Wrongful Death or Proof We Need Tort Reform?

Megan Duskey, 23, went to a Halloween party in a trendy hotel in Chicago in 2010.  She never made it home after falling four flights into a basement.  Her parents have filed suit for wrongful death against the hotel and the part event planners.

Megan decided to try to slide down the banister of the staircase and instead lost her balance.  The fall caused massive head trauma and she died instantly.  A tragedy for her friends and family.  She was young woman who recently graduated college with a degree in special education, and was a teacher at a local elementary school.

Here is a picture of the staircase she attempted to slide down, according to The Daily Mail.

Are you kidding me?  If this is truly the staircase that she fell from I don't see how her parents can possibly win a lawsuit stating that anyone else was responsible for her death other than her own choices.

I feel for her parents.  There is no greater pain then to bury a child.  It is not the natural order of the way life is supposed to happen.  You have children and fully expect them to outlive you.  Her parents lost a precious gift.

The reports at the time of the accident say they do not believe that alcohol was a factor, but that was before an autopsy was released.  She was only at the party for about 30 minutes when this accident occurred.  Her parents are suing the hotel and both party planners.  The problem is that she wasn't even in the party when her accident happened.  She is outside of the ballroom it was being held in.  Her parents say they didn't do enough to provide for proper security for the attendees of the party and by having an open bar with the price of the ticket they were irresponsible.

So the people who bought these tickets don't need to show any restraint whatsoever?  Since the ability to drink to excess is there, it is someone else's fault if someone decides to do that.  I have been to many a wedding where there was an open bar and didn't get drunk.  It is called self-control.

According to this lawsuit not only should they have been policing how much people drink they also should be putting guards around the staircase in case anyone gets the idea to slide down it.

Luckily for these parents I won't be sitting on this jury since I don't live in Chicago, but they would get not one dime from me.  They have my deepest sympathies for the beautiful daughter they lost, but that doesn't mean they deserve to paid for it.  There is such a thing as personal responsibility, and sadly, this young woman didn't show any.  She made a stupid choice and it cost her life.  Tragic, but not worthy of a settlement.  When this case is lost, they should be forced to pay for the legal bills of the other parties.  That will reduce the amount of frivolous lawsuits in a hurry.

I am not Pro-life, but this could make me so

Did she ever consider divorce?  I would never have an abortion myself, but I am a little on the fence if it should be illegal in all cases.  But in this case, this woman belongs in jail. 


A woman has admitted to being 'an abortion addict' after having 15 terminations over 17 years.



Irene Vilar said she had the abortions not from poverty or fear but as an extraordinary act of rebellion against her 'controlling' husband who did not want children.


The 40-year-old's confession has unleashed a torrent of attacks from anti-abortion activists on the internet, including death threats and demands for her to be jailed.


The cycle of pregnancies and abortions, which began when she was 16 and ended when she was 33, was also punctuated by several suicide attempts.


Now a successful literary agent with two young daughters, Loretta, five, and Lolita, three, Mrs Vilar has written about her experiences in a memoir, called Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict.


The book, which was published yesterday, has shocked many Americans, who remain bitterly divided over the issue, and has angered campaigners on both sides of the abortion divide.


Charmaine Yoest, president of pro-life pressure group Americans United for Life, said: 'It really underscores everything we always say in the pro-life movement - that abortion is part of a very sad story for women.'


However, pro-choice campaigners said Mrs Vilar's book raises uncomfortable questions about abortion as a form of birth control.


Mrs Vilar said of the book's reception: 'I am worried about my safety and the hate mail. I just imagine the "baby killer" stuff and I could be a poster child for that kind of fundamentalism.'


The attractive one-time academic prodigy attended a boarding school in New Hampshire and was accepted into a New York university when she was only 15.


A year later, she fell in love and married a 50-year-old Latin American literature professor, who she says was opposed to having children.


She claims he bragged that his relationships never lasted more than five years and told that having children killed sexual desire.


In response, Mrs Vilar said she rebelled by 'forgetting' to take her birth control pills.

Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita Lebron, pictured at an anti-U.S. protest in 2000, is Ms Vilar's grandmother. She left her own daughter with relatives as a baby


'In the beginning I was taking pills and I'd skip a day or two or give up one month,' she said in a television interview. 'I'd think I'll be better next time.


'But slowly, my days took on a balancing act and there was a specific high. I would get my period and be sad, then discover I was pregnant, being afraid, yet also so excited.'


She claimed she had the abortions so her husband wouldn't leave her although she failed to reveal whether he knew of the terminations.


'Of course, this did not mean I wanted to do it again and again.

'A druggie also wants to stop every time.'

'Women have written memoirs about their anorexia or their bulimia, and they explain the best that they can what motivated their addiction or their behaviour. I try to do the same in this book.'


Her first husband, Pedro Cuperman, a professor at Syracuse University in New York, could not be contacted for comment yesterday.


In her book, Mrs Vilar also revealed how she is haunted by a tragic past. Her grandmother, Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita Lebron, was jailed for 25 years after storming the U.S. Capitol building with a gun in 1954.






She was convicted of attempting to overthrow the government and was jailed for 25 years before she was pardoned by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.


Divided: Ms Vilar's book has split opinion on the issue of abortion


The author was eight when her mother killed herself by jumping from a moving car and died two days later. Her husband had been driving while her tiny daughter had made a pathetic attempt to hold her mother back.


Two of Mrs Vilar's brothers became heroin addicts.


Although she said she did not see herself as a victim, she admitted she felt she had let the women's movement down.


Now re-married, she is raising their two daughters and two teenage stepchildren in Denver, Colorado.


'Motherhood has made me feel accountable,' she said. 'It hasn't made me less pro-choice.


'It's just that I understand and feel the weight of the privilege we have in exercising our right to choose.'


Yesterday, a report released by the U.S.-based Guttmacher Institute revealed the number of abortions fell from 45.5million in 1995 to 41.6million in 2003.


The study claimed progress had been made in reducing unintended pregnancies, but too many women were still having unsafe abortions, with 32 countries having laws that make the procedure illegal.

The manuscript for Impossible Motherhood was rejected 51 times, before finally being published by Other Press.

Miss Vilar married her second husband in 2003 and now lives with her two daughters and two stepchildren. She is planning a new memoir on motherhood

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1220095/American-abortion-addict-15-terminations-17-years-publishes-memoir.html