91-Year-Old Ninth Circuit Judge Supports Duty of Target to have AED at Its Big Box Stores: Monstah PAC Announces its Support for Allowing Trial Over Issue of Target Store’s Failure to have AED Onsite When Customer Died from Sudden Cardiac Arrest
OCEANSIDE, CA--Monstah PAC a Federal Election Commission registered Super PAC announced today that it supports the proliferation of Automated External Defribillators throughout the US.
Monstah PAC announced today that David G. Eisenstein, the Treasurer of Monstah PAC, acting in his capacity as the attorney for the mother and brother of Mary Ann Verdugo, the developmentally challenged 49 year old who died of a Sudden Cardiac Arrest inside a big box Target store in the Pico Rivera area of Los Angeles while shopping there with her mother Rosemary and brother Michael in 2008, has filed a Petition to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals asking for a Rehearing En Banc of a three Judge Panel’s October 28, 2014 decision to affirm the District Court’s dismissal of the case without trial. The Ninth Circuit’s three judge Panel based its decision to affirm the lower federal court based upon a June 24, 2014 Opinion of the California Supreme Court that Mary Ann’s death from a Sudden Cardiac Arrest was not foreseeable by Target and so it was not required to have an automated external defibrillator (AED) at its store.
Mr. Eisenstein, in his Petition filed on Tuesday on behalf of the Verdugos stated that he filed it “because of the extreme and exceptional importance of the federal and state issues involved in this case as well as the literally life or death impact this Court’s decision on Rehearing could have on thousands of people affected by it.” Verdugo v. Target Corp., Case No. 10-57008. Eisenstein, in his electronically filed Petition filed through the Court’s web-based ECF system, quoted from the Separate Opinion filed by Ninth Circuit Judge Harry Pregerson which accompanied the Opinion of the other two members of the Panel in their decision dismissing the case without a trial after the case had been in the state and federal courts for over four years. Judge Pregerson, who is 91 years old, stated at that time:
“There is good reason for big box stores like Target to be equipped with AEDs: they save lives. The high percentage of death due to sudden cardiac arrest can be reduced by the quick use of a defibrillator. When ‘CPR and AEDs are used within three to five minutes from the onset of collapse, the survival rate of a sudden cardiac arrest victim is as high as 50 to 70 percent.’”
Attorney Eisenstein went on to quote Judge Pregerson’s Separate Opinion further in the Petition he filed on Tuesday, stating:
“Big box stores in particular should be required to equip their stores with AEDs. The sheer size of these stores increases the time for paramedics to reach a sudden cardiac arrest victim, making quick access to an AED of paramount importance. Mary Ann Verdugo died in the Pico Rivera Target store in part because the paramedics could not get to her inside the store in time to administer an AED. It is obvious why paramedics would have a hard time getting to the Target location and navigating inside the store within the five minute time window…”
SOURCE: Monstah PAC