Only In New Jersey!!

[doomtsu]

I came across this article today while on a NJ police site. Unbelieveable, just goes to show you that people REALLY aren't liable for thier own actions!

Any of you out there ever experience something quite like this?

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Cops lose 911 case on partygoer

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

By KIBRET MARKOS
STAFF WRITER

Shortly after countdown on New Year's Eve 2001, Frederick Puglisi left a party at a Ramsey hotel to buy cigarettes and grab a bite at a nearby restaurant. He headed back when he couldn't find anything open. But he never made it to the hotel.

Having drunk too much, Puglisi fell and passed out on a snowbank along Airmount Avenue, where he spent nine hours until police found him the next morning, barely alive.

The Ramsey and Bergen County police departments must now pay Puglisi $850,000 for not finding him sooner, following a Bergen County jury's verdict.

The jurors had given Puglisi $1 million but deducted 15 percent after finding him partially liable: His intoxication didn't help the search effort, according to the decision returned last week. The Bergen County Police Department is to pay $450,000 and the Ramsey Police Department $400,000.

Lawyers for both departments vowed to file a motion for a new trial.

Puglisi's lawyer, Samuel Denburg, said the Bergen County Police Department received a 911 call from a passer-by around 1 a.m., shortly after Puglisi went down. The call was relayed to the Ramsey Police Department, and three officers were dispatched to the scene, he said.

Denburg argued that the dispatcher didn't obtain enough information from the caller and didn't relay all of it to Ramsey police, who searched the area for nine minutes. The attorney also claimed that the officers did not conduct a thorough search.

At 10:30 the next morning, another passer-by found Puglisi, then 20, lying in the snow and called police, he said. He was barely breathing, his body temperature had dropped to 78 degrees, and he had suffered severe frostbite to his right hand, Denburg said.

Puglisi was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center, where doctors were able to revive him. But the frostbite permanently deformed his hand, his attorney said.

After a one-week trial in state Superior Court in Hackensack and six hours of deliberation, jurors sided with Puglisi.

"This has been a long and difficult ordeal for my client and his entire family," Denburg said Tuesday. "We can only hope that Bergen County and Ramsey will now do the right thing so that Mr. Puglisi can attempt to put this tragedy behind him."

Francis Sheehan, the lawyer for the Ramsey Police Department, said he was "obviously disappointed" with the verdict. "The officers conducted sufficient search of the area," he said.

He declined further comment, citing his pending request for a new trial.

Lawyer David Lafferty, who represented the Bergen County Police Department, said the dispatcher followed proper procedure in obtaining 911 information and passing it on to the locals.

"I think the operator acted appropriately," he said. "His primary objective was to dispatch the call as quickly as possible."

[acreature]

Welcome to America. Make a stupid choice that ruins YOUR life, and blame it on someone else successfully.