Police Litigation Against Taser Int'l
by TChris
To satisfy themselves that the Taser is a safe device to use against individuals who aren't engaged in life-threatening behavior, the police occasionally shoot a volunteer officer with a Taser. The officer rarely volunteers a second time.
In fact, injuries during Taser training have produced litigation against Taser International, including this recent case:
The suit by [Jacob] Herring, chief of police in Hallsville, Mo., says he suffered at least two strokes, loss and impairment of his vision and hearing, neurological damage, a head injury and "significant cardiac damage" after being shocked by a Taser M26 during a class on April 20, 2004.
Taser acknowledges that it has been sued 14 times since 2003 by officers who say they were injured in training.
The report said the company also faces 12 wrongful death lawsuits and four lawsuits alleging injuries during arrest or detention. Three other wrongful death suits have been dismissed, and one is on hold.
Perhaps fearful of being forced to compensate all the individuals who have been seriously injured (or killed) after being shocked with a weapon Taser International claims to be safe, Taser has opted to discourage litigation by refusing to settle any lawsuit. A few multi-million dollar verdicts might produce a change in that strategy. So might an SEC investigation into whether the company has fraudulently misstated the safety of the weapon, and class action lawsuits like this one:
The village of Dolton, Ill., near Chicago, stopped using its Tasers in May and filed a class action lawsuit in federal court last month. That suit says Taser's marketing portrays the unit as safe but that the product "has been involved in numerous deaths and serious injuries across the country" and has never been "adequately or independently tested for safety."
TalkLeft background on the Taser controversy is collected here.
| < Six Feet Under Finale | Iraq Leaders Delay Constitution > |
