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Dustin Dibble says he was so drunk he doesn't remember being run over by an N train in the Union Square subway station in April of 2006, but his intoxicated condition didn't stop a jury from awarding him $2.3 million last week. Dibble had part of his right leg amputated after the incident, and he says he'll use the money to cover his medical expenses. The jury agreed with lawyer Andrew Smiley's contention that the motorman had plenty of time to stop the train when he spotted Dibble, 25, lying on the tracks 180 feet away, but he kept moving because "he thought it was garbage." Smiley tells the News, "They're not allowed to hit you just because you're drunk and on the track. That doesn't give the Transit Authority a free pass." The payout is double what the MTA had to cough up in 2006, when a Queens man sued after losing his legs below the knees during a drunken romp on the 7 train tracks. And last year a Columbia University study confirmed the obvious: drinking and riding the subway is stupid, unless you're willing to trade your legs for some big cash moneys. Photo courtesy Reidab.
Drunk Man Wins $2.3 Million for Falling in Front of Subway
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It's the same media that NEVER mentioned Muslims' hatred of Israel as a possible motive for 9/11.
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A shame the train wheels missed his head.
(sigh)
I know he has medical expense and I'm sympathetic to that, but this happened due to his own actions.
180 feet? A car's stopping distance is ~100 feet, and it doesn't weigh 200-300 tons. According to this NYT article, the stopping distance of a properly maintained R-42 train is 250 ft. @ 30 mph. Those cars are not used on the N, but it provides some context. Unfortunately none of the articles provide an estimate of the speed of the train when it was 180 feet away, which is a very important detail.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CEED7153AF937A25751C0A965958260&n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FOrganizations%2FN%2FNew%20York%20City%20Transit
ok 1. drinking and riding the subway is not stupid, one idiot falling on the tracks is him being irresonsible or something, but it doesn't mean someone who drank shouldnt ride the subway, go back to kansas.
2. that is quite a bit of money and now the mta is more in debt, it just gets worse!
Gotta love the America court system. Hopefully he gets hit by a train and this time doesn't make it out alive.
This guy is a scumbag looking for some easy money. He was drunk and now it's the MTA fault!?
On the plus side, you know this idiot still won't go very far even if he gets the whole amount. He'll just blow it all on booze, hookers and drugs. With luck, he'll party himself into an early grave.
this is what happends when jury duty is forced upon people w/o just compensation. anyone with a brain finds a way to get out of it, and you're left with morons who hand out these ridiculous awards.
zero sympathy for this guy. any chance the judge could overturn the award or reduce it significantly? Does this mean i can sue Wusthof if i sever my finger while chopping onions while drunk?
honestly, where does it end? People need to take responsibility for their actions.
And everyone wonders why the MTA is in debt...
Millions could be saved if the justice system was smart enough to throw out these frivolous cases where people are incapable of blaming themselves for their own idiotic actions and look everywhere for a scapegoat.
That's the problem. People are ALWAYS looking to blame someone else or something else for their actions.
are all these guys white?
just asking...
"he kept moving because 'he thought it was garbage.'"
Sounds like he wasn't exactly wrong.
Thanks, drunken idiot, for spiraling the MTA even further into debt. When our fares go up this year, we'll think of you.
"And last year a Columbia University study confirmed the obvious: drinking and riding the subway is stupid, unless you're willing to trade your legs for some big cash moneys."
Ha! Now I've got something to show my friends who try to make me feel guilty about drunk driving!
well there IS a ton of trash on the tracks all the time. sometimes big huge bags of garbage.
why do dumb people always get the money?!
I'm with the guy should have been a splatter mark people. It, however, annoys me when the last thing someone uses in a post as some sort of idiotic insult is "go back to Kansas." Ohhh, just because you are from NY you must be some sort of superior being or something, hah. Go ahead and look at the Columbia study, they tend to be far more enlightened beings than you, and then you can go back to whatever crack in the wall you crawled out from.
people from kansas are great, it isn't saying i'm superior, it is saying that to make a statement like you shouldn;t drink on the subway is ridiculous, and if you were from here you'd know that, you sound like naiive chungbot idiots.
If the MTA won these kinds of lawsuits (instead of often losing them), then it probably wouldn't have been made a violation recently to cross between subway cars.
That was my first thought too. All too often they settle crap like this out of court. And we get treated to nanny rules like "no changing cars". As the first poster put it, we'd be better off if this shitbird had died from his stupidity.
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY !!!
It's BS lawsuits that increase our taxes and fares. Just like all those idiots who fell into the gaps on the LIRR and Metro-North platforms. Is it so difficult to watch where your going when your walking. Not to mention a large part of those riders were most likely drunk too.
That guy on the 7 line tracks was walking on the tracks with his friends, this guy should have been arrested and charged not given monetary damages.
"he thought it was garbage."
He was right.
"he thought it was garbage."
He was right.
you people suck, this man got hit by a train. sure he was drunk but i doubt he was thinking about 2 mill before he fell onto the tracks. just keep complaining and see how much better it makes you feel about yourselves.
Whatever
It's not about feeling bad for the guy. Sure, I feel bad for him for getting hit by a train.
But people have to take responsibility for their actions. The fact that he wanted to blame anyone other than himself is not only selfish, but an insult to the taxpayers and passengers who will now pay for his drunken mistakes.
It's not that we feel better about ourselves by doing this, it's that we know he isn't thinking of anyone BUT himself by cashing in on this.
12 more idiots give away the store.
Thanks, guys.