or He didn't have a leg to stand on
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/drunk_million_lost_verdict_after_9tyHj2gMkpsmlHsHJswYdM
Drunk who lost leg after falling from a subway platform has $2.3 million verdict tossed
Ouch.
A man who lost his leg after taking a drunken tumble onto the subway tracks at Union Square has now lost his $2.3 million jury verdict.
In a decision released today, the state Appellate Division overturned the award to Dustin Dibble and threw out his entire lawsuit, finding the MTA shouldn't have been held liable for his injuries.
The January 2009 award had infuriated Mayor Bloomberg, who said, "you'd think there's a personal responsibility here," referring to the fact that Dibble had been out drinking for hours before he stumbled off the platform and into the path of an N train.
The appeals court didn't focus on Dibble's drunkenness - they focused on his assertions from his experts that the train operator, Michael Moore, could have avoided the accident if he'd reacted faster.
One expert testified that Moore's reaction time was too slow because it was more than one second.
The five judge panel said Dibble's case "was based on impermissible speculation, and that the verdict was thus based on insufficient evidence."
Dibble, a former college basketball player, has admitted drinking for four hours in an Upper West Side bar on April 25, 2006, before he left to take a downtown train home.
At the 14th Street Station, he fell off of the platform and onto the tracks, where an N train hit him, cutting off his right leg below the calf. Dibble's blood-alcohol level was found to be .18 - twice the legal driving limit.
"It is uncontested that he was intoxicated at the time of the accident and remembers nothing of the accident itself, only that he woke up in the hospital," the appeals ruling says.
Bloomberg had called the verdict "incomprehensible."
"It wasn't my choice to lose my leg," Dibble said at the time.
