OCEAN CITY—The remaining defendant in a civil suit filed in federal court by a plaintiff impaled in the chest by a flying umbrella on the beach in June 2018 this week filed a motion to dismiss the case.
In July 2018, Pennsylvania resident Jill Mendygral was impaled in the chest by a rented beach umbrella that had become dislodged from the sand and thrown through the air by a wind gust. In June, Mendygral, through her attorneys, filed a civil suit in U.S. District Court alleging negligence against the two named defendants, the Town of Ocean City and the beach equipment rental company 85 N Sunny, LLC, referred to simply as “Sunny” in court documents. The suit seeks damages in excess of $75,000 against each of the named defendants.
Last year, however, a U.S. District Court judge granted the Town of Ocean City’s motion to dismiss the case against city, leaving the beach rental franchisee was the only remaining defendant. Last week, 85 N’ Sunny, through its attorneys, filed a motion to dismiss the case entirely, pointing to a couple of pillars in the plaintiff’s case.
“The plaintiff cannot meet her burden of proof to show negligence on the part of 85 N’ Sunny,” the motion reads. “To meet her burden of proof, the plaintiff must show 85 N’ Sunny’s actions, or inactions, were the proximate cause of her injuries. There is no evidence in the record to establish by a preponderance of the evidence why the umbrella came out of the sand, which is critical to the analysis of causation.”
The defendant’s motion to dismiss asserts there is no evidence to support the umbrella that impaled the plaintiff was installed improperly.
Is she under the impression the town of Ocean City controls the wind? I kind of get suing the rental stand for negligence, but suing the town is just frivolous. This case has dragged on for years and it just seems like an attorney wringing as much money out of this woman as they can.
Ok dimwit.
In cases like these you include all the defendants that you can imagine and let the court sort it out. Second, the attorney isn’t getting a dime unless it goes to trial and they win.
Her only cost would be for depositions and stenographers, if they were even at that point.
If the City of OC controls, regulates or owns the stand, that is why they would be included in the lawsuit.
The fact that it came out of the sand, could indicate, it was possibly not planted in the ground properly, and it would have been negligence to not warn customers of such occurrences and how to protect oneself or how to react to them.