Woman sues bar for not carding her and preventing drunken car crash that left her paralyzed

A 20-year-old woman paralyzed in a car crash after a night of underage drinking is suing a bar for not checking her ID.



Chelsea Hess, now 22, argues a barman should have asked her to show her ID when she ordered drinks at a South Carolina Bar in 2009.



Despite being a year under the legal age to drink Ms Hess spent several hours at Jock's Sport Grill in Bluffton, South Carolina where she drank with friends and played billiards.

Night out: Chelsea Hess at 20-years-old finished drinking with friends at a local sports bar before taking to her car without wearing her seat belt leading to her car crash

When she left the premises at 1am and was driving home her car ran off the road.



Officials say Ms Hess, who was not wearing a seat belt, was over the legal drink drive limit.

She was ejected from the vehicle and hurled 20ft suffering catastrophic injuries that left her as a paraplegic.



According to the lawsuit Ms Hess claims the bartender should have asked if she was old enough to buy alcohol or if she was drunk when she was in the bar.

'The bartender failed to attempt to ascertain whether or not plaintiff was already impaired by alcohol consumption when she purchased the alcoholic beverage and made sale to plaintiff even though she was unable to legally purchase the alcoholic beverage, and notwithstanding the possibility that she was already impaired by alcohol consumption,' according to the complaint obtained by the Courthouse News Service.

Response: Ms Hess is now suing the bar in Bluffton, South Carolina for serving her alcohol under the age limit as well as the city for the road's conditions resulting in her paralysis

Ms Hess has also sued the Department of Transportation and the town of Bluffton and Beaufort County claiming they had failed to properly maintain the road where she crashed.



The lawsuit says the wheels of her 2000 Mitsubishi car 'suddenly dropped off into a large unmaintained area on the shoulder of Alljoj Road, which caused plaintiff to lose control of her vehicle and causing her to roll the vehicle off the side of the road.'

In its response to the lawsuit, Schubert Place LLC, operator of Jock's Sport Grill, denied Ms Hess's claims.



They said she was responsible for her injuries due to her acts of 'negligence, recklessness, willfulness and gross negligence'



The South Carolina Department of Transportation also blamed Ms Hess, saying the accident occurred due to a number of events for which she bore responsibility, including driving while intoxicated and failing to keep her under control.



Ms Hess, now aged 22, is seeking punitive damages that could run into millions and cover the cost of her round-the-clock health care.

Tragic: Hiroyuki Joho, 18, died when he ran in front of a 70mph Amtrak train at Edgebrook Metra station in Chicago in 2008

The case comes as critics questioned the extreme lengths to which America's culture of compensation could be taken.



Yesterday it was revealed that a woman was suing the family of a teenager hit by a train, after one of the young man's body parts hit her following the horrific and gory accident, causing her to suffer a broken leg and wrist.



Hiroyuki Joho, 18, died when he ran in front of a 70mph Amtrak train at Edgebrook Metra station in Chicago in 2008. It was pouring with rain and the teen had an umbrella over his head.

His body was severed on impact, and a large part became airborne, flying about 100 feet onto the southbound platform, where it hit a commuter.

Gayane Zokhrabov, 58, brought a lawsuit which was initially dismissed by a county judge, who said Joho could not have anticipated the woman's injuries.



But ruling in what it called a 'tragically bizarre' case, a state appeals court disagreed.

It found that 'it was reasonably foreseeable' that the high-speed train would kill the college hopeful and fling his body towards a platform where people were waiting.

Lawyer Leslie Rosen, who handled Zokhrabov's appeal, argued that the case was a straightforward negligence case.



'If you do something as stupid as this guy did, you have to be responsible for what comes from it,' Ms Rosen said.

A lawyer for the teenager's mother, Jeung-Hee Park, said the crossing where of high-speed trains cross a slow commuter train track is inherently hazardous.

The whistle that warns people to keep clear is no longer in use and the view of the track is partly blocked by foliage, said attorney Keith Davidson.



He said: 'It really reflects a failure of the courts to get to grips with the limits of cognition and human reaction.

'It has been shown that objects, in this case a train, approaching from a distance from a wide angle appear to be going much more slowly than they are.

'Hiroyuki would have thought he had plenty of time to cross the track.'