Posted on 09/26/2003 11:14:13 AM PDT by blam
Woman sues DIP storage facility over bizarre ordeal
09/26/03
By GARY McELROY
Staff Reporter
Wanda Hudson missed Thanksgiving and Christmas 2001 because she was locked in a Dauphin Island Parkway storage unit, Hudson's attorney said Thursday.
In fact, Hudson was padlocked in the unit for 63 days, attorney Mallory Mantiply told a Mobile County Circuit Court civil jury.
Hudson, 44, is a short, plump woman -- sporting fingernails several inches long that curl back into her palms -- but on Jan. 9, 2002, she weighed 85 pounds and was near death, a nurse told jurors.
She is suing the company, Parkway Storage on Dauphin Island Parkway (DIP).
Mantiply told jurors in an opening statement that the bizarre case began in early October 2001 when his client rented a unit from Parkway Storage. Creditors had foreclosed on her home and tossed her possessions into the street, he said.
The facility, containing 456 units with more than 60,000 square feet of storage space spread out over five acres, is located about two miles from her former home, the attorney said.
She rented unit number 611, a 30 feet by 10 feet enclosure, paid a month's rent, then moved her furniture and other belongings inside.
A month later, on Nov. 7, 2001, Mantiply told jurors, Hudson paid another month's rent. And on that very night, while on a routine security check, the facility's manager found Hudson's storage unit unlocked and partially open.
He closed and locked it.
And that was apparently the last anyone saw of Hudson for more than two months.
On Jan. 9, 2002, a customer using a nearby unit heard sounds coming from unit 611.
Mantiply told jurors he expected witnesses to testify that the smell was so overwhelming when the doors were opened that firemen were obliged to use gas masks when they entered.
Later in court on Thursday, Gloria Turner, a former nurse with Providence Hospital, testified that when Hudson was brought into the emergency room she weighed 85 pounds.
"The first indication I had that something was going on was the smell," Turner told jurors. Hudson had apparently been moved into a decontamination unit.
"The odor wafted out of that room and through the emergency room," Turner said.
Hudson's skin sagged on her limbs, Turner said.
She apparently had survived on juice and canned foods, her attorney had said earlier.
Turner said, "She was asking God why he allowed this to happen to her. She was crying almost constantly. .. She was crying, praying, talking, she would go to sleep, wake up, it was a continual process."
Frostbite appeared to have gnawed at Hudson's feet, Turner said. There were areas on her elbows and a thigh that looked like bed sores, caused by not moving for long periods of time, the nurse testified.
Hudson wanted to know what day it was, Turner said, and began crying anew when she realized she had missed Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Dr. William Asher, called by the plaintiff's side, told jurors he studied Hudson's case after her time in the hospital.
Her condition when discovered in the unit, Asher said, was of "advanced starvation, unusual to find in medical circumstances in America today."
Defense attorney Bert Taylor on Thursday did not dispute that Hudson had spent more than two months in the storage unit. But did she ever make an effort to be found, yell out, bang on the metal door, scream to make her plight known when anyone came near?
He told jurors to expect testimony from another customer at the facility, who stored books in a unit two doors down who was there nearly "every single day" of Hudson's ordeal, and never heard a thing.
"There was no yelling, no screaming, no beating on the doors, no nothing," Taylor said. "No one knew she was in there."
And as for why she was in there, he said, "I don't know."
He asked jurors to consider whether his client, Parkway Storage, and its personnel, did anything unreasonable under the circumstances of Hudson's bizarre silence.
"Yes, she was locked in there," Taylor said. "But why she was there, and what efforts she made to get out, we'll let her tell you."
The trial was to continue this morning before Circuit Judge Rick Stout.
Let me get this straight---moved her furniture into a storage facility, had food,juices,bit of food, couch, radio----(she literally had given up on herself) someone finally heard a radio on 63 days later and she's suing them?Boy, that really takes brass ones. I can't wait to hear how the Alabama jury decides.
I don't think we've heard the whole story yet. I will keep FReepers advised of the outcome.
In other words they would have checked the storage unit.
Something about this does smell. Maybe she was in a severe case of depression and when the door closed she decided to stay where it was nice, safe and dark for a while always thinking that when the food ran out she would just bang on the door until someone let her out. But then things got out of hand.
Use handle key locked garage doors, with the handle on the inside that you can use to open it.
Also, install one of those doorbells that glows in the dark, that wired to go off at the guard shack, or something.
You'd think the handle on the inside would take care of it, but I don't know what this does to the security of the unit.
Also do these units have lights in them? Light switches? Probably wouldn't be that hard to determine if a light was turned on or not. Small plastic panel set into the unit.
And I'm sure theres a hundred other possible ideas.
That us just nasty, girl you really nead to trim those claws, which i must say are located on those nasty paws
I totally agree with you, I was in that situation for two months I would probably loose that much too...
A jury has awarded $100,000 to an Alabama woman who spent over two months trapped in a storage facility after she was locked in her rented storage unit.
Wanda Hudson, 44, had originally sought $10 million from Parkway Storage in her lawsuit, claiming negligence on the part of the company that rented her a unit in early October 2001.
Hudson testified in Mobile County Circuit Court that creditors had foreclosed on her home and tossed her possessions into the street, forcing her to rent an enclosure measuring 30 feet by 10 feet from Parkway. She paid a month's rent, then moved her furniture and other belongings inside, her attorney Mallory Mantiply said.
On Nov. 7, 2001, while on a security check, the facility's manager found Hudson's storage unit unlocked and partially open, and locked it, Mantiply said.
When she realized she was locked inside, Hudson testified, "It was just total panic. I tried to breathe. I had to believe I was not stuck inside."
Two months later, on Jan. 9, 2002, a customer using a nearby unit heard sounds coming from unit 611. It was Hudson, who apparently had survived on juice and canned foods, but lost 65 pounds while in the unit. Hudson weighed 85 pounds when she was admitted to the hospital, according to medical records.
Her condition when discovered in the unit was of "advanced starvation, unusual to find in medical circumstances in America today," said Dr. William Asher, who studied her case at the hospital.
Hudson was vague about why she was in the storage unit so late on Nov. 7, and denied she heard the metal door close. Parkway's attorney, Burt Taylor, suggested she was sleeping and, furthermore, that she had been living in the unit. She denied Taylor's supposition.
The company argued that during those two months that Hudson claims to have been locked in the unit, customers renting nearby units never heard her trying to get help.
Hudson testified that wasn't because she didn't yell out. She claimed that more than one person heard her screams but did not respond.
Jurors later yielded a $100,000 verdict in favor of Hudson.COPYRIGHT 2003 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
Bingo. There's the question no one's asking. Forget the two months in which no one heard a sound; why the heck didn't she give a yell right then? Seems pretty obvious to me that she was living there, and was probably asleep...or...this whole thing was a planned lawsuit from the get-go.
MM
Unbelieveable, huh?
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