When the CITY is at fault!

So when we talk about personal injury, typically we’re talking about “people,” both in terms of the victim and the perpetrator. For example, let’s say John Smith’s car gets rear-ended by Jane Doe’s car; Jane Doe would have committed a negligent act and John Smith would have been the plaintiff (and the one who was wronged) in this instance. But what happens when we have a victim who was wronged by a city? Can that still be considered a personal injury case? It sure can. Our governments (at the federal, state, and local levels) are not these obscure entities for which there is no accountability. The governments are comprised “of the people” and, therefore, there are people within the government who sometimes make very bad decisions that have some very bad consequences.

Let’s head north to Philadelphia, where a young woman is suing the “City of Brotherly Love” for placing her in the “protective care” of her aunt. The young lady and her attorney have claimed that the aunt beat her and kept her held captive in the basement—for 10 years! The city is potentially at fault, in this instance, for placing her in the care of her aunt, a convicted felon. The plaintiff feels that if the Department of Human Services had adequately trained their workers in terms of child placements, the victim would have never been forced to suffer in her aunt’s home. Her aunt was, as mentioned above, a convicted felon; she served a prison term of 8 years for killing her sister’s boyfriend roughly twenty years ago. In the murder case, it was discovered that the aunt held the victim captive in a closet until he starved to death. If the brave young woman in this case hadn’t come out with her story, she too might have faced a similar fate.

During the young woman’s hellish experience, she wasn’t only beaten; over her ten years in captivity, she was often forced to consumer her own urine. The young lady’s hellish conditions were discovered eleven months ago when she was found, along with several mentally handicapped adults, in her aunt’s basement. Authorities believe that the aunt was keeping the mentally challenged adults in her basement in a scheme to collect their social security money. This case of incredible brutality, and the negligence that led to it, will certainly show that nobody is above the law—even those who make it.

If you’ve been a victim of the city you live in, don’t feel intimidated. If someone is negligent, and as a result you’ve been injured, you have legal recourse! Please call us at 561-266-9191 or email us at daronberg@build.simple.biz for a free consultation.

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