Jury Returns $ 4.4 million Verdict For Death Of Beloved Coach
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The family of a beloved coach Yarmouth, Massachusetts killed in a bus accident outside of Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts won a personal injury/wrongful death suit from a Suffolk Superior Court jury worth a minimum of $4.4 million. . The jury returned their verdict late Tuesday December 18, 2007.
The accident occurred in the fall of 2003 as a bus shuttled passengers to the parking lot where their cars were parked at the stadium from the PGA Deutsche Bank Open golf tournament taking place in Norton, Massachusetts that day.
As the bus went through an empty parking lot, a gust of wind hit a metal parking gate that was not locked in place as it should have been. The gate swung open and an 8-inch double-shafted pole crashed through the bus' windshield and shot diagonally across the aisle. Thomas Kelly, who was an English teacher and football and basketball coach at Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School, was pinned and injured, along with two others, by the pole. His left leg was mangled and his right leg broken.
Kelly had to be airlifted from the scene and underwent several surgeries. He died a month later.
After Kelly's death, his family filed a wrongful death suit against five parties. The bus driver and bus company have both been exonerated by the jury. However, Apollo Security, Standard Parking, and Foxboro Realty Associates, the owner of the land around the stadium, were found by the jury to have been responsible for the unsecured gate.
According to one of their attorneys, Kelly's wife and two sons will share the $4.4 million judgment, which could amount to $6.1 million including interest.
For more information on this subject, please refer to our section on Wrongful Death.