The family of a woman beheaded by a metal gate in front of her husband at a national park has launched a lawsuit for $140million (£115m).
Esther Nakajjigo, 25, was driving around the stunning Arches National Park in Utah, US, in 2020 along with her husband Ludovic Michaud when the unthinkable happened.
The wind whipped a metal gate round which sliced through the passenger door of the car and decapitated Esther.
In the opening statements of the wrongful death lawsuit, attorneys representing Michaud and Nakajjigo’s family recounted the moment Michaud realised his wife had been killed.
When he inhaled the copper-tinged smell of blood, turned to figure out what it was and saw his beheaded wife.
The family are arguing that the US Park Service was negligent and did not properly maintain the gates at the entrances and exits to the parks, leading to their loved one's death.
In opening statements Monday in Salt Lake City, their attorneys said they were seeking $140 million (£115m) in damages from the government accounting for Esther's earning potential.
The family’s lawsuit claims when the national parks reopened in April 2020 after being shuttered due to Covid-19, rangers at the national park in Utah didn’t secure the gate in place, which in effect “turned a metal pipe into a spear that went straight through the side of a car, decapitating and killing Esther Nakajjigo”.
Attorney Randi McGinn, representing Nakajjigo’s family, on Monday asked the family to leave when he described the death in gruesome detail.
Attorneys for the government have not disputed that park officials are at fault but instead have disputed how much the family should be awarded.
Disputing the family's claims the victim was on track to become the CEO of a non-profit who could eventually have netted an annual income in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.
US attorneys have said this claim was too speculative to be used as a basis for damages.
“We don’t know with any level of certainty what her plans were,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nelson said.
Ms McGinn described Nakajjigo as a prominent women’s rights activist who rose from poverty to become the host of a solutions-oriented reality television series in Uganda focused on empowering women around issues such as education and healthcare.
Nakajjigo worked on fundraising 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 Boulder, Colorado-based Watson Institute for emerging leaders.
All this building towards the $140million in damages.
Nelson, the government’s attorney, has said an appropriate award would be $3.5million (£2.9m).
He said he didn’t deny Nakajjigo was an extraordinary person, but argued it was difficult to speculate what kind of work she would have gone on to do.
He noted she had recently worked as a host at a restaurant around the time of her death and didn’t have a Bachelor’s degree.
Arches National Park is a 120-square-mile desert landscape near Moab, Utah, that is visited by more than 1.5 million people annually.
It’s known for a series of sculpture-like fins and arches made of an orange sandstone that wind and water have eroded for centuries.
