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State trooper sues Taser over broken leg
By Greg Turner
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 - Added 10h ago

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A state police trooper is suing Taser International Inc., claiming a shocking product demonstration fractured his femur - rebreaking a bone that had snapped just two years prior in a horrific pileup on the Mass. Pike.

Trooper James J. Foley, 38, says he disclosed to a Taser representative that he had a metal rod in his left leg before he and other law enforcement officers tested the company’s X26 “electronic control device,” according to a federal lawsuit filed yesterday.

After the February 2006 seminar, his leg throbbing with pain, Foley went to the hospital - where an X-ray showed a new fracture and a surgical screw “bent at almost 90 degrees,” said Thomas Healy, Foley’s attorney. The lawsuit filed by Foley and his wife seeks unspecified damages.

Taser faced about 40 lawsuits, six of them involving training injuries, as of Sept. 30, according to the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company’s most recent quarterly financial report.

But Taser hadn’t yet received official notice of Foley’s lawsuit yesterday. “We do not comment on pending litigation - especially when we have not been served,” spokesman Steve Tuttle said.

According to the lawsuit, Foley signed a release in which Taser said its devices are non-lethal but “involve a degree of risk.”

Foley was first zapped unintentionally while spotting for another participant and then shocked twice during his voluntary “Taser exposure” - which many officers withstand to better understand the device’s effect on people.

“Usually the person who claims injury as a result of Taser exposure is a criminal suspect,” Healy said. “In this case, obviously, it’s a law enforcement officer simply trying to do his job and learn about the technology.”

Foley attended the seminar to evaluate the device for the state police, whose troopers have never been equipped with Tasers, according to state police spokesman David Procopio.

The state police made a “final decision” to not use Tasers after Foley’s reinjury, he said.

“It’s not a weapon we needed to add to our arsenal,” Procopio said. “The decision is not going to be changed.”

Foley, who joined the state police in 1999, had a second surgery and is now on active duty patroling the highways.

He returned to work about a year after he suffered a broken leg and ribs in a four-car crash on the Pike in Auburn in March 2004. A pinned Foley was saved by two fellow troopers, James Coakley and Ruben Colon, who put out flames shooting from the cruiser’s engine compartment.

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