Police Officers Sue Taser for Training Injuries

R

Rich Lucibella

Staff
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0820taser20.html
Police officers in five states filed lawsuits against Scottsdale-based Taser International over the past two weeks claiming they were seriously injured after being shocked with the electronic stun gun during training classes.

Among them is a Missouri police chief who says he suffered heart damage and two strokes when he volunteered to be shocked while hooked up to a cardiac monitor as a way to demonstrate the safety of the Taser to his officers.
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Rich
 
when he volunteered
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If it's done as a volunteer only activity, then doesnt that sort of already invalidate any lawsuit?

But on the other hand if the Taser company is underrating their strength then that is kind of shady, and isnt this type of weapon considered less lethal? and not less than lethal? meaning it can still kill you but the chance of dying is less than being shot with a firearm? Why are cops being used a test subjects with "Less lethal" weaponary?
 
Volunteered in good faith but after being given false and misleading safety information?

The 104-page complaints filed Aug. 5 each allege that Taser was aware of injuries to other officers but did nothing to warn police departments, "knowing full well that such a reported serious injury would have devastating ramifications on its safety claims and, most importantly, its most-effective sales tool, the law enforcement training program."

Specifically, the lawsuits point to the injury of former Maricopa County sheriff's Deputy Samuel Powers, who filed the first product liability suit against Taser in February 2004 and claims that his back was fractured when he was shocked during a training exercise two years earlier.

He said in his suit that Taser instructors and training materials all told him the stun gun had not and could not cause an injury.
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IMO, Taser should not be responsible for someone being injured by testing a weapon on themselves, unless the company specifically told the police department that they "will not" get injured when using the stun gun in demonstrations.
 
Whether or not the chief volunteered has absolutely no bearing on the merits of the lawsuit. The Taser, OBVIOUSLYwas represented to the l.e. agency(ies) as being safe. If there's a nexus between the chief's heart and stroke problems, then OF COURSEhe has a legitimate lawsuit.

If you VOLUNTARILYget in your car and it blows up and injures you, due to a design or manufacturing defect, you think your case would be tainted by the fact that you volunteered to drive your car?

Ever heard of "implied warranty of merchantibility?"
 
I'm not sure I can figure out where a medical nexus between a Taser ride and a stroke comes in, but then again, I'm not a doctor.
 
And if its taser's training includes:
shocked while hooked up to a cardiac monitor as a way to demonstrate the safety of the Taser to his officers.
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I think that constitutes a statement on taser's behalf of saying it is safe...its safe enough we'll zap you and you can watch a heart monitor to see so!
 
Hmm, in the U.K. there was a case where police officers were criticized for using a taser on a suspected terrorist. Body attached bombs could have been detonated by the taser..

Could be a reason for lawsuits in the future.
 
Time to sell that Taser Stock, the end has begun.
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But-but-but Tasers were supposed to be the thing that meant we would have no more excuses for keeping our defense guns! :rolleyes: The antis were going to say, "See, if the cops are safe with TASERs, then so are you."


If the company is claiming that when certain conditions (medical, device usage, etc.) are met, that there is no health risk to being TASERed, then they should be liable if someone follows their demonstration procedures and gets hurt. If the TASER devices do more damage than the company actually claims they do, they should be liable.

If this is a case of some big fat police chief dude said, "Stand back; watch this," and his health history had indications that he should not allow himself to be shocked, then that's on him.

But in any case, if any of these cases is to be considered to have merit, all TASER use by the departments involved should be currently halted! And of course, TASER itself should be unwilling to continue sales to any department that is suing it. (Just like all gun companies should refuse to sell guns to any state, city, or local police department or government if it is on board with lawsuits against the companies.)

-blackmind
 
The irony I see here is that injuries and deaths caused by Tasers are not secret. I am not suggesting the Taser folks are not liable, only that individuals in many police departments failed to make proper decisions that resulted in injuries to fellow officers or themselves. In short, they made stupid decisions about a dangerous product.

A quick search on the interet reveals a plethora of events. Many have extinuating circumstances such as the suspect having a pre-existing medical condition (sometimes not known) or is high on nasty drugs. You gotta figure that if folks are going to die after being tasered becasue of pre-existing conditions that were unknown, then volunteering to be tased will run the risk of "recon by fire" for locating a potentially lethal medical condition.

If you think about it, the taser disrupts the neuro-electrical signals. The heart functions by neuro-electrical signals as does muscle control and the brain. Is that something you want to voluntarily expose your CNS to?

If any of the departments involved in the lawsuit still use Tasers and a suspect gets hurt by a Taser, the suspect should have an exceedingly easy time of winning a lawsuit against the department using the Taser as the department obviously does not feel that the product is safe as indicated by their own lawsuit!

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For the record here, I doubt the chief with heart and stroke damage ever volunteered to be used in a demo where he was clubbed on the back of his legs with a baton until he fell to the ground. He could have gotten bruised and the bruises turn to blood clots and kill him, right?
 
If any of the departments involved in the lawsuit still use Tasers and a suspect gets hurt by a Taser, the suspect should have an exceedingly easy time of winning a lawsuit against the department using the Taser as the department obviously does not feel that the product is safe as indicated by their own lawsuit!
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Maybe not - Tasers are less lethal than guns but that doesn't rule out the use of guns. Batons are definitely going to cause injury, but that doesn't rule out the use of batons. If a Taser is used as an intermediate step before using guns, then the damage to the tasered person is certainly to be preferred over that caused by bullets.

I think it is still a perfectly valid tool for LEOs.
 
If I were the police chief, I'd be pretty peeved too - am guessing they asked for volunteers with the prelude that it was perfectly safe, and chief was a good sport.

Even if it does turn out the Taser caused the issue, I don't think that should automatically result in a ban on Taser use. Nightsticks, chokeholds, etc aren't 100% safe either.
 
Whats the problem here? I thought we'd decided that Tasers were not only good but good for you, full of vitamins and minerals, the perfect way to (jump) start your day? :rolleyes:
 
I could see how a tazer could cause a stroke. A stroke can be caused by the heart getting out of rythm, allowing blood to pool in the heart and clot, then the clot gets pumped through, and hello stroke.
 
You gotta figure that if folks are going to die after being tasered becasue of pre-existing conditions that were unknown, then volunteering to be tased will run the risk of "recon by fire" for locating a potentially lethal medical condition.
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It is this notion of "recon by fire" that I find is the greatest argument against using TASERs against criminal suspects in the first place.

A guy who would simply get bruised up because he's high on cocaine and the cops wrestle him to the ground to arrest him might just DIE if they instead use a TASER.

I know that TASERs are used, in part, to keep police officers from having to get down and dirty in a physical altercation with a nutjob. But where is the balance point between guaranteeing the officer's safety, and guaranteeing the safety of a person who should be arrested but who is NOT, at the moment of arrest, a person known to be guilty of a crime (the jury decides that, much later on)?

I think that if a person doesn't want to stand exposed to physical harm on the job, he should not become a police officer. When TASER is used as a lazy-man's way out of having to confront an individual in a police-type manner, we run the risk of finding out in a lethal way that the suspect had a condition that would cause him to not survive being TASERed. I find that unacceptable. Most people will survive a minor beating-during-arrest, of the type that TASERs are now being used to replace. And I think there are more people out there who will now not survive being taken into custody, as a direct result of this "new-fangled" way of doing it. They claim it's to make the suspect suffer less injury during arrest -- but I suspect it's the police backing away from accepting the possibility that they may be injured in a scuffle with an arrestee.

Police who put their own safety ahead of that of the public should not be police. When you are willing to jeopardize lives just "so you can go home at night," then you should consider other work.

-blackmind
 
I don't wish harm on anyone. Kind of funny though when you are on the receiving end. What makes them think they are any different than John Q Public, who didn't volunteer. I think the attitude of the police today has changed in how they respond to the public in general. I have mixed feeling about tazers, but it seems to me that they are used too often, especially when a cop doesn't want to get his hands dirty doing his job. Policing has changed because of our screwed up legal system, but it doesn't make it right. Law enforcement is a calling...
 
Whats the problem here? I thought we'd decided that Tasers were not only good but good for you, full of vitamins and minerals, the perfect way to (jump) start your day?
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I've been told that my great grandmother, who was raised in a sod house on the Kansas prairie, would go out and grab the electric fence for a little buzz first thing in the morning. She lived to her late '90s.
 
They claim it's to make the suspect suffer less injury during arrest -- but I suspect it's the police backing away from accepting the possibility that they may be injured in a scuffle with an arrestee.
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Rodney King was, as I understand it, a textbook use of police batons. Watching the entire video, you can discern the cues by which they start and stop their thumping of his body, and the locations thumped.

If they'd had more effective Tasers back then, where one guy could zap him and two others could cuff him in the five-second span of the jolt, the riots might never have happened and Rodney King might never have wound up with a six-figure check to piss away.
 
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