict every McDonald’s that is open 2AM has to hire security. And will still get sued in these kind of situations if the security fails to protect against a death by stomping or knives or what have you
And thus the warped legal theory of Deep Pockets triumphs yet again.
No, you f'in' morons, the thing that sets all of this in motion is feral youth.
I encourage McDonalds and all other restaurants in feral-youth infested areas to pull out. Screw 'em.
I thought Bryan / College Station was a lot smarter than that. WOW.
It will be overturned on appeal.
Pretty sad when Private Business’s have a “Legal Duty” to “Protect” it’s Customers but the POLICE DON’T??
Maybe we need a Constitutional Amendment guaranteeing “Equal Protection Under the LAW”.
This is a stupid award. The only thing good that could come out of this would be that all the stupid, feel good businesses can see the fallacy of having no weapons on property policies and put up signs saying you and your legal weapon are welcome. One CHL carrier could have stopped this assault.
Texas lawyers drove all the doctors away from Texas, after Texas tax payers paid to educate those doctors…until Rick Perry won the state house. I dread what happens when Greg Abbott becomes governor…one of the great things about Perry i that he’s not a &^%$ lawyer.
I say sue the corporations that banned guns on their property. To me, this creates an absolute liability on their part to protect everyone at the site, as they do not allow people to effectively protect themselves.
Beaten to Death at McDonald’s: A racial attack the media chose to ignore.
FrontPage Mag ^ | 08/20/2014 | David Paulin
Police were constantly responding to late-night fights, assaults, and disturbances among huge crowds that were mostly black – a problem one top police official called a “drain on resource.” Most of the reported incidents – some 200 in the three years preceding Ward and Crisp’s deaths – involved black-on-black violence by gang bangers and, according to one police officer, members of black college fraternities. One police report described an unidentified man’s head getting bashed against a curb. White patrons appeared to be especially susceptible and at risk – and when they were attacked, the blows were particularly vicious. The hours of 2-to-3 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays were especially volatile, with at least a dozen fights and assaults reported during those hours in the year preceding Ward and Crisp’s deaths.
~snip~
For Ward and Giesen, the trouble started seconds after exiting McDonald’s front door. “You’re in the wrong neck of the woods, cowboys,” Giesen recalled a young black male saying.
Unwittingly, they’d blundered into a highly-charged situation. Shortly before they’d arrived, two black males had gotten into a loud argument inside the restaurant. A gun was brandished. But manager Lindsey Ives, a black woman, didn’t call the police. She told the men to take their dispute outside.
In an instant, a bloodthirsty mob was upon the college students.
~snip~
Why was University McDonald’s so popular among black gang bangers and black fraternity members? Carlos Butler, the outlet’s black general manager, could take credit for that. An aspiring hip-hop artist, he hosted large hip-hop concerts attracting some 1,500 people — and after those events many of the black hip-hoppers headed to University McDonald’s.
Interestingly, Butler told a police detective he always had “a lot of security” at his hip-hop events.
Yet at University McDonald’s, Butler had no off-duty police officer providing security — even on nights that the hip-hop and gangsta crowd showed up in large numbers.
Cost for an off-duty cop – a mere $100. Police had told Butler such a late-night security measure, in use at other nearby 24-hour outlets, could stop trouble before it started.