Juan Foote

This "idiot cyclist" is laughing all the way to the bank. Not such an idiot, is he?

rwp

The only such lawsuit that I've been able to find happened in Milwaulkee and it was thrown out of court. Do you have a link to any successful one?

BlazingPedals

Seems to me that if someone hits a patch of ice and goes down, they were riding too fast for conditions. If going too fast for conditions resulted in an injury accident, they should have gotten a ticket for the infraction. That is separate from all other possible violations that may have happened.

caphits

This guy better have really gotten hurt.
Whenever I fall, I get back up as soon as I can, and go on my way. (Not that I really fall all that often.)

prathmann

According to another story on this case he had direct medical expenses of about $10,000 and initially only sought to have the bar (which had pushed snow/ice/gravel onto the bike path) cover those costs. When the bar refused the lawyers got involved and the amounts escalated.

Digital_Cowboy

Canada: “Crook wins damages for injury during theft”

Robber Sues the Store He Robbed I think that this is the case that you were referring to. If it is, it wasn't dismissed because the robber was injured during the commission of his crime, it was dismissed because the defendant couldn't afford to post the $10,000.00 bond.

George Hinnenkamp, Elderly Oregon Man, Has Car Stolen and Crashed--Is Now Being Sued by Folks Who Crashed In It Here is one with an interesting twist.

These are the ones that I came up with.

LesterOfPuppets

I would hope that the bar's snow removal efforts obstructed or affected the surface of the MUP in some way. Otherwise, totally ridiculous suit.

twobadfish

Ridiculous no matter what the circumstances. You ride your bike at night, in the winter, expect unfavorable conditions. I just can't agree with any other logic.

Even if snow somehow made it onto the MUP, so what? Welcome to the real world.

LesterOfPuppets

Snow removal efforts performed or contracted by businesses should never block roads, sidewalks or MUPs, IMO.

twobadfish

And that warrants a lawsuit? I mean I can understand after several complaints and documented issues that a serious injury finally occurred... but come on, he slipped - on ice - while riding his bicycle at night.

LesterOfPuppets

I don't think it warrants a lawsuit but I think that it changes a totally ridiculous lawsuit into an almost reasonable one.

rwp

Actually the one I found was of a thief who robbed a homeowner then sued for loss of income (like your original claim). It's not on your list but it was thrown out of court. Of those on your list, the only succesful suit was brought by the guy in Canada who did not rob a homeowner and did not sue for loss of income. Rather he took some razor blades from a supermarket and then was beaten up by store employees. He sued for actual physical injuries sustained in the beating.

I've looked further and I still can't find any real instance of a thief robbing and then succesfully sueing a homeowner.

XR2

You can't fix stupid but a lawyer can make it profitable.

bkaapcke

Phony PI shakedowns never got $100G back when I was practicing law. More like 10K was tops. Except for sex harassment cases, it's pretty much true today. So there's a good claim in there somewhere. bk

Digital_Cowboy

I did find one that was close. A farmer(s) over in the U.K. were told that they couldn't use barbed wire to fence their gardens/allotments after being robbed. The reason they were told to take down the fence is to prevent a potential lawsuit if the thief injured themselves.

Digital_Cowboy

Agreed, and if it's found that it contributed to a crash/accident then the business should be held accountable.

Booger1

Who are they going to sue in the summer when they get sunstroke because there were no trees?

Digital_Cowboy

Motorized bicycle on a trail where it wasn't authorized.

While I agree that this is a lawsuit that shouldn't have been fired. Are any of us really qualified to say what is or isn't a frivolous/unreasonable lawsuit? Granted just because someone falls and get's injured it doesn't mean that:

a) the victim was at fault
b) the home/property owner was at fault

Sometimes people just slip and fall and injure themselves, and it doesn't mean that anyone is/was at fault.

In this case IF the bar or whomever they contracted for snow removal did in fact push the snow onto the MUP they were wrong and should be fined. But if a person who regardless of whether or not the snow was pushed onto/near the MUP is riding a bike (or motorized bike) on the trail slips and falls then that is part of the risk of riding in the winter and s/he has no one to blame but themselves.

I mean take when my front wheel hit a loose patch of sand or gravel and I went down when I was leaving the parking lot of a local shopping center not to long ago. Could I have hired a lawyer and sued? Sure, but really what would have been the purpose?

As one could argue that by riding on 700x28c tires that I was at least partially at fault for the crash. Could I roll on wider more "stable" tires, sure. Could the management company that manages the shopping center have done a better job of keeping the driveways clear of sand and gravel, sure. But the bottom line is that other then a slightly skinned knee I wasn't hurt. So what would have been the point of suing?

Steve B.

We had a local rider, member of the regional mt. bike club and all, so a somewhat experienced rider, who takes a bad fall at a local state park. He sues and wins.

The area where he fell is what is known as the "BMX" section, due to the kids that come in with shovels, digging holes and building up dirt mounds to practice BMX stunts. The litigious rider apparently fell while trying to emulate the BMX'rs. He was alone at the time and broke something major - neck or so.

He sued the state for allowing a dangerous trail condition to exist, forgetting that there is actually no official mt. bike trail in the park and that the state has merely allowed the activity to occur on a huge network of roads and single track.

You would think that some sense of ethics or morals would kick in and he would just chalk up his fall to doing something stupid.

We were lucky the state didn't ban mt biking, but that are totally non cooperative about the idea of formalizing the trail system, for good reason as it cost;s something like a million bucks per mile, or so we were told.

myrridin

Even unsuccessful civil actions cost the accused money. And successful ones will rarely benefit the one starting the action. The only winners are the lawyers.

bkaapcke

What's a state park doing letting kids remake trails into BMX jump ramps? They are responsible for the condition of their land as modified by the kids, if it had been going on for some time. A guy with a broken neck is supposed to walk away from the claim? bk

Self, what are you thinking? This is the crowd that thinks fixing and flipping bikes for fun and profit doesn't require liability insurance.

Never-mind!

Digital_Cowboy

Let me see if I've got this right?

We have a state park that doesn't have official trails because it would cost too much to instal and maintain. There is a section of the "trail" that is "known" to be used by kids who bring in shovels and what have you to make a BMX trail network. The staff knows about it because it is safe to presume that someone has to go out and undo what the kids have done. Yet apparently no one at the state park does anything such as handing out citations to the kids to stop them from doing what they're doing.

Why isn't the state at least partially responsible for what happened to the experienced MTN biker?

Digital_Cowboy

Good point, if there is any kind log or record of who used that track/trail those "kids" should have been named as co-defendants in the resulting lawsuit.

DX-MAN

Dec. 2009, I was riding to work, in nasty weather. I turned onto a side street I frequently used; this particular morning, the last 100 feet or so were frozen over, as was part of the yard of the house at the corner. I stopped pedaling, and HOPED to coast over it....

The back wheel sideslipped out from under me; I put a foot down to catch the fall, and my foot slid along with the bike. I felt and HEARD a SNAP!, followed by hot pain in my ankle. (The inner bone of the ankle snapped, and re-closed immediately, so it didn't even show up on x-rays until the bone built up over the break!)

That corner was flood-prone in conditions of heavy precipitation; so, the logic pursued by this damned fool and the idiot judge would dictate that I sue both the city and the homeowner at the corner for my injuries. As it was, I went to the VA, suffered through two months of walking around the job 'wounded', and another month in an aircast after the break was found. I missed two days of work, and earned the reputation as an 'iron man' by working through a broken ankle.

Lightingguy

Good points.

In this case it's a park that is mostly 5 golf courses as well as a large wooded area with wood chip road trails used for cross-country running, as well as a rats maze of trails, mostly all single track, some of which were cut (and have been maintained) by mt. bikers. Then a lot of area's where local kids come in to party, build BMX sections, etc...

The state park folks are all oriented towards golfing. They have refused any sort of efforts to make any of the trails "official", due to cost, they say. The maintenance guys on occasion will take a bob-cat to some single track and widen it to expand the chip trails. They have no plan to do this work, they just decide to do it. There is no environmental review of any kind. They have been known to clear out a single track, put wood chips down then post a sign at one end saying "No Bikes", even though most folks ride the trial the other way and only see the sign if they happen to be looking back on their way out of a section. It is my suspicion that partly due to lay-offs in the maintenance departments as well as reduced budgets, there are sections in the woods that the park folks have never been to or are aware of the conditions. I have NEVER seen a state employee in the depths of the woods, other then the idiots with the bob-cat. I did see one of the state park policemen (we call them grass cops) asleep in his cruiser on dirt road in the woods one day. Thus it's safe to say there is no maintenance done in the wooded area's and all the budget goes to the golf courses.

In that light, they may or may not know about the kids digging holes for BMX jumps, but nobody is cleaning up after the kids.

But my point was that if you bike the park on a regular basis (which the injured biker had done and admitted to), you know the conditions.

You also know that mt. biking can cause injuries and if you don't there's something wrong with you.

Thus you fall while attempting a move that is possibly beyond your skill level and you sue the state for not maintaining safe conditions.

This could have happened anywhere in the park where this riders skill level might have come up short of the conditions. He might still have sued

And that's wrong.