It could have been much more. The brothers who made their fateful Memorial Day leaps sued the city, and the verdict rendered initially by a Brooklyn jury called for the city to pay more than $104 million. That initial award was reduced in later court action.
The two brothers, Virgil Brown, then 26, and John Brown, then 27, dived off a 700-foot-long, city-owned fishing pier that juts out from the boardwalk of the famous seaside attraction. They had to scale a 3-foot, wooden-slat fence to do it and look down at the shallow water about 10 feet below the pier.
”I was cooling off. It was very hot that day,” Virgil Brown, a construction worker before the accident, recalled recently.
Now 38, he said he couldn’t tell from his perch that the water was only a few feet deep. He broke his neck when his head slammed into the sand.
His brother, John, dived in to try to help and suffered a similar injury.
New York City taxpayers had to pay because the jury decided that the city, which installed the fence, was responsible for the accident, despite what the city claimed was the bad judgment of the two men.
The key fault of the city, the court ruled, was not posting “no diving” signs. That warning is now stenciled every few feet along the fence.
”If there had been a sign telling me not to dive, I wouldn’t have done it,” Virgil Brown said.
**********************************************************
Are you freaking kidding me? These morons don't deserve a dime. If there had been a sign telling you not to dive? The fact that you had to CLIMB A FENCE wasn't odd to you? Ridiculous.
posted by Chris O. @ 6/26/2004 09:36:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home