Home Depot is defending a lawsuit filed by a man who claims one of the chain’s stores ignored his cries for help after he fell victim to a prank and was glued to a toilet seat.
Bob Dougherty, 57, of nearby Nederland, said he became stuck to a bathroom toilet seat last year after somebody smeared glue on it.
“They left me there, going through all that stress,” Dougherty told The Daily Camera, of Boulder. “They just let me rot.”
His lawsuit, filed Friday, said Dougherty was recovering from heart bypass surgery at the time and thought he was having a heart attack. A store employee who heard him calling for help informed the head clerk via radio, but the head clerk “believed it to be a hoax,” the lawsuit said.
According to the lawsuit, store officials called for an ambulance after about 15 minutes. Paramedics unbolted the toilet seat.
Dougherty, “frightened and humiliated,” passed out as he was being wheeled out of the store, court papers said.
The lawsuit said the toilet seat separated from his skin, leaving abrasions.
“This is not Home Depot’s fault,” Dougherty said. “But I am blaming them for letting me hang in there and just ignoring me.”
I’ll bet it left a mark.
Lawsuits are one of the pitfalls of underpaying your employees.
They could have handed him a magazine or newspaper. I don’t see why he and his lawyer should get a retirement fund out of it. Even though I would have felt sorry for the guy, it would have been hard to keep a straight face. Mental note: Wipe the seat over with tp before sitting down.
OBVIOUSLY he didn’t use the tissue ass-gaskets that most public toilets have. Nor did he wipe down….I’ll bet he doesn’t even wash his hands after….he’s a personal hygiene failure!!! THAT IS WHAT he should be embarrassed about.
Geez… he’s not still there…what is he whining about?
What exactly was he yelling? Something stupid like “help I’m stuck to the toilet seat”? Use some common sense, man,….just cry out “help, I need assistance!”…..or a direction “please, someone, call an ambulance” or even “I’m having a heart attack, get the manager”.
Evidently he was giving TOO MUCH needless information and not enough direction. It’s not just Home Depot employees (underpaid and undermotivated)…he’d have problems anywhere. Now, to try and sue, instead of looking at HIS blame here……he finds a moronic lawyer without any common sense, either.
PUT ME ON THAT JURY!
What sort of glue could effectively seal the human gluteus (no pun intended) maximus to a toilet seat without being visible to anyone about to enthrone themselves? There is surely a high degree of victim culpability here. Home Depot doesn’t deserve to be sued for the incident, but their employees deserve to be fired for not providing assistance for any call for help, however ridiculous it might seem. I don’t accept the argument that poorly paid employees should not be expected to have a sense of duty to help anyone who asks for it; this is a symptom of something more serious than being dolts. You respond to the plea, preserve as much respect for the unlucky person as you can muster, then later go somewhere and laugh your gluteus maximus off at the person’s predicament!
richard,
I think that crazy glue would work pretty well…only it would have had to have been spread there FRESH, like right before, as it has a fast set time. But, even a simple floor contact cement (like for laying tile, hardwood, or carpet/linoleum) would work well. The trick would be to put a very smooth layer over the seat….and let it start to “skin” …so within a half hour…that would be very effective. So, would a thick coat of shellac.
Human skin is pretty good for sticking….and if the guy had butt hairs…well, now, that would be ideal.
FYI
This guy is a liar and a fraud! If he cared so much about contaminating his ass, and there were no ass gaskets, then he’d have draped toilet paper around the seat. At a very minimum he would carefully inspect the seat and at least wipe it down first before plopping his ass down. Super glue also dries super fast and it stinks too. I guarentee even if you wanted to glue someone’s ass down to a public toilet seat you could not. I’ll bet you could try for weeks with no luck. First of all the glue would dry before anyone was stupid enough to sit down. You would also spend a fortune in glue trying. How much glue is needed to secure a grown man’s ass, four tubes? What’s that, $20 worth? What teenager is going to spend hundreds of dollars setting toilet seat glue traps?
If you ask me, this is some homeless asshole who glued himself to the seat. I hope and pray Home Depot has the balls to go to the matt with this one. If they settle out of court every jerk off in America will start gluing their asses down to their toilet seats. 3 million. Give me a break! Can’t they just publically humilate this guy instead? I’d put him in a set of old stocks in the town square and pull his pants down and glue a toilet seat to his ass. The public would then be free to whack him on the ass and laugh! Ha Ha
As an attorney – I am embarassed for the profession.
About that man that claimed to have gotten glued to a toilet seat I think he’s a scoundrel and a trickster trying to take advantage of a large corporation as is Home Depot. I’ve the impression that he must’ve planned to whole thing to see if he could get a few bucks off of his story. My opinion is that he should be prosecuted for being a swindler and be put behind bars and if possible be glued to a toilet seat using a large amount of super glue!
The latest tinkle.. I mean wrinkle.. on this story:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1292747
There’s a detailed update in the Rocky Mountain News:
http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4223874,00.html
I hope Home Depot goes after this dirt bag and sues him, like Wendy’s and the woman who placed the finger in her chili. And for the comments about underpaid HomeDepot associates-they get paid better than most other retail workers. Quite a few are actually paid very well.
When I first heard about this, I thought it was a case of fraud. How could a teenager know that someone would come immediately after he left and sit down in super glue. Super glue does dry pretty fast.
Then for 3 million for pain and humiliation (by suing he sure has to be humiliated). Also lost wages? What was he doing before this happened, leading a fortune 500 company? Maybe he can share a cell with the woman who sued Wendy’s and swap stories.
As for underpaid HD employees not answering his calls for help – so far we only have his story. If it actually goes to trial, then the employees will have their side of the story told. Fifteen minutes for calling an ambulance for somebody who has their ass glued to a toilet seat sounds like they used good sense (maybe they tried to spare him any further embarrassment by not calling any emergency services right away).
Another update (11/11/05), in which he passes a polygraph test:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/11/11/toiletseat.suit.ap
“The questions covered allegations that he made previous a similar claim in another town, according to a story in The Rocky Mountain News.
Bob Dougherty answered 20 questions in the polygraph test, including four related to a former Nederland town official’s allegation that Dougherty made similar claims there, the newspaper story said.
Dougherty, 57, offered to take the test to dispel doubts about his story. The test, administered Wednesday, was paid for by television station KDVR.”
If the guy was at home depot, why didn’t the staff there get a screw driver to take the toilet seat off and some solvent to pry his bulbous behind off the toilet seat themselves? Just wondering. It sounds recockulous.
Dougherty sure looks familiar, looks a lot like a scam artist who used to frequent motels in the Houston area back in 2001…
he was elderly, probably could not see that well
back in the day we didn’t have to worry about being super glued to the seat…
ass gaskets would have not have worked, have anyone of you used this glue? it will harden on the outside and still have soft glue inside, even if “ass gasket was used i bet it would squeeze out underneath or permeate the thin paper,
people aren’t helping others, like the seinfeld last show they should be prosecuted…
Well i dont know about men but when i sit on a public tiolet i clean it or put paper down. And i Damn sure if i feel any thing wet on it im gonna jump up IT COULD OF BEEN SOMEONE PISS. THIS IS A VERY HARD CASE.