Drunken man awarded $2.3M for losing leg in subway

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New York, Feb 18 (ANI): A drunken man, who lost his leg after he fell on the track of a subway train, has been awarded a whopping 2.3 million dollars by a Manhattan jury, which blamed NYC Transit for the accident./pp
Brooklyn resident Dustin Dibble, 25, confessed that he’d been boozing with friends for four hours before he fell on the tracks at the 14th Street Station, where a train accident cost him his right leg./pp
Official records revealed that Dibble had a .18 blood-alcohol level at the time of accident, more than double the legal limit if he were driving./pp
Dibble also said that he was so drunk that he didn’t remember anything about the 1:50 a.m. accident./pp
In fact, he didn’t even remember how he ended up on the tracks, but the jury still found he didn’t bear the majority of the blame./pp
Dibble’s lawyer, Andrew Smiley, said that the NYC Transit was the bigger culprit because a driver is supposed to stop the train if he sees a big mass in front of the train./pp
A subway- train operator is obligated to stop a subway train before it strikes a large object on the tracks, even if it is not known that the object is actually an intoxicated person, the New York Post quoted Smiley as saying./pp
Train operator Michael Moore, a long-time MTA vet with a sparkling record, said in a deposition: I saw what I thought was garbage on the track and continued into the station./pp
He added: I saw movement and I put the train into emergency – meaning he hit the emergency brake./pp
When asked whether his client’s drunkenness was one of the major reasons of the accident, Smiley said, We never disputed that./pp
It was just an accident [but] it wasn’t my choice to lose my leg, said Dibble./pp
While a spokesman for NYC Transit, Paul Fleuranges, said that lawyers were reviewing the February 9 verdict, Mayor Bloomberg’s office declined comment./pp
The jury returned a 3.5 million dollars verdict in Dibble’s favour, but also found him 35 percent responsible./pp
Thus, Dibble will now collect 2,336,713 dollars. (ANI)/p

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