Woman sues after 'disaster wedding' leaves husband with brittle bones severely injured. UPDATED 2X
"Suing for medical expenses after disaster wedding?"
Relevant background information: my husband has a condition called osteogenesis imperfecta, which makes his bones very fragile and susceptible to fractures. He uses a wheelchair because his bones are too weak to support his body weight.
This past weekend, we attended a friend's wedding. There was a (again, relevant info) fairly heavy young woman at our table who was drinking heavily, and was flirting very aggressively with my husband throughout the evening.
I found out later that she's a cousin of the bride. He was very polite, but eventually started rebuffing her with decreasingly gentle hints, and told her that he was gay and that his husband was sitting right next to him.
A bit later, some tables were cleared and dancing began, which led us to believe that we were off the hook. The woman who had been bothering us was dancing with another guy, so we sat at the edge of the improvised dance floor and watched.
After a while, however, she had disentangled from her dance partner and was dancing near us with a couple of female friends. Right as a song was ending, she leaned backward in an attempted flourish of sorts and "tripped" and ended up right in my husband's lap.
As I mentioned earlier, his bones are not up to supporting a ~200 lb weight suddenly dropping on him, and she ended up breaking both of his femurs and one of his ribs.
It was a disaster -- we had to call an ambulance, he needed surgery on his right leg, he had to stay in the hospital for 4 nights, and he's going to be stuck in bed for a good long while.
We do have decent health insurance, but it's looking like we can expect to pay ~$3000 out of pocket for the healthcare he received. Honestly, we don't have that kind of money lying around.
Our friend who got married has been in touch and was extremely apologetic about the situation. He and his new wife were absolutely not at fault, and I'd like to drag them through the mud as little as possible.
I am, however, wondering if it is possible to sue the cousin at fault for the medical bills we now owe. After an evening of aggressive flirting, I frankly don't believe that she came over to us and then happened to fall exactly in my husband's lap purely by accident, but I don't have any proof that it was intentional.
I'm certain that she didn't have any malicious intent, and that she had no idea that she was going to hurt him so badly by plopping herself on him the way she did. Even if it was purely a drunken stumble, does she bear any liability for the injuries she caused, even if they were unintentional?
Neither of us have contacted her at all since the wedding -- we'd never met beforehand, and I don't know quite how to casually ask a stranger for thousands of dollars.
Based on her behavior at the wedding (the actions above, plus the fact that she peaced out as soon as it became apparent that she'd really hurt my husband, and she didn't get in touch again) I suspect that she's not going to be super willing to pitch in for medical expenses.
Do we have any kind of case against her?
Is it worth hiring a lawyer, or is that just going to add to the pit of debt that this wedding has put us into?
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's initial post:
Most wedding venues will require the purchase of wedding insurance which could cover the costs of injuries to guests. I would ask the bride and groom to see if they have a policy and if it would cover injuries; if there is coverage then the insurance company may either cover the medical expenses or the attorney fees to sue the cousin.
nightmarewedding (OP)
That's a great point and not something I'd thought of. I'll ask the groom about it, but probably won't get a definitive answer until they get back from their honeymoon after the New Year.
I do not practice in MN, but this sounds like a textbook claim against the cousin. Malicious intent is not (usually) a requirement. Talk to a local civil trial attorney.
A little over two weeks later the OP returned with an update.
First off, thank you everyone for providing really helpful input -- my husband and I had pretty much just planned to pay the bills ourselves until we read through everyone's comments.
My husband got in touch with a personal injury lawyer shortly after I made the original post, and he said that she echoed a lot of the advice we saw on here (shout out to u/lawgeek for introducing me to the term "eggshell plaintiff", which was apparently the phrase of the hour when they talked).
She said that he would almost certainly win a case against the drunk cousin, possibly for quite a substantial payout once lost wages and pain and suffering were taken into account.
She added, however, that recovery could be a real issue, and the suit might not be worth pursuing if we didn't think the cousin would actually pay up. She said that he also could have a case under Minnesota's dram shop law against the bride and groom or (more likely) the bar tending service they hired, but he’d likely get a much smaller settlement because of comparative fault laws.
I got the name of the bar tending service, and they definitely have liquor liability coverage. I learned from the groom that the cousin is a bit of a train wreck in terms of fiscal responsibility, and that she's quite unlikely to be willing or able to pay any kind of settlement. So for now my husband's lawyer is helping him figure out how to bring a case against the bartenders.
As I mentioned, it's unlikely that we'd get the full settlement (especially if he settles out of court, which I think he'd like to do if possible), but that's completely fine because the numbers she was citing were crazy high once pain and suffering, etc. were brought into play. Even a quite small fraction, if we were able to recover it, would help a lot.
As an aside, the drunk cousin apparently found out that we were considering suing her, because she found my husband on Facebook and sent him a rather incoherent message about how the whole situation wasn't her fault because she couldn't have known he had OI, and in fact was HIS fault for not telling her.
I guess she thinks he should just wear a sign at all times that says "I have brittle bones, please do not sit on me". I thought he should reply "Eggshell plaintiff!" but maturity won out at the end of the day and he didn't respond at all.
Otherwise, his fractures are healing well, which is a huge relief, and he's a lot more comfortable than he was the last time I posted. It's a little bit of a bummer that the cousin isn't going to be held accountable for her actions, but at least it's looking likely that we won't be on the hook for the bills we had to pay. Thanks again for the help, LA!
A month later, the OP returned with their final update.
Now that things have settled down a little, I thought I'd provide an update. Long story short, we didn't end up suing anyone. The woman who was responsible was unlikely to be willing or able to pay for any real damages, and Minnesota apparently has fairly strict wage garnishment laws which would prevent us from recouping even legal costs for the foreseeable future.
We did also look into suing the company that provided bar tending services for the wedding, but ultimately dropped that as well for two reasons. Firstly, there's a good chance that we'd lose the case and would then be out legal costs as well as medical expenses, and secondly it seemed that even if we did win, someone who really wasn't to blame would likely be fired.
There is good news though! As someone suggested on the original thread, the couple did have wedding insurance that covered up to $5000 in expenses for injuries to guests, which did not require establishing fault.
So we were actually able to get pretty much everything paid for with that without going through the hassle of a law suit. It definitely wasn't the kind of payout that a personal injury suit can bring, but we hadn't really been looking to profit from whole situation anyway so it turned out fine.
Other than the highly unpleasant individual who caused the whole situation, everyone involved has been really wonderful. My husband called the hospital's billing department, and they were very accommodating about deferring payment and reducing costs that they had control over (intimate knowledge of the hospital's inner workings is one of the major perks of OI, along with the punch card that gets you your 10th surgery free).
Also, the lawyer didn't end up charging us for anything, despite the fact that she spent three hours meeting with my husband and presumably some extra billable time on top of that.
The bride and groom have also been very helpful with the insurance and legal information, and gracious about their wedding reception going south in such a spectacular manner.
I do really wish that there had been some kind of consequences for the cousin beyond public shaming, but I'll just have to hope that every one of her Starbucks orders is slightly wrong for the rest of her life.
EDIT: Someone messaged me informing me I posted from the wrong account. Oops. I can't comment from the original account because this thread is locked, but if there's a BOLA post or something I can post there. I need more coffee.
EDIT 2: Man, if I knew all it took to get reddit gold was a nonstarter lawsuit and my husband breaking both his legs, I would have done this ages ago!
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's final post:
Insurance coming in clutch for once, glad they saved money not paying a lawyer suing someone who wont be able to pay.
Or the bartender! I know they seemed unlikely to win that potential case, but I couldn’t imagine suing a bartender because you had medical expenses from a third party who had a few too many drinks. Crazy lawsuits and medical debt. Nothing more American than that.
The wedding dance floor is a new twist but I've definitely heard of bars getting sued for over serving patrons that go on to drive drunk and kill/injure someone. In this case, though, it's not clear that they did over serve; LAOP says the cousin was drinking heavily but even he isn't sure if the woman was a sloppy drunk or if she was still in full control and did it on purpose.
That lady will never be invited to another wedding again.
Frankly, this is going to be one of those memories you look back that will always be told at gatherings about how chaotic and awful it was.