Apple Store crash victims sue Apple over '100% preventable' crash
Apple, the shopping center developers, and the driver responsible for the destruction at the Apple Derby Street store in Hingham, Massachusetts, are all being sued by a coalition of victims, all saying that not enough was done to prevent the incident.
Source: AP Photo/Steven Senne
One man died and 19 were injured in the incident on November 21 when Bradley Rein drove his SUV through the store's front window. Rein has since claimed it was an accident, and Tim Cook has visited the victims.
According to the Boston Herald, an unspecified number of the victims are suing Apple and others. Sheff & Cook lawyer Doug Shef told journalists that he is representing "several" victims.
"Our experts tell us that this catastrophe was 100% preventable," Shef said. "They simply needed to place a few barriers or bollards between the parking lot traffic, which was busy holiday traffic, and the public."
The driver skipped a curb and drove about 30 feet from the road to the front window of the Apple Store. It's not clear how fast the driver was going, and he has claimed that his foot was stuck on the gas, causing the accident.
Claiming that "storefront crashes occur thousands of times per year," Sheff said that 46% of those resulted in injuries, 8% included fatalities.
"We want to right a wrong that exists," Sheff continued. Rather than suing for any specific sum, he said that the victims would "like to see more of a clarification of these kinds of safety devices and, of course, to make these families whole."
Neither Apple nor the shopping mall's owner WS Development have commented.
Read on AppleInsider
Source: AP Photo/Steven Senne
One man died and 19 were injured in the incident on November 21 when Bradley Rein drove his SUV through the store's front window. Rein has since claimed it was an accident, and Tim Cook has visited the victims.
According to the Boston Herald, an unspecified number of the victims are suing Apple and others. Sheff & Cook lawyer Doug Shef told journalists that he is representing "several" victims.
"Our experts tell us that this catastrophe was 100% preventable," Shef said. "They simply needed to place a few barriers or bollards between the parking lot traffic, which was busy holiday traffic, and the public."
The driver skipped a curb and drove about 30 feet from the road to the front window of the Apple Store. It's not clear how fast the driver was going, and he has claimed that his foot was stuck on the gas, causing the accident.
Claiming that "storefront crashes occur thousands of times per year," Sheff said that 46% of those resulted in injuries, 8% included fatalities.
"We want to right a wrong that exists," Sheff continued. Rather than suing for any specific sum, he said that the victims would "like to see more of a clarification of these kinds of safety devices and, of course, to make these families whole."
Neither Apple nor the shopping mall's owner WS Development have commented.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
2. Did Apple own the parking lot?
3. Whoever owned the property did they follow local building codes and ordinances?
Ultimately like most lawsuits against companies of this scale and wealth everyone is hoping for a significant settlement for them but not matter to Apple.
People falling onto rail lines or out of windows is also 100% preventable but we somehow get by without extra measures.
As do most pedestrians who only have the curb between them and the traffic.
But I guess that may be true of many professions, doctor, teacher, minister, realtor, most are good, but the few that aren’t taint the rest.
I am not a fan of tort lawyers, but many Apple Stores already have bollards in front. Saddle Creek (Germantown/Memphis) has them as do other stores I have visited. With an all glass front it would seem that having bollards would be a natural risk mitigation. We live in a time when there are many risks to pedestrians, shoppers and others that never would have been imaginable not too long ago.
My guess is that Apple will settle out of court unless the demands are unreasonable. In a court they would lose on the facts of the case.
A recently retired Mass state rep tried for years to mandate protective barriers
It’s that kind of thinking that meant that this morning I had to remove a shrink plastic seal, unscrew a cap that had one of those breakaway rings, and THEN tear off a seal glued over the mouth of the bottle, all to get at the OJ inside. I suspect that next time the bottle will be in a box that’s glued closed and the box sealed in plastic.
It’s very obvious when barriers and bollards are used for safety reasons, like around gas pumps and propane storage tanks.
I’m 100% sure that Apple would have provided financial compensation for the victims of this crash out of concern for the victims, either directly or through liability insurance, because it occurred in their store. But the primary responsibility lies with the driver and owner of the vehicle who is required in most states, including MA with some of the toughest auto insurance requirements in the country, to carry insurance to cover personal and property damage related to the operation of the vehicle.
If a plane, helicopter, tree, telephone pole, power line transformer, etc., crashed through the roof of the store and injured or killed someone in the store would Apple be liable because they didn’t have protective barriers mounted over the roof of their store to handle such scenarios? I don’t think so, but in any case, I’m quite certain Apple carries very high maximum liability insurance to deal with such cases.
Getting lawyers involved and going directly after Apple is an opportunistic money grab regardless of tragic circumstances surrounding this incident. This was a tragic accident and that’s why companies and individuals pay lots of money for insurance policies to cover these unpredictable situations. Even if Apple put their stores in hardened underground bunkers their stores would not be totally safe from things like sinkholes and earthquakes. But they’d still be sued - because Apple has a lot of money and lawyers like nothing better than shaming a very public entity like Apple to hand over some of that money to them, with a small stipend set aside for the actual victims.
They got planning permission, works licences and had it overseen by an architect. If the work got through the whole process (including municipal inspection) and conformed to legislation, what more could have been done on reasonable grounds?
Turning the store into a bunker would be unreasonable.
In Spain bollards are not used to protect store customers but to deter smash and grab operations.
Also, statistically speaking there is probably more chance of injury to customers through the presence of other customers in the store but there are no checks for concealed weapons on entry etc. We accept this reality even in the face of the risks.
I hope this case does not get far if Apple simply complied with all the obligations it was required to comply with.
The affected parties should be looking at the driver and his insurance company for compensation.
The reason why stores have barriers installed behind their stores in for theft and loss prevention. The bad guys don’t want to draw attention to their illegal activities which makes the back entrances more vulnerable.
Again, I’m not anti-safety and I recognize that these accidents occur more often than they should, especially in areas with a higher proportion of elderly drivers, some of whom should probably not be driving. But I also believe that we need to take a systems approach to solving the problem. I’ve spent some time working with functional safety for industrial machinery and one thing that strikes me as odd in the commercial sector is the total lack of emergency shutdown mechanisms in automobiles.
I can’t imagine an auto maker putting a big red e-stop button on the dashboard of every new car, mostly because drivers would be unlikely to use it under emergency circumstances, but I do think that auto makers should be involved in helping to solve the unintended acceleration problem from their side as well. They can’t solve it alone, just like retrofitting passive barriers on a massive scale can’t solve the problem alone. Some level of cooperation and shared responsibility needs to be applied, including community based legal mandates, on-vehicle safety systems, applying more scrutiny to age related license renewal, and avoiding driver distraction.
Shot down by the building-real estate lobby.
It should be noted that Apple Store Palo Alto had stanchions installed several years ago (before the pandemic) due to an auto-assisted burglary attempt.
Clearly Apple could have done more to prevent the Derby Street incident.