

Widower sues Wal-Mart, says bag caused death - codegeek
http://money.msn.com/now/post--widower-sues-wal-mart-says-plastic-bag-caused-death

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anigbrowl
And he will probably win, too. Nevada is a modified comparative negligence
state, but to make that argument the defense is going to have to argue that
the victim should have known the bag was inadequate to hold the quantity and
type of the items within, thus upholding the plaintiff's major premise. From
there it's simple for the plaintiff to argue that a grocery bagger has far
more knowledge and experience of a given retailer's bag capacity than the
customer who shops there occasionally, and that's before subpoenaing Walmart's
training materials.

considering the compensation sought is modest the smart thing to do for
Walmart would be to pleas guilty or settle.

The lack of predictability that a gashed toe would result in a painful death
is beside the point. There's a long-established principle in tort law that you
take the victim as you find him/her, and there seems to be a fairly
straightforward causal chain between the injury and the death, so if the
report is accurate then proximate causality shouldn't be a problem.

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qbrass
The incident took place in Nebraska, if that changes anything else about your
reply.

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anigbrowl
Thanks for spotting that, I got distracted in the middle of typing my reply.
The legal principle happens to be the same in both states.

If you're interested, there are basically 4 different 'fault' theories,
summarized here:
[http://www.latitudesubro.com/misc/contributory_negligence.pd...](http://www.latitudesubro.com/misc/contributory_negligence.pdf)

You absolutely don't want to get injured in AL, DC, NC, MD, or VA, as you'll
have a hard time recovering if any aspect at all of the injury could be
considered your fault.

