Daily Report http://www.dailyreportonline.com/id=1202734935175/Atlanta-Lawyer-Wins-66M-Verdict-in-Boston-Rape-Case

August 17, 2015

The client of Atlanta lawyer Don Keenan is set to collect $6.6 million in her suit against a hotel over her being beaten and raped in its parking deck.

The principal of Atlanta's Keenan Law Firm suggested that jurors placed all the blame on the corporate owners of the Radisson hotel—and none on the garage management company—because the hotel had not increased security after a similar attack by the same rapist 12 days before his client was assaulted.

"I think the jury was so angry at the corporate defendants that they just let LAZ [Parking] off the hook," said Keenan. At the time of attack, he said, both of the hotel's security guards were in the hotel and the garage was unmanned, leaving his client, Kira Wahlstrom, unprotected.

"I think the tipping point that they could not get over was that at the very time Kira was screaming for her life—this was a brutal rape, she was attacked with closed fists—while this horror was going on, they were in the lobby controlling the bar crowd that was coming in," said Keenan.

A couple of years ago, Keenan said, Wahlstrom decided to waive her anonymity in order to advocate for victims' rights. "She said, 'Even if I lose this case, I need to tell people it's OK to speak up,'" said Keenan.

Keenan was lead counsel in a team that included his associate, Andrew Gould, as well as David J. Hoey of North Reading, Massachusetts, and his associate, Krzysztof "Kris" Sobczak.

Lawrence Kinney Jr. of Boston's Sloane & Walsh, who represents Radisson's owners JPA IV Management Co. and JPA 1 Management Co., said via email that it will be a couple of weeks until the judgment is entered in the case and that no decision has been made on an appeal or other post-trial motion.

The attorney representing LAZ Parking, John Jarosak of Litchfield Cavo in Lynn­field, Massachusetts, was unavailable, but in comments to Boston media he welcomed the verdict.

According to Keenan and multiple news accounts, the case began around 2 a.m. in May 2009 when Wahlstrom stepped from an elevator into the garage. Juan Rivera III, who had also been on the elevator, followed her off, dragged her by her hair to a stairwell and raped her.

Rivera was caught and sentenced to 15 years in prison, and in 2010 Wahlstrom sued the hotel owners and the parking company in Suffolk County Superior Court.

Keenan said the case was delayed for several years while his team waited for Rivera to exhaust his criminal appeals so that he could be interviewed as a potential witness for the civil case.

"After waiting all that time, and spending a great deal of strategy to figure out how to get him to talk, he just came out and told the truth."

When asked why he returned to the site of the earlier rape, Rivera "was very forthcoming," Keenan said. "He said they hadn't made any changes in security, and he thought they would."

Rivera, who was homeless, said he frequently targeted cars for break-ins at the garage; he also slept there on occasion, said Keenan.

"He said he rarely saw a security guard, and he could do what he wanted to," said Keenan.

But Superior Court Judge Paul Wilson deemed Rivera's testimony too prejudicial for the jury to hear, Keenan said, "and he also said it would have been a danger to bring him in to testify," so the jury never heard the rapist's story.

Keenan said Massachusetts law barred him from discussing any settlement negotiations, "but I can categorically say that, at the time the verdict was read, there were no offers on the table."

Jury selection was interesting, Keenan said, because Massachusetts law recently changed so that attorneys can question prospective jurors in civil and criminal trials throughout the Superior Court. Until the law went into effect in February, he said jurors were interviewed only by the judge.

"This was a big deal," Keenan said. "Massachusetts had always been known as a crapshoot for picking juries."

He noted that the Massachusetts Trial Lawyers Association invited him in March to teach lawyers how to do voir dire. "I had a 70-year-old lawyer asking me, 'Where do I stand?'"

"It was fun, but eye-opening," Keenan said. "I think I definitely had an advantage there."

During the five-week trial, Keenan said the hotel owners' argument was basically that they had increased security after the first attack, and that such attacks were unheard of prior to Rivera's 2009 rapes.

"Their opening statement was that there had never been a rape there in 38 years," said Keenan. "In closing, I said there'd never been a 9/11 before 9/11 either. After that happened, we didn't say, 'Oh that's never going to happen again.'"

Plaintiff's lawyers also introduced evidence showing that the Radisson had at one time employed four security guards, before cutting back to one until after the first rape.

"Then they said they couldn't put cameras on every level of the garage, but they admitted they had a camera behind the desk clerks because they didn't want them taking money," Keenan said. "And there were two cameras over the time clocks so they could make sure no one was double-punching for somebody else."

The parking company, LAZ, simply argued that it had fulfilled all the duties it was contacted to perform by the hotel owners, which did not include any security-related tasks, he said.

Keenan said a key plaintiff's witness was Dr. Ann Burgess, a rape trauma specialist at Boston College, who testified that the brutality and manner of Wahlstrom's attack, and the fact that it could have been prevented, added to the trauma she suffered.

Keenan said that, in closing, he asked the jury to recognize the damage his client had suffered, and the courage she had demonstrated in coming forth with her story publicly.

"There's always the fear that you're not going to believed, that you caused it, that you're going to be considered a whore or a slut," he said. "I just had to tell the jury how important it was for them first, in their verdict, to say 'yes, we believe you.' And two, let her label from this day be as the woman who stood up."

After 6½ hours, the jury awarded Wahlstrom $4 million; Keenan said that, after factoring in 12 percent annual interest since the suit was filed in 2010, the total is more than $6.6 million.