Posted on 09/30/2003 8:04:13 AM PDT by blam
Locked-up woman awarded $100,000
She said she was forced to spend 63 days confined in a DIP storage shed
09/30/03
By GARY McELROY
Staff Reporter
A Mobile County Circuit Court jury awarded $100,000 Monday to a woman who claimed she was forced to spend 63 days locked in a Dauphin Island Parkway storage shed.
The verdict handed to Wanda Hudson was $9.9 million short of what the 44-year-old woman had wanted from Parkway Storage.
Her attorney, Mallory Mantiply, said the company was negligent when one of its employees apparently inadvertently locked Hudson into a 30 feet by 10 feet unit at its DIP facility.
During the two-day trial before Circuit Judge Rick Stout, Hudson told jurors she spent more than two months locked in the unheated unit with her meager belongings, with diminishing sustenance. As the days and nights drew on, her body wastes became overwhelming in the tight space, she said.
Mantiply said that before her confinement on Nov. 7, 2001, Hudson weighed 150 pounds. By Jan. 29, 2002, when she was pulled -- starving and dehydrated -- from the stench of unit No. 611, her weight had plunged to 85 pounds.
At one point Monday, jurors declared they were deadlocked, by a vote of 8 to 4. In whose favor, it was unclear. Stout admonished them to buck up and do their duty.
About two hours later, following questions posed to the judge about a plaintiff's own responsibility in his or her predicament, jurors delivered the verdict.
In her testimony, Hudson claimed she yelled out and pounded on the walls and doors of what she came to believe would be her "tomb" any time a passer-by approached, but they ignored her.
During the trial, defense attorney Burt Taylor suggested to jurors that Hudson -- who shortly before her ordeal began was evicted from her home -- was homeless, had been living in the storage unit for some time and was probably asleep the night a company employee found the door to her unit open.
When he closed and locked it, she was trapped.
Hudson rejected Taylor's premise that she was sleeping. She said she was "looking for some papers" amid her piles of possessions and simply never heard the sliding metal door slam shut.
But when it did, she said, her existence in the dim, cold shed took on "a life of its own."
During Taylor's cross-examination of her on Friday, she claimed that while she kept her belongings stored at Parkway, she was living with a sister in west Mobile.
"Was she expecting you that night?" Taylor asked.
"Yes," Hudson answered.
Yet, no one, including her sister, ever filed a missing persons report, Taylor asked.
"No," Hudson replied.
Evidence related to Hudson's mental and psychological history was not presented to the 10-woman, two-man jury.
Information within the case court files indicates that in late October 2001 -- about a week before she disappeared behind the doors of her storage shed -- mental health authorities asserted she posed "a real and present threat of substantial harm to herself and/or others."
At various times, according to the court files, authorities have described Hudson as unable to "physically take care of herself ... allowing her physical condition to deteriorate to the point of threatening her health and well-being, making threats to kill herself."
Stout had ruled the evidence inadmissible.
When police found her after being in there 63 days, she kept mumbling, "What about Dingell-Norwood?... What about Dingell-Norwood?..."
I feel that she just ripped off the storage company for a hundred grand. She shouldn't have been paid one red cent, instead she should pay the company rent for her stay.
Stout had ruled the evidence inadmissible.
Stay tuned folks, I don't believe we have heard the last of this one.
Nah, she'll take the $60k (the lawyer probably got 40%) go to another state and try for the $10M again.
“What do you mean 100 large... that's CHICKENFEED! I've been dis-enfranchised and we will appeal!
You owe me a keyboard.....ROFLMAO
Hey, the diet worked. She should pay them $100,000.
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