Thursday, 4:30 PM
Closing arguments heard in gorilla escape case
By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff
The attorney for a Boston girl attacked by an escaped gorilla at the Franklin Park Zoo in 2003 said today that she still bears the scars of the encounter.
"She's not all better. She's not back to the little girl she was when she walked into that exhibition -- and she is not going to be for a long time," Donald Gibson told a jury in Suffolk Superior Court, where Terrasita Duarte-Scott is suing the zoo and five top officials on behalf of herself and her now 6-year-old daughter, Nia Simone Scott.
Gibson also told the jury in closing arguments in the case that they could award any amount of money they chose to the girl and her mother to compensate them for their physical and emotional injuries.
Kevin Kenneally, the zoo's attorney, told jurors that Nia was "remarkable" as was her mother. Reading from medical reports, he suggested the injuries to both were minor or due to other life issues. "Be fair to us, and please be fair to Nia and her mother," he said.
Jurors went home today without reaching a decision after deliberating for about three hours and will return Wednesday. In Massachusetts, a verdict in a civil lawsuit does not have to be unanimous, but five-sixths of jurors must agree. In this case, 12 of the 14 jurors deliberating must agree to reach a verdict, according to the attorneys involved in the case.
Nia Scott went to the zoo with a family friend, Courtney Roberson, on Sept. 28, 2003. She was attacked by Little Joe, a western lowland gorilla who had escaped from his enclosure at the Tropical Forest exhibit. Scott testified Monday that the gorilla dragged her and attacked her with his "claws.'' Roberson, who settled her own lawsuit, testified that the gorilla slapped at the child five to eight times.
Gibson told jurors the zoo and the officials were negligent because they did not do enough to make sure Little Joe, who had escaped from the same place the month before, could not get out. He said no one knows to this day how the gorilla defeated a ring of "hot wire" draped around the enclosure just to keep Little Joe inside.
Attorneys for the zoo and the zoo employees urged jurors to consider whether any lingering problems Nia Scott might have are solely the result of the confrontation with Little Joe or due to other issues in her life, such as the death of her father.
