A Maryland family has filed a $5 million wrongful-death lawsuit against the man convicted of drowning their 22-year-old son. The man convicted of the 2008 murder is set to be sentenced to four years in prison as part of a plea agreement. The lawyer for the family said they were “dissatisfied with the anticipated sentence and want[ed] to take further action.”

A New York man has filed a $100 million wrongful death lawsuit against a Brooklyn hardware store clerk who is accused of murdering and dismembering the man’s 8-year-old son. The suit not only claims wrongful death, but is also blaming the man for the “extreme physical pain and mental anguish” the boy suffered. The lawsuit also names the man’s father as a defendant, claiming he should have been aware of his son’s actions.

A settlement has been reached in a lawsuit filed by the family of a former University of Kansas athletic director who died in a bicycle accident in 2009. The accident occurred when the bike hit a hole in the concrete on Lawrence Street in Lawrence, Kan. The undisclosed settlement was reached with a local concrete company, who allegedly was “negligent during repair work on pavement” where the accident occurred.

A federal appeals court has reinstated a wrongful death lawsuit filed against a Madera, Calif., police officer who shot a man in the chest with her pistol, believing it to be her Taser. The man was handcuffed in the back seat of the officer’s patrol car when the incident occurred. The appeals court said the officer had acknowledged the man posed no danger to anyone but himself, and that a jury might even question the use of a Taser in the situation, let alone a gun. 

A Montana woman has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the tavern her daughter was working at prior to her death in an alcohol-related car crash. According to the lawsuit, management at the Windsor Bar in Boulder, Mont. encouraged Dallice Smith to drink on the job then allowed her to drive despite knowing she was intoxicated. The case is scheduled to be heard in Jefferson County District Court in Boulder.

A Chicago family has filed a lawsuit against a cab driver and the company that owns his car after the cab driver hit and killed one of their family members last month. The Chicago Tribune reports the cab swerved across a few lanes of traffic and struck the 57-year-old man, who was walking down the sidewalk. The suit claims the cab driver and the taxi company were negligent and failed to exercise care and caution that “a reasonable person under similar circumstances would have exercised.” The suit is seeking unspecified damages.

A North Carolina family has been awarded $10 million in a lawsuit filed against Taser International Inc. over the death of a 17-year-old in 2008. The boy was Tased by a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer at a local grocery story, causing him to fall to the floor and pass away shortly thereafter. The lawsuit claimed the company knew that if Taser was applied near the heart it could cause heart problems, but failed to warn users of the risks.

A Florida veteran was in court this week as the plaintiff in a $30 million medical malpractice lawsuit filed against the Miami Veterans’ Administration hospital. In the lawsuit, the plaintiff claims he contracted hepatits C from an unclean medical device used in a 2007 colonoscopy. The Miami Herald reported that this could be the first of a dozen trials filed by veterans with similar issues.

A Utah family has filed a lawsuit against a West Valley City, Utah, police officer who shot and killed a 21-year-old man in December. The family members claim in the suit that the officer, who was responding to a domestic violence call, mistakenly thought the man was carrying a gun and shot him twice in the chest and once in the back. The suit also accuses the police department of withholding information from the family about the victim’s status shortly after the shooting. The suit is seeking unspecified damages.

A jury has ordered the University of Central Florida Athletic Association to pay $10 million to the parents of a former football player who died during a pre-practice conditioning workout in 2008. The lawsuit cited the intensity of the workouts as contributing to the young man’s death, saying that at certain points other players had to help him up. Experts for the plaintiffs also testified that there was no evidence that sickle cell trait contributed to the player’s death.