My First Big Story

[silverscreenselect]

I've just written up my first big story at the new job, and it's a big one. The writing part of the job requires monitoring the cases we cover and writing articles based on the progress of the case. This one just resulted in a $65 million verdict for the plaintiff, a man whose apartment exploded due to a gas leak. He was engulfed in a ball of flame and burned over half his body.

The verdict is likely to be reduced. Georgia Law limits punitive damages to a maximum of $250,000 unless it's an intentional tort or a products liability case, so the $47 million in punitive damages is likely to go away. The attorney's fee award may or may not stay. In Georgia, a party can recover attorney's fees if the other party is stubbornly litigious, which can happen if the jury feels there is clear and convincing evidence of the defendant's liability and no real issue involved. The judge may or may not allow this award to stand.

The explosion resulted because the management company didn't cap the gas lines to the dryers (since most people have electric dryers, the gas lines aren't used much any more). The apartments were poorly constructed; the shutoff valve for the dryer line was not in the same room as the dryer, a code violation. There were actually two shutoff valves in the furnace room, one for the hot water heater and one for the dryer line. So, it was probably only a matter of time before someone would turn on the wrong shutoff valve by mistake. The complex had 57 units without capped gas lines (it's a 700 unit complex). Also hurting the defendants was the fact that someone reported a "severe" gas smell coming from the area of the apartment 36 minutes before the explosion, and the maintenance man who was dispatched to send it out arrived after the fire trucks did following the explosion.

This is one of the larger jury verdicts we've ever had in a case we've televised, so we're planning to use this to help market our network. Our sales people will be promoting this story quite a bit in the upcoming weeks, so it's good exposure for me personally.

http://blog.cvn.com/65.8-million-award- ... -explosion

[TheConfessor]

Did you retain the movie rights?

[Vandal]

You'll need this:

[frogman042]

I read a newspaper article that I was hoping would be a hard-hitting investigation of the facial tissue industry - it turned out to be just another

Spoiler

puff piece.