Two weeks ago, Broadside featured a story about an incident involving three students who were injured in a car accident caused by another student, prompting a lawsuit.
The story “Riding in cars with boys” was pitched by the lawyer of the person filing suit, who is referred with the alias Lindsey White. On the surface it seems that the defendants in question are getting their just desserts but after digging a bit deeper, that just might not be the case.
The defendant was found at fault for the accident by the Fairfax County court system and he absolutely should be responsible for the medical bills and monetary loss due to injury of everyone involved. People must take responsibility for their actions.
However, suing Alpha Epsilon Pi, the local chapter and its president for $20 million is undeniably wrong. Perhaps White felt she deserved more compensation, but my guess is her lawyer convinced her she was entitled to it.
This is a growing trend in our society. Too many people think they deserve riches beyond their wildest dreams because of tragedy. From suing McDonald’s for hot coffee to bringing a lawsuit against the Winnebago company for not advising a driver that it isn’t safe to put the vehicle on cruise control and leave the drivers seat, lawyers have run amok with their frivolous lawsuits egging on this notion of entitlement.
Quite frankly, it’s disheartening to see a lawyer try to use the good students of this campus in such a shameful manner.
Why contact Broadside in the first place? How is that relevant to this case?
Do White and her lawyer really want to tell her story to prevent the same thing from happening to others? Lindsey might, but her lawyer probably couldn’t care less.
He’s using a common public affairs tactic to make public opinion so bad for AEP and the other defendants that they will feel that a settlement is the only feasible option.
Full disclosure, in another life I worked for my fraternity, Sigma Pi. Every Monday we received phone calls from lawyers regarding some incident that happened over the weekend with a member of the fraternity somewhere in the country.
Most of the time those lawyers were simply sniffing around to see if we were susceptible to settling. They went after us, even if there was no fault on our part, because we had a multimillion-dollar liability insurance policy, as all fraternities do, including the one being sued by White.
If AEP and the local chapter are somehow to blame for irresponsible driving then why not go after some others who are perhaps more to blame? How about the defendant’s driving instructor for when he got his learning permit?
Maybe the parents are to blame for not instilling in him the types of safety measures needed to drive a vehicle. You won’t see that because to lawyers, it’s not really about accountability, it’s about who has the most money.
There was one incident with my fraternity that I’ll never forget; one which puts this incident at George Mason University in perspective.
Sam Spady was a 19-year-old freshman at Colorado State University. After consuming too much alcohol, she returned to the Sigma Pi house for the evening. Sadly, because the brothers there did not know how to assess if someone had alcohol poisoning, she died sometime in the night.
She left many friends and a loving family, including a very heartbroken mother, Patty Spady. Mrs. Spady did not sue my fraternity. Instead she started the Sam Spady Foundation, an organization dedicated to warning college students on the dangers of alcohol abuse.
Her story has saved the lives of a number of college students by educating them on how to know when someone is suffering from alcohol poisoning. Mrs. Spady’s efforts are nothing short of heroic.
Every time she tells her daughter’s story she relives it all over again, but she does it because her work is too important. After all, that’s what most people do when they are faced with adversity; they rise up to the challenges, no matter how heart wrenching they are, to overcome and achieve something great.
Well, most people anyway. Some people just want to get rich.
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