Tamra Weimer holds photos of her son, Andrew Weimer, who was 15 years old when he died from an ATV accident, during a news conference in Oklahoma City in 2006, called to discuss the Oklahoma Legislature’s failure to pass a bill aimed at reducing deaths due to children riding all-terrain vehicles.
DANA BAIOCCO, PRESIDENT Donald Trump's pick to sit on the Consumer Product Safety Commission, made her name helping companies avoid responsibility for harmful products. A partner at law firm Jones Day, Baiocco has represented big tobacco and fought in court against asbestos workers who developed mesothelioma.
But the cases she's litigated that may conflict most directly with the CPSC's mission of protecting the public from dangerous products involve all-terrain vehicles.
While the CPSC was leading a campaign over ATV safety, Baiocco was representing Yamaha in several suits over its two-person Rhino ATV.One involved a 14-year-old boy named Michael Kennedy, who was driving a Yamaha Rhino on a gravel road in North Carolina in 2004, when the ATV tipped over onto its side. The boy's legs were trapped under it. When they were freed, his bones were so badly broken they poked through his skin at several points, according to the complaint in a lawsuit over his injuries. Kennedy lived, but he had to have part of his foot removed and will never again walk as he did before the accident.
Kennedy wasn't the only one who had trouble with the Rhino, an off-road vehicle that looks like a cross between a monster truck and a golf cart. Fifty-nine people died in similar accidents involving the vehicle between 2003, when it was introduced to the market, and 2009.
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