North Carolina residents who watch ‘The Walking Dead” on television may know that a stuntman lost his life while an episode of the hit AMC show was being filmed in 2017. The stuntman died as the result of injuries he suffered in a fall, and a wrongful death lawsuit brought by his family claims that he would be alive today if AMC and a production company had not cut corners on safety.
AMC claimed in a motion to have the wrongful death lawsuit dismissed that they were not responsible for the accident because the stuntman had assumed responsibility for his safety before performing the stunt that led to his fall and subsequent death. However, that a Georgia judge found that argument unconvincing and denied the motion. The trail is scheduled to begin on Dec. 9.
The stuntman’s family say that safety measures were inadequate on the set of ‘The Walking Dead” because AMC placed undue pressure on the production company to keep expenses low. They accuse AMC and Stalwart Films of taking shortcuts that placed the cast and crew in danger in order to complete filming as cheaply and quickly as possible. The director of the episode in question, the stunt coordinator and an actor who worked on the show with the stuntman are also named in the lawsuit. AMC said in a press release that it believed its motion was supported by the law and the facts of the case.
Experienced personal injury attorneys may make claim the defendants in wrongful death lawsuits acted with gross negligence when presented with facts like these. Gross negligence is behavior that was so reckless death or serious injury became inevitable. When gross recklessness can be established in court, the dependent family members of individuals killed in fatal accidents could in some cases be awarded punitive as well as compensatory damages.