I’m Not a Trust Fund Baby.
This is Andrew Speaker’s defense to the NINE lawsuits that have already been filed against him for possibly exposing them to tuberculosis on a commercial flight from Prague to Montreal.
Hmm. I wonder what his reaction to such a statement would be when he was a personal injury lawyer. Probably “I don’t care.”
The plaintiffs are suing for the distress that the exposure has caused. Only one of the plaintiffs has tested positive for the disease, though it is not clear whether that individual had contracted the disease from exposure to Speaker. One plaintiff summed it up this way: “At the very first moment that I found out, I was obviously very stressed, very shocked. I’m still very stressed out about it. He deliberately got on this plane, endangered our lives and this is very selfish and reckless behavior that deserves to be punished.”
Speaker has not yet hired an attorney to defend him - maybe he’s waiting for his wife to pass the bar?
I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg. Speaker can probably start clearing his post-dismissal calendar for a whole lot of court appearances.
July 13th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Mr. Mac and I laughed and laughed over this item in today’s AJC. Truly good stuff, I tell ya. The PI lawyer getting sic-ed by a bunch of, well, fellow PI lawyers. Tee hee.
July 13th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
I’m surprised we didn’t hear news of lawsuits sooner. According to CNN this afternoon, though, the one passenger who tested positive did so only six days after the flight, which is apparently medically impossible (two weeks is the shortest amount of time they said), so must have been exposed quite some time before. That means there were actually TWO people with TB on that flight. Yikes! Anyway, I’ll bet that becomes Speaker’s defense if anyone else tests positive.
July 13th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Hey Laura, thanks for the update.
Of course, the passengers don’t have to prove that they got TB from Speaker - or even could have gotten TB from Speaker - they just have to prove that they had emotional distress from his actions. Considering his level of recklessness, that shouldn’t be too difficult.