|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
HOT JOBS IN EVANSVILLE
Family of Indy legal startup founder sues Tesla over fatal 2016 crash
Marilyn Odendahl for www.theindianalawyer.com
Survivors of the founder of the Indianapolis-based legal startup Case Pacer, who died after a fiery 2016 crash of a Tesla Model S, have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the electric car maker, claiming the company built and sold a vehicle it knew was defective.
Kevin McCarthy’s wife and three children filed the lawsuit June 25 in Superior Court in Alameda, California. They assert the automobile’s defects, including its “unstable and inadequately protected lithium ion batteries,†“faulty door handles,†and “uncommanded acceleration,†led to McCarthy’s death after his Tesla S wrecked on Illinois Street in downtown Indianapolis on Nov. 3, 2016.
The family is seeking general damages and special damages as well as punitive and exemplary damages against Tesla, Inc.
“Kevin was a loving husband and father, a successful businessman and a pillar in his community,†said attorney Elise Sanguinetti, founding partner of Arias Sanguinetti Wang & Torrijos LLP. “He was killed because Tesla built and sold a car it knew was defective, and those known defects led to Kevin’s horrible, avoidable death.â€
Arias Sanguinetti Wang & Torrijos LLP in California and Slavik Law Firm LLC in Colorado are representing the McCarthy family. The case is Stacey McCarthy et al. v. Tesla, Inc. and DOES 1 through 100, inclusive, 19C24488.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment by IL deadline.
McCarthy had been in the process of building his company Case Pacer. After his death, the company leadership continued the business.
McCarthy was riding as a passenger in his 2015 Tesla Model S and Casey Speckman, an employee of Case Pacer, was driving. He and Speckman had been entertaining clients at the Omni Hotel in Indianapolis when they left shortly before 1 a.m. to retrieve some promotional materials they needed for the next day’s Indiana Trial Lawyers Association conference.
According to the lawsuit, Speckman lost control of the vehicle because of the uncommanded acceleration defect and, while attempting to avoid an oncoming car headed the wrong way, she drove up on the sidewalk and hit a tree. Witnesses said the car hit a wall and a fire subsequently ensured, engulfing the vehicle.
McCarthy was observed to be alive following the impact and was attempting to escape the vehicle, the lawsuit says.
However, the lawsuit says, because of the uncommanded acceleration event, the lack of effective automatic emergency braking and the ensuing crash, and the propensity of the vehicle to catch fire, as well as the defective design of the door latch system entrapping him in the vehicle, he was unable to exit the car.
As a result, according to the suit, McCarthy suffered severe thermal injuries and was exposed to toxic gases. After almost twenty minutes, the Indianapolis Fire Department extricated McCarthy and transported him to Eskenazi Hospital, where he died due to the injuries he suffered during the post-impact fire, the suit says.
MITCHELL G. WHEELER
Chandler, IN. – Mitchell G. Wheeler, 57, died Monday June 24, 2019 at his residence in Chandler, Indiana.
Mitchell was preceded in death by his parent Glenn C. and Barbara S. Wheeler and brother, Michael W. Wheeler.
Surviving Mitchell is his wife of 20 years, Tammy; daughter Becci Giddings(Mark); Brother, Terry(Mary); Nephew, Jeffery Wheeler(Tina); one grandchild, Leah Giddings and many friends.
Services will be on Friday, June 28th at Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Chandler, IN.
Visitation for family is at 10 am on Friday.
Visitation for Friends is at 11 pm on Friday.
Service will start at 2 pm on Friday followed by burial at Greenwood Cemetery in Chandler, IN.
In lieu of flowers please make a donation to his wife Tammy to help with funeral costs.
To send flowers to the family of Mitchell G Wheeler, please visit Tribute Store.
Lois Smith
Boonville, IN. – Lois Smith, 72 years old (February 1, 1947- June 25, 2019) has joined her Heavenly family, parents, Clarence and Dorothea Addington and dear Aunt Edna Addington. She waits to be reunited someday with those left on earth: husband, Ron Smith; daughters, Jenny Stadelmann and Angela Taylor (Ryan); grandchildren, Grace and Ellie Stadelmann and Josiah and Micah Taylor; sister, Linda Hadley (David); brother-in-law, Jim Smith (Margie); and nieces and nephews Julia (Aaron) Mayes, Doug (Amee) Hadley, Chris (Jaleigh) Hadley, Aaron (Lisa) Smith, and Zachary Smith.
Lois was a loving and devoted wife, mother, daughter and sister. Outside of family, she poured her passions into serving others, especially through teaching and music. She taught for more than 35 years, the majority being at Castle High School, as an English and Literature teacher. Her service continued outside of the classroom to provide additional support to teens during difficult transitions.
Lois also enjoyed learning about other cultures through her travels to Europe with students and through her participation in a professional development program with other teachers traveling throughout Asia and developing an Asian literature program. These amazing cross-cultural experiences expanded her ability to see the image of God in all people.
Lois’ other love was music. She played piano at Main Street General Baptist Church for over 25 years, and she especially enjoyed preparing for and performing cantatas around the holidays.
Services will be 10 A.M. on Friday, June 28, 2019 at Koehler Funeral Home in Boonville, Indiana with Pastor Rodney Sloan officiating. Burial will be at Mt Gilead Cemetery in Boonville, Indiana.
Visitation will be 4 P.M. until 7 P.M. on Thursday, June 27, 2019 at the funeral home and again from 9 A.M. until the time of service on Friday.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to The Association of Frontotemporal Degeneration (ATFD), which supports research to find treatments and a cure for those suffering from frontotemporal dementia. To learn more go to https://www.theaftd.org/
To donate by mail, simply make a check out to AFTD and send it to:
AFTD, Radnor Station Building 2, Suite 320, 290 King of Prussia Road, Radnor, PA 19087
To send flowers to the family of Lois R Smith, please visit Tribute Store.
Vail’s two-hit outing gives Otters 6-0 victory
The Evansville Otters picked up a 6-0 series-opening win Tuesday against the Schaumburg Boomers, receiving eight shutout innings from starting pitcher Tyler Vail.
Vail made his deepest start of the season, recording a season-high 10 strikeouts and allowing only two hits.
The right-hander has seen improved performance since transitioning from the bullpen to the starting rotation.
Vail, the Easton, Pa. native, hit Dylan Jones for the first pitch of the game, but was able to settle in with back-to-back strikeouts to Jimmy Galusky and Quincy Nieporte to get out of the top of the first.
The Otters struck first offensively on an RBI single from Ryan Long, scoring Keith Grieshaber, to give the Otters a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first.
Carlos Castro led off the bottom of the fourth with a solo home run, his sixth of the year, extending the Otters lead to two.
After a J.J. Gould single, Jack Meggs ripped a double down the right-field line giving the Otters a 3-0 lead.
Vail would enter a groove from that point on. Four of his eight innings went in order as he had his secondary pitches working Tuesday, combining that with his fastball. He earned his first win as a starter, improving his overall record to 2-3.
The Otters would score two more runs in the fifth, as errors were committed by the Boomers, allowing Long and Castro to cross home, and the Otters took control of the game at 5-0.
Making his first start since May 17, Payton Lobdell allowed three runs on six hits in four innings. He earned the loss, going to 0-3 on the season.
Grieshaber smacked an RBI double that scored David Cronin in the bottom of the sixth, pushing the Otters’ lead to six. They were able to string together quality at-bats that turned into runs, a formula that has worked for them in 2019.
Senator Braun Offers Condolences to Family of Jasper Girl Scout Isabelle Meyer
Senator Mike Braun released the following statement offering condolences to the family of Isabelle Meyer, an 11 year-old girl from his hometown of Jasper, IN who died Monday in an accident on a Girl Scout camping trip in Perry County.
“In a close-knit community like Jasper, every loss feels personal,” said Senator Braun. “My heart aches for Isabelle’s family, and Maureen and I are praying for them and our whole hometown community.”
Tuition Costs Continue To Rise In Indiana
Tuition Costs Continue To Rise In Indiana
By Abrahm Hurt
TheStatehouseFile.com
INDIANAPOLIS– The State Budget Committee heard testimony Monday from state universities that are increasing tuition in the coming academic year.
Rep. Tim Brown, R-Crawfordsville, said Hoosiers are spending more of their salaries on college tuition than they did 10 years ago.
The committee heard from and asked questions of university leaders from Indiana University, Vincennes University, Ivy Tech Community College, the University of Southern Indiana and Indiana State. Each college had tuition hikes that exceeded the Commission of Higher Education’s recommendations.
The commission recommended that base tuition and mandatory fees for resident undergraduate students should be held at current levels or adjusted by no more than 1.65% in the next two school years.
Purdue, among Indiana’s public universities, is holding the line on tuition hikes. In June, the college announced a freeze on tuition for the eighth consecutive year.
At Ivy Tech Community College, officials closed campuses, sold property and cut employees. The school lost money when the state dropped the cost of dual credit courses from $50 to $45, said Matt Hawkins, senior vice president and chief financial officer for Ivy Tech Community College. Dual credit courses allow high school students to earn both high school and college credits.
John Sejdinaj, vice president and chief financial officer for Indiana University, said the school has seen a decline in enrollments across all categories—residential, regional and international.
He said the college accepts over 75% of its applicants, but the college has had to increase fees to attain a higher budget.
“Our rule is to graduate more people, more Hoosiers, so that we can generate income for the state,†he said.
From 2017-2018 and 2018-2019, tuition increased by 1.4% each year. In June, IU announced a 2.5% increase for in-state undergraduate students on all of its campuses for each of the next two school years. Out-of-state undergraduate tuition will increase by 3%.
Aaron Trump, chief government and legal affairs officer at the University of Southern Indiana, said tuition and fees will increase 2% for 2019-2020 and 2020-2021.
Trump said this will cost students $156.90 in year one and $159.90 in year two.
Sen. Ryan Mishler, R-Bremen, said he would speak to the Commission for Higher Education to get a report that would break down the percent of state dollars, percent of tuition and fees from all the universities’ total revenues.
FOOTNOTE: Abrahm Hurt is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalists.
Commentary: Brebeuf, Cathedral And The New Reformation
TheStatehouseFile.comÂ
INDIANAPOLIS – For some reason, the archdiocese of Indianapolis seems to want to provoke another Reformation.
Within the past few days, Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School in northwest Indianapolis announced it was separating from the archdiocese. The archdiocese wanted Brebeuf to fire a longtime and well-respected teacher who happens to be gay and married. Brebeuf stood with its employee – and its LGBTQ students – and said no.
Soon after, Cathedral High School announced it was knuckling under to demands from the archdiocese that the school fire another longtime and well-respected teacher who happens to be gay and married. The archdiocese had a lot of leverage to exert on Cathedral. It could force teachers who are priests to leave the school and even compromise Cathedral’s not-for-profit tax status, which likely would have shut the school down.
The Brebeuf and Cathedral controversies follow a similar battle at Roncalli High School on Indianapolis’s south side.
There, the archdiocese demanded the firing of a longtime and well-respected – notice a pattern? – school counselor who happened to be gay and married. Another gay and married Roncalli employee faced the same archdiocesan wrath.
Both Roncalli employees have filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charging the archdiocese with discrimination. The complaints are a prelude to lawsuits.
They’re lawsuits the archdiocese likely will lose or be forced to settle. Unless the archdiocese is willing to enter into a jihad to fire every employee who is divorced, had an abortion, engaged in premarital or extramarital sex or supports capital punishment, the argument that it is selectively enforcing the teachings of the Catholic Church in order to discriminate is close to a slam dunk.
But that’s down the road.
At this moment, the archdiocese’s actions have provoked a firestorm.
The New York Times and other national news organizations have done stories on the Brebeuf and Cathedral situations.
Several Indiana state lawmakers said schools the archdiocese controls or supports no longer should be eligible for vouchers and other forms of taxpayer support. The legislators’ sensible argument is that no school that discriminates against individuals in legally sanctioned unions should receive government funds. The state wouldn’t support a business or organization that fired employees who married people of a different race or ethnicity.
But perhaps the thing that should be most troubling to the archdiocese – and the church leadership to whom the archdiocese presumably answers – has been the reaction from Indianapolis-area Catholics. Brebeuf students, parents, alumni, faculty and staff have rallied around the school.
Upset members of the Cathedral community began an online petition drive urging the school to defy the archdiocese on principle, regardless of the consequences. The petition included an open letter to Cathedral’s leadership that cited an authoritative source on the subject:
“This policy decision comes at a time when the global Church, exemplified by the papacy of Pope Francis, has embraced a more inclusive stance and pastoral tone toward the LGBTQ+ community. In 2013, Pope Francis made headlines saying, ‘If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?’ He went on to say, ‘The catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says they should not be marginalized because of this [orientation] but that they must be integrated into society.’â€
Within a few hours, more than 4,000 people had signed the petition, many of them Cathedral students, parents and alumni.
Worse, at least one Cathedral teacher threw down the gauntlet in a way that perfectly illustrated the archdiocese’s shaky legal position. She said she had been divorced and had remarried without getting an annulment. If the archdiocese was going to fire people for being gay and married, it needed to fire her, too.
Most poignant have been the arguments from anguished Catholics that Christ would not close the door to people in this fashion.
In the popular imagination, Martin Luther’s complaint against the Catholic Church was a protest regarding corruption – the selling of indulgences, etc. But it was more profound than that. Luther contended that there should be no intermediary between the individual and God – that human beings should not have to choose between their church and their consciences.
But that’s precisely the choice the leaders of the Indianapolis archdiocese have forced on people in Indiana.
God help them for doing so.
FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehousseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
The City -County Observer posted this article without opinion, editing or bias.