A federal jury on Monday awarded $500,000 to the widow and estate of a police officer who killed himself nine days after he helped defend the U.S. Capitol from a mob of rioters, including a man who scuffled with the officer during the attack.
The eight-member jury ordered that man, 69-year-old chiropractor David Walls-Kaufman, to pay $380,000 in punitive damages and $60,000 in compensatory damages to Erin Smith for assaulting her husband, Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They awarded an additional $60,000 to compensate Jeffrey Smith’s estate for his pain and suffering.
The judge presiding over the civil trial dismissed Erin Smith’s wrongful-death claim against Walls-Kaufman before jurors began deliberating last week. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said no reasonable juror could conclude that Walls-Kaufman’s actions were capable of causing a traumatic brain injury leading to Smith’s death.
chiropractor
So, a fraudster.
So how exactly does the law work with this? Civil wrongful death suits like this always confuse me. I definitely get the argument that he caused this cop to kill himself but from a legal standpoint what is the threshold for that? Like presumably if someone kills himself because he got fired, his family wouldn’t be able to sue his boss for wrongful death.
The presence of doubt.
A civil suit can be dubious. But a criminal suit has to have no reasonable doubt.
Right but that doesn’t answer what the actual bar is for a civil wrongful death case to apply in a suicide. Does there need to be a criminal action first? In my example, if the suicide victim wrote a note and said “I’m doing this because my boss was mean and fired me” then there is no doubt what the cause was. However, in this case I feel like the courts would never side with the family if they tried to sue for wrongful death.
Are you asking how one can deem legitimacy of someone’s actions and if they are based off morals/ethics if I understand correctly?
I don’t believe it comes to that. I believe it is about whether someone’s actions were reasonable. If their boss tells them their performance is lacking and they need to let them go, it’s reasonable. If their boss calls them a vile piece of shit that deserves to lose his house, kids, and their partner doesn’t deserve to be stuck with such a lowlife so they should just blow their brains out… And a coworker brought that information to their spouse after they blew their brains out later that day… they may have a case.
I’m sure it’s all relative
Can Donakd pardon people involved in civil trials, or otherwise mess with the outcome?
Yes actually. So far Trump has pardoned an estimated $1.3 BILLION in fines and restitutions.
He doesn’t have to. The MAGAts will start a gofundme or some billionaire will pay the bill.
Can’t have any precedents that might deter Boomer criminals in the future.
No billionaire is going to pay this.
More likely is that MAGAts will harass if not kill the widow for even thinking of suing one of them.
He could simply sue the government and get it back.
Why would billionaire MAGA pay? We were told many times that the insurrectionists were antifa. So this guy must be antifa too.
I would expect him to try. Or at least complain about the “liberal judge”.
