A U.S. Senator's Swimming Pool Safety Litigation Case

Hi All, Two days ago, I read an Los Angeles Times article on Democratic Presidential Contender Sen. John Edwards' second last major legal case right before he ran for the Senate seat in North Carolina in 1998. This case involved a female child who lost 80% of her intestines after she sat on a swimming pool drain pump. I posted parts of the article that talks about this case in a hope that people who were not aware of the danger of the pool drain know about it. This post is not designed to campaign for Sen. Edwards' presidential bid, so I deleted all parts of the article that are less relevant to this swimming pool drain cover case and more relevant to his presidential campaign. A Legal Star Who Burned for Politics By David G. Savage, Times Staff Writer RALEIGH, N.C. — The courtroom was packed and curious lawyers stood in the back. All eyes were on John Edwards, making his closing argument on behalf of a 5-year-old girl horribly injured in a wading pool accident. For 90 minutes, politely but persistently, Edwards spoke, without notes, without missing a key point. *** The jury deliberated for three hours before returning a verdict of $25 million. *** It was the case of 5-year-old Valerie Lakey. Valerie's accident happened early on a June evening in 1993 at a public pool in Raleigh. Her father, David, was nearby when Valerie and a playmate went to the wading pool while the lifeguards cleared the main pool. The plastic drain cover in the wading pool was easily popped off, and the two children put their hands over the drain. Valerie sat on it, and she was soon stuck. Her father, frantic, could not pry her loose. When the pump was finally shut off, she had lost about 80% of her intestines. Valerie's life was saved by skilled doctors, but she faced a difficult future. She was hooked up to feeding tubes 12 hours a day. After several weeks, her parents, David and Sandy, decided they would need to sue in hopes of winning enough to pay for her medical care, which at the time included the prospect of a kidney or liver transplant. The pool, the county and the pump company agreed to settle for the maximum their insurance policies would pay, nearly $5 million. However, Sta-Rite Industries, the Wisconsin-based maker of the plastic drain cover, refused to settle. Its lawyers argued that the cover had been improperly installed because it was supposed to be secured with screws through two holes. That was the fault of the pool operators, not the manufacturer, they contended. The case went to trial and, over seven weeks, Edwards carefully presented his case. A key moment in the trial came when the company admitted, belatedly, that it had documents in its files of similar cases of people trapped by its drains. *** Edwards and Kirby used those documents to show that the company had been sued for a series of accidents. Suddenly, Sta-Rite's lawyers decided they'd better settle the case before it went to the jury. Edwards called the girl's parents with the company's $17.5-million offer. When he suggested that they turn it down, he recalled recently, "there was dead silence on the other end of the line." But, eventually, they agreed. At his closing argument, Edwards placed the white plastic drain cover on the railing in front of the jury. Had the maker of that cover simply attached two screws to it, the cover would not have popped off, Edwards said. The company had testified that neither a warning label nor the attached screws were needed, Edwards continued, even though they knew that other children had been trapped in the suction of similar uncovered drains. "You have been watching what happens when absolute corporate indifference collides with absolute innocence," Edwards said. "This piece of plastic is the only thing that stands between the children and this hidden, deadly hazard. "Knowing what you now know, would you have put a warning on the cover?" he asked the jury. "Would you have put those screws in the cover?" *** www.latimes.com/la-na-edwardsprofile14jan14,1,4513902.story