Every now and then, a lawsuit comes along that is so ridiculous, it must be true. Such is the case of the Manhattan auntie who is suing her own nephew for $127,000.
What, you ask, was his crime? Did he walk off with her Hermes clutch? Her prized DeBeers? No, he greeted her too enthusiastically at his eighth birthday party, and hurt her wrist in the process.
According to 54-year-old HR manager Jennifer Connell, the damage from that overzealous hug in 2011 has left her life in tatters. To this day, she struggles to “hold a plate of hors d'oeuvres” and manage the stairs to her third-floor New York walk-up. (Because we all know the wrist bone is directly connected to the leg bone.)
“All of a sudden he was there in the air, I had to catch him and we tumbled onto the ground,” went Connell’s testimony. “I remember him shouting, ‘Auntie Jen I love you,’ and there he was flying at me.”
The lawsuit claims that young Sean Tarala, now 12, should be held accountable for his “unreasonable” behaviour.
As he sat in court with his father, Sean, whose mom died last year, looked 'confused.' And no wonder. After all, why would dear Auntie Jen try to take her own family members to the cleaners? Perhaps there is more to the story than meets the eye. And - call it a hunch - perhaps that $127,000 has something to do with it.
Connell maintains that her nephew should have known better than to greet her in this manner, i.e. the manner of a 50-pound boy who hasn’t seen a relative he loves in a while.
She says negligent; I say accident. She says careless; I say caring. After all, how many nephews get genuinely excited to see their aunts and uncles?
At the time Connell never admitted that she was hurt because she “didn’t want to ruin his birthday.” Fair enough. Then she should have quietly headed straight from the party to the local hospital to get that baby X-rayed and put in a cast.
She didn’t want to ruin the boy’s party, yet she had no qualms about waiting two years before dropping a lawsuit on his family.
RELATED: The Valentine Kite
Printer-friendly version