Phelps v. Waste Management: Homeless man killed in dumpster
(Court TV) ? Richard Phelps once had a promising future before schizophrenia led to homelessness. But Phelps' tragic story doesn't end there.
He was killed while seeking shelter from a cold winter night in Portland, Ore., inside a garbage dumpster that was unloaded into a sanitation truck and compacted with Phelps inside.
Barbara Bassett, the sister of the 50-year-old victim, sued the billion-dollar sanitation company, Waste Management Inc., for more than $10 million.
Bassett claimed that this wasn't the first time a homeless person in the area sought refuge in a dumpster, and that sanitation workers were negligent for not checking.
But the defense maintains that Phelps' death, though tragic, was the result of his own negligence, not the company's.
The suit resulted in a two-week trial that began May 20, 2003, before a Multnomah County jury.
Downward Spiral
Phelps, an Indiana native, was a college graduate and Army veteran who earned his master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University. The married father of one son, he went on to work for the Chicago Tribune before starting his own advertising agency and penning a novel that was never published.
But Phelps' marriage and life crumbled as his mental health deteriorated. Around the time of his divorce, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Bassett took her brother, suffering from paranoia and delusions, into her Sacramento home, and he remained there for two years.
Several times he decided to strike out on his own, but bad luck and homelessness brought him back to Bassett's home several times to get back on his feet.
Finally in late 1996, Phelps felt well enough to try to start his life over in the Pacific Northwest and headed up to Olympia, Wash. Bassett would never see her brother again.
On the morning of Jan. 29, 1997, Phelps walked into a Safeway supermarket and proceeded to peruse the aisles, eating a pilfered Power Bar and lining his pockets with cheese and cigars.
Store employees confronted him, offering to not to report the incident if Phelps returned what he had taken and left the store immediately.
But while Phelps returned the food, he refused to leave the store, saying he didn't want to return to the cold.
He sat in an office in the supermarket and waited for police to arrive, who arrested him and took him to jail.
At the jail, however, Phelps became incontinent so authorities threw him into the shower, where he stayed for three hours.
Though corrections officers reported Phelps was "acting weird," he was released later that day. Before leaving the jail, Phelps forgot to reclaim his backpack on his way out.
It is unclear how Phelps spent the remainder of his day, but he apparently turned in for the night inside a dumpster. According to police, Waste Management driver David Wagner later drove a front loader to the site, picked up the dumpster and compacted its contents, with Phelps inside the entire time.
The trash was then brought to a transfer station in northwest Portland where it was to be sorted by workers lining a conveyor belt for separating recyclables.
On Jan. 30, 1997, Metro transfer station worker Jose Menjivar saw a hand, initially believing it was a remnant of a mannequin. But when a supervisor discovered parts that clearly belonged to a human body, police were notified at 4:43 a.m., according to the incident report.
Lost and Found
Officers who saw the body immediately determined it belonged to a transient, based on the worn clothes and the corpse's unkempt hair and beard.
Phelps' body had been through extensive trauma -- his face was a deep purple, he had bled from his eyes, and his ribcage was fractured. A medical examiner on the scene concluded his death was caused by trauma inflicted by the trash compactor and that it was more than likely accidental.
While investigators had unraveled the cause of death, they did not learn the identity of the victim until after fingerprints yielded a match resulting from Phelps' shoplifting arrest.
Though they knew who the victim was, authorities did not know of any next of kin to contact.
Meanwhile, Barbara Bassett hadn't heard from her brother and knew something was amiss. She filed numerous missing persons reports, hung fliers and made phonecalls to track down her brother.
It wasn't until March 18 when Bassett contacted Social Security to check if Phelps had been cashing his disability checks that she learned Phelps had been found dead. The did not, however, give her any details regarding where, so she started calling medical examiner's offices along the Pacific Coast.
The Plaintiff's Case
Lawyers Greg Kafoury and Mark McDougal launched a two-pronged wrongful death claims suit under different theories.
The first claim was that Waste Management was negligent for failing to find out whether the dumpster was occupied or preventing people from climbing inside.
Their second claim was that Waste Management was negligent in failing to instruct its drivers to determine if a container is occupied before dumping and compacting.
The lawyers maintained that Phelps' history of mental illness rendered him unable to appreciate the dangers of sleeping in dumpsters, and thus couldn't be considered at fault.
They also contended that Waste Management knew homeless people often foraged in dumpsters for food and shelter, which made the dangers foreseeable. They believed that countless people being killed in dumpsters all the time, and said that there were at least five crushing deaths in Portland-area dumpsters in the the past decade.
Bassett said her brother told her "You never get in a dumpster no matter how cold, no matter how wet," recounting his days of being homeless in Chicago.
They suggested that using a different technique to pick up the garbage could have spared the life anyone inside it.
The Defense's Case
Waste Management lawyers Jeff Johnson and Steve Madison maintained the company could not be held negligent in this case because Phelps' injuries were sustained as a result of his own negligence.
Phelps, they argued, was not looking after his own safety when he ignored warning signs posted on the dumpster and climbed into it.
Furthermore, he did not alert the driver to his presence when the front-loader approached and dumped the container into the truck's bay.
The defense did not concede that it was their truck that even picked up, compacted, and dumped Richard Phelps, an assertion determined at the transfer station.
Drivers cannot get out of their trucks and check every dumpster by hand because it would be time-consuming and dangerous, they argued.
The Stakes
The plaintiff asked for $500,000 in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages. Any proceeds from the case would not go to Bassett, but to Phelps' estranged son.
The Verdict...?
:shrug:
(Court TV) ? Richard Phelps once had a promising future before schizophrenia led to homelessness. But Phelps' tragic story doesn't end there.
He was killed while seeking shelter from a cold winter night in Portland, Ore., inside a garbage dumpster that was unloaded into a sanitation truck and compacted with Phelps inside.
Barbara Bassett, the sister of the 50-year-old victim, sued the billion-dollar sanitation company, Waste Management Inc., for more than $10 million.
Bassett claimed that this wasn't the first time a homeless person in the area sought refuge in a dumpster, and that sanitation workers were negligent for not checking.
But the defense maintains that Phelps' death, though tragic, was the result of his own negligence, not the company's.
The suit resulted in a two-week trial that began May 20, 2003, before a Multnomah County jury.
Downward Spiral
Phelps, an Indiana native, was a college graduate and Army veteran who earned his master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University. The married father of one son, he went on to work for the Chicago Tribune before starting his own advertising agency and penning a novel that was never published.
But Phelps' marriage and life crumbled as his mental health deteriorated. Around the time of his divorce, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Bassett took her brother, suffering from paranoia and delusions, into her Sacramento home, and he remained there for two years.
Several times he decided to strike out on his own, but bad luck and homelessness brought him back to Bassett's home several times to get back on his feet.
Finally in late 1996, Phelps felt well enough to try to start his life over in the Pacific Northwest and headed up to Olympia, Wash. Bassett would never see her brother again.
On the morning of Jan. 29, 1997, Phelps walked into a Safeway supermarket and proceeded to peruse the aisles, eating a pilfered Power Bar and lining his pockets with cheese and cigars.
Store employees confronted him, offering to not to report the incident if Phelps returned what he had taken and left the store immediately.
But while Phelps returned the food, he refused to leave the store, saying he didn't want to return to the cold.
He sat in an office in the supermarket and waited for police to arrive, who arrested him and took him to jail.
At the jail, however, Phelps became incontinent so authorities threw him into the shower, where he stayed for three hours.
Though corrections officers reported Phelps was "acting weird," he was released later that day. Before leaving the jail, Phelps forgot to reclaim his backpack on his way out.
It is unclear how Phelps spent the remainder of his day, but he apparently turned in for the night inside a dumpster. According to police, Waste Management driver David Wagner later drove a front loader to the site, picked up the dumpster and compacted its contents, with Phelps inside the entire time.
The trash was then brought to a transfer station in northwest Portland where it was to be sorted by workers lining a conveyor belt for separating recyclables.
On Jan. 30, 1997, Metro transfer station worker Jose Menjivar saw a hand, initially believing it was a remnant of a mannequin. But when a supervisor discovered parts that clearly belonged to a human body, police were notified at 4:43 a.m., according to the incident report.
Lost and Found
Officers who saw the body immediately determined it belonged to a transient, based on the worn clothes and the corpse's unkempt hair and beard.
Phelps' body had been through extensive trauma -- his face was a deep purple, he had bled from his eyes, and his ribcage was fractured. A medical examiner on the scene concluded his death was caused by trauma inflicted by the trash compactor and that it was more than likely accidental.
While investigators had unraveled the cause of death, they did not learn the identity of the victim until after fingerprints yielded a match resulting from Phelps' shoplifting arrest.
Though they knew who the victim was, authorities did not know of any next of kin to contact.
Meanwhile, Barbara Bassett hadn't heard from her brother and knew something was amiss. She filed numerous missing persons reports, hung fliers and made phonecalls to track down her brother.
It wasn't until March 18 when Bassett contacted Social Security to check if Phelps had been cashing his disability checks that she learned Phelps had been found dead. The did not, however, give her any details regarding where, so she started calling medical examiner's offices along the Pacific Coast.
The Plaintiff's Case
Lawyers Greg Kafoury and Mark McDougal launched a two-pronged wrongful death claims suit under different theories.
The first claim was that Waste Management was negligent for failing to find out whether the dumpster was occupied or preventing people from climbing inside.
Their second claim was that Waste Management was negligent in failing to instruct its drivers to determine if a container is occupied before dumping and compacting.
The lawyers maintained that Phelps' history of mental illness rendered him unable to appreciate the dangers of sleeping in dumpsters, and thus couldn't be considered at fault.
They also contended that Waste Management knew homeless people often foraged in dumpsters for food and shelter, which made the dangers foreseeable. They believed that countless people being killed in dumpsters all the time, and said that there were at least five crushing deaths in Portland-area dumpsters in the the past decade.
Bassett said her brother told her "You never get in a dumpster no matter how cold, no matter how wet," recounting his days of being homeless in Chicago.
They suggested that using a different technique to pick up the garbage could have spared the life anyone inside it.
The Defense's Case
Waste Management lawyers Jeff Johnson and Steve Madison maintained the company could not be held negligent in this case because Phelps' injuries were sustained as a result of his own negligence.
Phelps, they argued, was not looking after his own safety when he ignored warning signs posted on the dumpster and climbed into it.
Furthermore, he did not alert the driver to his presence when the front-loader approached and dumped the container into the truck's bay.
The defense did not concede that it was their truck that even picked up, compacted, and dumped Richard Phelps, an assertion determined at the transfer station.
Drivers cannot get out of their trucks and check every dumpster by hand because it would be time-consuming and dangerous, they argued.
The Stakes
The plaintiff asked for $500,000 in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages. Any proceeds from the case would not go to Bassett, but to Phelps' estranged son.
The Verdict...?
:shrug:
