All of which would go toward negligence by the transit authority. Our subject golddigger is not suing the transit authority. She's going after the guy. While I appreciate all the information you're bringing to the discussion, I don't know what your position is, JHW.
Fine. Wall of text.
When I talk about an argument that can be made in someone's favor I'm not saying the argument is necessarily correct. I'm saying that based on the slim bits of information in subsequent articles I've found that there are new arguments to be made. There isn't enough here to say whether they'll be successful or refuted. Some of them may be very provably wrong.
I'll provide a summary, but again you're better off reading from primary source material rather than relying on me or bloggers to interpret and summarize them for you. My second hand interpretation is not somehow a better stopping point for your understanding than those crappy blogs and you shouldn't presume it is in any way except providing more direct sourcing. This is why I have been trying to include direct links to things like the ruling for the case and primary source news articles.
They had been cleared previously and it was determined they could not be considered a defendant in this suit. The suit may be amended later if the Illinois supreme court reverses the decision in Mrs Parks upcoming appeal. Waiting for a resolution of Mrs Park's case in hopes of pleading with the less sympathetic Merta as the defendant was not an option. The statute of limitations in Illinois on this sort of suit is 2 years; the incident occurred in 2008.
The ruling in the first Park case supersedes this plaintiff's ability to sue Merta over her injuries and her only option was to file suit against the only defendent still availible. If Merta was not negligent, then the argument that the late Park's choice to cross the tracks as he did has enough merit to be heard - this is not the same thing as saying it would ultimately be successful. If the appeal against Merta is successful then the second suit may be ammended to name them as a defendent.
So - what were they trying to get out of this considering it seems not improbable that the estate will be insolvent? They get to sue the people you think are ultimately responsible which they would have otherwise been entirely unable to do. The process of resolving Mrs Parks case will have taken about 4 years to resolve by the time it is done and the initial ruling compared to the 2 year statute of limitations.
Including Merta in the original suit would have been potentially worse. If they had sued Merta alone, Merta would have asked for a summary judgment. Using the finding of fault from the previous case the summary judgment would have been in their favor. The chances of a summary judgment where one plantiff appears to be attempting to sue a defendent for the same incident they were already found not to be at fault for would be very likely to be denied the appeal against Z's lawyer's inevitable requests that it be heard after the Park appeal if she wasn't named as a defendant. Basically since Mrs. Park lost her case, they had to sue her to have the best chance that her suit would be resolved favorably before theirs might run out of chances to be heard. In terms of Park's laweyer and Z's lawyer, cooperating in requesting scheduling that allowed for this was in both parties best interests.
Why didn't they sue both then? Merta would ask to for summary judgment or dismissal in-part; that they be dismissed as a party or for summary judgment. In either case - as they were dismissed in part - the only way to appeal for Z. would for that same judge to agree to write an an express written finding in support of that. That's actually sort of a problem in appealing complex cases in Illinois.
So what do I really think about this? Well after all that I KNOW that I do not have nearly enough first hand information to make sweeping moral judgments of the quality of the people involved. That would be undeserved self-righteous bullshit.
I think this looks like Z's lawyers might be counting on Park winning her appeal against Merta. The reason to sue her is not to get a cent from her but because its the only reasonable chance they have of getting their case against Merta heard ever. If they didn't do it then they would have very likely found themselves in a situation where the initial ruling made in favor of Merta resulted in them either running out of appeals up against the statute of limitations despite Park eventually winning her own appeal and showing that Merta was responsible for her son's death.
Was Merta was negligent? Are they now negligent but actually weren't at that time? I Park sounds like they have an argument to make that they were - and a stronger one than they did when their case was originally heard. That's why they're having their appeal heard - because the new information is enough to consider rehearing the argument. The argument that Zokhrabov could be looked at as negligent does make sense as well, but only if Merta really wasn't negligent.
I haven't found significant details on Merta's original defense as the reporting on this doesn't seem to keen to help explain their position. I hope they don't have much working in their favor and that might be biasing me into tending to beleive Park's case. I want Park's mom to win but I don't know if that represents the truth of what happened. Merta makes the convenient villian for the story - and they may very well be just that.
My optomistic hope is that Merta loses to Park. If that's the case then Zokhrabov will ammend their complaint to include Merta. Park would likely move to have the complaint against them specifically dismissed or request separate summary judgment. Since this situation will then strongly favor Zokhrabov over Merta - any difficulty relating to the ability to appeal will favor Zokhrabov and not Merta this time.
That's the "good ending" for this and it hinges on Park's case against Merta. Merta being found negligent and responsible for this whole mess is the result I'm sure most of us would want but it might not be the truth. There's no reason to think that Zokhrabov a gold digger though - well only if don't have any idea how this crazy shit works. It's a broken way to have to go about doing things but there aren't a lot of options.
Her lawyer probably doesn't talk to the press much and probably should avoid doing so - but what she's doing is probably the only way to even get the chance to make a case at all and not even necessarily against the family of the deceased. It makes for inflammatory headlines and self-righteous blog rage but there's a lot more here than fits in a blog post. I'd post all the links for this one but I think I'm done googling for you.
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