Las Vegas jury rejects Harry Reid lawsuit against fitness band maker

LAS VEGAS – A jury in Las Vegas categorically rejected the trial of former US Sen. Harry Reid against a gym band maker who he blamed for his injuries – including the blindness of one. eye – that he suffered when the extensible device escaped him and that he fell a little over four years ago.

After eight days of testimony, the jury of the eight-member civil trial deliberated about an hour before declaring that Reid had never proved the first of the ten questions he had to ask: the device used by Reid that day was a TheraBand device manufactured by Hygenic, based in Ohio. Corp.

The jurors never saw the device, Reid's adult son Reid's lawyer Leif Reid disposed of it shortly after Harry Reid's injury.

Reid and his wife, Landra Gould, were not in the courtroom at the time of reading the verdict. The 79-year-old former leader of the Democratic Party used a wheelchair during the two-week trial, after treatment for pancreatic cancer and back surgery.

Their lawyer, James Wilkes II of Tampa, Florida, said he respected the Nevada jury's decision. "I may not agree with the result, but I agree with the way we got there," Wilkes said.

TheraBand's lawyer, Laurin Quiat, was defeated.

"My customer has always believed in the product, believes that it is safe, that it is not unreasonably dangerous for anyone and that he supports it," he said. "That's all I have to say."

Reid and his wife claimed unspecified damages because they had claimed that the product was defective and that the company had not warned the public that it was dangerous for elderly people like Reid.

Reid's lawyers abandoned a negligence action after several days of testimony commencing March 27.

Reid testified last week that his injuries were "the main factor" in his decision not to seek a sixth term in the Senate in 2016. Quiat, however, showed the jury a 2015 video press release in which Reid had stated that his decision not to show up had "absolutely nothing" to do with my injury. "

Reid, the leader of the Democratic Senate party while President Barack Obama was at the White House, said he wanted senators and voters to know that he was not in a state d & # 39; disability.

Quiat reminded jurors during the hearing Friday that they would never know for sure if the device that Reid was using was manufactured by Hygenic. The company's attorney also raised questions about Reid's truthfulness.

He noted that Reid had initially stated that the group had broken, not that he had escaped his hand and that he had been tied to a metal hook in the bathroom wall of his house. suburban Las Vegas.

On the witness stand, Reid testified that he had passed a ring through a shower door handle, not a hook, and that he had returned to fall face against room wardrobes Baths with hard contours when he slipped from his grip on New Year's Day 2015.

Company experts and witnesses testified that Reid abusively used the device, blaming him for the blindness of his right eye, facial fractures, fractured ribs, concussion and bruises. .

"This is not a complicated case – the resistance bands are not complicated," Quiat said. "This case concerns the responsibility of one's own actions."

He said Reid had used broad flat resistance bands for several years without a hitch, after being offered to a group by congressional therapists. Quiat said that they then tried for months to get Reid to improve his posture, his balance and his technique when using the camera as part of his work. a program of shaping the upper body similar to that of rowing.

The former Nevada boxer, member of the Gambling Commission and Lieutenant Governor, was first elected to the US House in 1983. He was elected to the Senate four years later and served for 30 years.