The trial of a woman beheaded by a metal gate in a Utah national park began Monday as her family sought $140 million in damages and accused Ranger of negligence.
Esther Nakajjigo, 25, died on a windy day in spring 2020 when a piece of metal gate from Utah’s Arches National Park broke through the passenger door, decapitating her – and now her husband Ludovic Michaud is demanding justice.
Michaud was driving the car when Nakajjigo died and has joined her family to sue the US Park Service for not maintaining the park gates.
At the opening hearing, an attorney representing Nakajigo claimed that she had a bright future as a women’s rights activist and would have made hundreds of thousands of dollars had she not died.
United States attorneys did not dispute that park officials were at fault, but argued that the amount that should be awarded to the family was far less and questioned the way the damages sought were calculated.
Esther Nakajjigo (above), 25, and her husband Ludovic Michaud were driving through Utah’s Arches National Park on a windy day in 2020 when a piece of the gate broke through the window
Nakajjigo and Michaud were just passing through the gates when the accident happened. Pictured: the gates that led to Nakajjigo’s death
A piece of the metal mesh ripped off and went through the passenger door where Nakajjigo was sitting
The stop sign from the gate had also been thrown into the car
The metal seemed to have torn off this bar
Michaud launched a lawsuit against US Park Service after his wife’s death
The couple had just tied the knot when they took a trip to the national park
The allegation surrounding Nakajjigo’s death claims that if valet parking staff simply opened the gate with a padlock, it would never have swung free and pierced her car
In opening remarks Monday in Salt Lake City, attorneys representing Michaud and Nakajjigo’s family said they are seeking $140 million in damages from the government.
The family’s lawsuit alleges that when the national parks reopened in April 2020 after being closed due to COVID-19, rangers at the Utah national park failed to secure the gate in place, effectively “turning a metal pipe into a spear.” , which went straight through the side of a car, beheading and killing Esther Nakajjigo.’
Attorney Randi McGinn, representing Nakajjigo’s family, described the death in gruesome detail on Monday. After urging the family to leave the courtroom, she recounted the moment Michaud realized his wife had been killed when he inhaled the coppery smell of blood, turned to find out what it was and saw that she was dead
In the opening statements, it was anticipated that the process would depend less on differing accounts of the accident and instead focus on Nakajiigo’s biography and earning potential, which will be used to calculate some of the damages.
Attorney Randi McGinn is representing Nakajjigo’s family in the lawsuit
McGinn said that if her life hadn’t been cut short, Nakajjigo’s trajectory indicated she would have become a non-profit CEO who could eventually have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars — or millions — in annual income.
She described Nakajjigo as a prominent women’s rights activist who rose from poverty to become the host of a solution-focused reality television series in Uganda that focuses on empowering women in issues such as education and healthcare.
Nakajjigo worked to raise funds to open a hospital in an underserved part of Kampala, Uganda’s capital, became a philanthropic celebrity and immigrated to the United States for a fellowship at the Watson Institute for Emerging Leaders in Boulder, Colorado.
Nakajjigo has been described as a prominent women’s rights activist who has risen from poverty
Nakajjigo was appointed Uganda’s Ambassador for Women and Girls at the age of 17 after using her college tuition to start a non-profit community health center
She later received recognition for projects such as Saving Innocence Challenge, a reality show that provided education and business funding for hundreds of girls on the island of Lake Victoria
Her family’s attorney argued that she later became a non-profit executive
Delicate Arch can be seen in Arches National Park near Moab, Utah
Defense attorneys said claims by the family’s lawyers that Nakajjigo, who was 25 at the time of her death, was on track to become a non-profit CEO shortly, were too speculative to serve as a basis for damages.
“We don’t know for sure what their plans were,” Assistant Attorney Jeffrey Nelson said.
Nelson, the government attorney, said fair compensation would be $3.5 million, far less than the $140 million target. He said he doesn’t deny that Nakajjigo was an extraordinary person, but argued that it was difficult to speculate what kind of work she would later do. He noted that at the time of her death, she had recently worked as a hostess at a restaurant and did not have a bachelor’s degree.
Arches National Park is a 310 square kilometer desert landscape near Moab, Utah that is visited by more than 1.5 million people annually. It is known for a series of sculpted fins and arches made of orange sandstone that have been eroded by wind and water over centuries.