Dallas Fort Worth Injury Lawyer Blog
Three years ago, James Becker was doing what many vigorous 15-year-old boys do – playing baseball, basketball and soccer.
Now he is severely disabled, must use a wheelchair and is under the constant care of his mother.
The accident that reduced James to such circumstances occurred at the Woodcroft Swim Club in Parkville on July 29, 2006, when, his family’s lawyer says, he almost drowned. His brain was apparently deprived of adequate oxygen for about 10 minutes.
His parents, William J. Becker III and Mary Becker, have filed a $40 million lawsuit in Baltimore County Circuit Court against the swim club and the company that runs it, D.R.D. Pool Management Inc., accusing them of failing to both “timely recognize and respond” to the struggling boy and to properly perform resuscitation efforts.
Paramedics who arrived at the pool 13 minutes after the incident was reported found James without a pulse. They attempted to get his heart restarted, primarily by using a defibrillator. While in an ambulance headed toward Franklin Square Hospital Center, they found a pulse but, his lawyer says, the damage was done.
The lawyer, H. Briggs Bedigian, said the amount of damages sought for James “is not meant to shock the conscience,” but represents the best estimate of what it will cost to care for him for the rest of his life. The suit accuses the defendants of negligence but does not seek punitive damages.
In the suit, the family is asking for $36 million for James, $3 million for his parents’ expenses so far and $1 million for the boy’s mother, who was at the pool with him and helped to pull him out of the water.
“Mary Becker was forced to bear eyewitness to her son James’s horrifying near-drowning, [his] deteriorating condition in the minutes following his removal from the pool, and near death, which has resulted in real and severe emotional distress,” the suit says.
At the time of the accident, James, an only child, was a sophomore at Archbishop Curley High School. Now, at 18, he attends the Chimes School, which serves children and young people who are developmentally disabled or have multiple handicaps, autism and other problems.
“He literally went from a normal, all-American boy who should have started college this year to basically the worst fate I can imagine,” Bedigian said. “He can’t eat, walk or talk. He’s completely trapped, but he still has cognition – he recognizes people.”
William W. Carrier, an attorney representing the swim club and the management company, said that the injury to James’ brain was caused not by a near-drowning but by a heart attack he suffered in the pool. Carrier said James was pulled out of the water less than a minute after he showed signs of struggling, and never went to the bottom.
The boy was given CPR treatment by a Maryland Shock Trauma Center nurse who happened to be one of the 15 people swimming in the pool at the time, Carrier said, adding that three lifeguards were on duty and responded to the emergency.
If you or a family member has been injured because of the fault of someone else; by negligence, personal injury, slip and fall, car accident, medical malpractice, trucking accident, drunk driving, dangerous drugs, bad product, toxic injury etc then please contact the Fort Worth Texas Personal Injury Attorney Dr. Shezad Malik. For a no obligation, free case analysis, please call 817-255-4001 or Contact Me Online.