Court upholds negligence award in case of Harvard grad student who killed Cambridge man
The Massachusetts Appeals Court has upheld a negligence finding in a civil suit against Alexander Pring-Wilson, the Harvard grad student who fatally stabbed a Cambridge man in a fight on a Cambridge street in April 2003.
The executrix of Michael Colono’s estate filed the suit against Pring-Wilson. A Superior Court judge found both Colono and Pring-Wilson were equally at fault, but that Pring-Wilson was negligent when he pulled out a knife for “failing to avail himself of reasonable alternatives to combat’’ and “employing more force than was reasonably necessary to repel the attack.’’
The judge ordered Pring-Wilson to pay $10,000 to the estate of Michael Colono and $250,000 for the benefit of Colono’s daughter for his wrongful death.
Pring-Wilson argued that the judge was required, based on the facts of the case, to find that he acted intentionally and not that he was negligent.
The Appeals Court said the lower court judge was right when he found that Pring-Wilson had intentionally pulled the knife out to drive away his attackers — and that he acted negligently in doing so.
The court said the finding that Pring-Wilson acted intentionally did not preclude a negligence finding. “Indeed, much negligent conduct involves some intentional act, e.g., driving at an excessive rate of speed; storing a firearm in an accessible location; discharging an intoxicated passenger from a limousine,’’ the court said.
“If the actor intended the act, and the consequences, although unintended, were reasonably foreseeable, then liability for negligent conduct results,’’ the court said in an opinion written by Justice James F. McHugh, who has since retired from the court.
Messages left for Elizabeth N. Mulvey, who represented Colono’s estate, and Thomas B. Drohan, who represented Pring-Wilson, weren’t immediately returned.
In January 2008, Pring-Wilson pleaded guilty in Middlesex Superior Court to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to two years and one day in state prison.
Pring-Wilson was charged with murder in 2003. In 2004, a jury convicted him of manslaughter and sentenced him to six to eight years in state prison. The Supreme Judicial Court ordered a new trial, ruling in 2005 that jurors should be told in self-defense cases whether the victim has a violent history.
A new trial was held in the fall of 2007, but the jury, after 10 days of deliberations, deadlocked. Pring-Wilson’s lawyers, prosecutors, and a judge then reached the plea agreement.
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