Taser Manufacturers Face Wrongful Death Lawsuits
Posted by
Randy WaltonOctober 02, 2007 5:23 PMThe now infamous video of a University of Florida student being tased during a speech by Senator John Kerry has shined the media spotlight on the use of tasers, and the safety of these self defense devices. As the use of tasers spreads among law enforcement and civilians alike, a question is being asked: how safe are they?
For the uninitiated, a taser is a hand-held devise that shoots to barbed darts into the victim, which delivers a series of 50,000-volt electrical pulses over 5 seconds, causing severe pain and intense muscle contractions. The pain and muscle contractions have led to many injuries and more than 50 wrongful death lawsuits against one manufacturer alone.
People who are tased when upright tend to fall over. Any resulting injuries are usually minor but at least one person has died from a head injury. The barbed tips of the Taser darts, which are around 1 centimeter long, can cause serious injuries if they strike sensitive areas such as the eye, though there have been few reports of such injuries.The intense muscle contractions can also be damaging. Last week, William Bozeman of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, published a case of spinal fracture in a volunteer as a result of these contractions.
Critics remain particularly concerned over whether the electric shocks delivered by a Taser can disrupt the nerve signals controlling breathing or the heart.
Tasers are still considered extremely safe when correctly used, and serious injuries are uncommon. But with the growing use of tasers, particularly by the untrained general public, we will no doubt be hearing more and more about injuries and deaths related to the use of these devices.
For more information on this subject, please refer to our section on Wrongful Death.