mamabearCali wrote:Though I think Zimmerman is stuck with Omara, there is no way in tarnation (are we allowed to say that here?) that I would ever hire him as a lawyer. TAM you are absolutely correct. You never never apologize for your actions. For heavens sakes O'mara should know that! If he absolutely needed to express regret for the loss of their son. He could say something like this. 'I sympathize with them in their grief as they have lost a child, that is always hard." GRRRR it is so hard watching someone get such terrible counsel from someone who is supposed to be an advocate for him.
When I was in junior high school, my father ran over a small child on a tricycle, nearly killing him. It happened right in front of me and my horrified mother. We were leaving on spring break to go spend a week at our beach house and my dad was pulling a trailer, loaded down with beds and other stuff for the house, with his car down the alley that ran behind our house, while my mom and I followed him. A little boy on a trike, not realizing we were there in the alley, came barreling out of his family garage, hit the left rear passenger door of my dad's car and went down. My dad's left rear tire (a 1953 Mercury) and the trailer's left tire rolled over the poor kid's head and chest before my dad could get the car stopped.
In the long run, the child lived. He suffered a fractured skull, broken ribs and a punctured lung, but the local ER was able to save his life. His older brother was a playmate of mine and my brothers, and we knew the boy very well. To top it off, both of their parents were already dead, having been killed in a car wreck when they were much younger, and they were being raised by their grandparents. To the grandparents, the potential loss of one of the two grandchildren—all they had to remember their own children by—was a crushing blow.
My dad felt sooooo bad for them. We all did. These people were neighbors and friends. And the accident was 100% the child's fault. There was literally nothing my dad could have done to avoid it, except to have not been there, in that alley, on that day. He wasn't speeding. We were going
maybe 5 mph. He had, for all practical purposes, already
passed the entrance to that garage, the interior of which was in shadow, and what transpired actually happened
behind him from where he sat in the driver's seat....so there was no way he could have known that this boy would appear out of nowhere.
The point of all this is that my dad felt so bad about it that he wanted to send flowers to the boy's grandmother along with a note saying how sorry he was that this had happened. I very clearly remember the insurance company's lawyer telling him, "NO! Do not do that. Sending those flowers may make you feel better about it, but in court it will be taken as an admission that you think you could have done something differently to avoid the accident; and a judge or jury will find
you to to be at least
partially responsible, if not entirely so, and
we won't be able to help you then."
He never sent the flowers, but it broke his heart. Fortunately, the kid did survive although he had a nasty scar on his forehead that was visible for a long time.
When you are involved in a situation which results in the injury or death of another person, no matter how bad you might feel for them or their family, you simply don't open yourself up to litigation. For better or for worse, we live in a litigious society. Even if you're 100% in the right, an admission of sorrow on behalf of the other person opens you up to liability you don't want. So, if you simply
MUST say something, "I am
very sorry that your son put me in a position of having to use deadly force to defend myself; I wish it had never happened," is a whole lot better than "I am very sorry I took your son's life." Zimmerman stepped in a big cow patty with that one.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
#TINVOWOOT
