How much money would it take you to willingly fall 40 feet through glass onto Philly’s Rodin museum marble floor? Your injuries would include fractures to your femur, hip, pelvis, ribs, and elbow as well as undergoing 15 surgeries in the 45 days you’ll be confined to a hospital.
You’d make a recovery but long-term symptoms would include difficulty walking, suffering from fatigue and head trauma, which restricts your ability to concentrate for long periods at a time.
$1 million? $5 million? Before you answer, let me show you someone who has been there, done that.
The man featured in the below footage is engineer Phani Guthula, who was 27 at the time of the incident back in November 2012. Gut hula was inspecting lights in the attic of the Philadelphia art museum when he fell through the glass.
Terrifying.
Does your number change after seeing that? Does $7.2 million change your mind? Because that’s what the Rodin museum and Guthula have settled on in compensation for the incident.
Daily Mail reports Guthula had been escorted to the attic by a security guard to check on the lights and had been told that it was safe to step onto a glass paneled surface by the guard.
One of Guthula’s attorney’s, David Kwass, said:
‘Testimony at trial clearly would have demonstrated that the defendants failed miserably in their duty to protect Mr Guthula.
‘Guard railings installed to keep people off the glass floor were not in place, security personnel who escorted him to the site were uninformed and inattentive, and there was no signage to warn against a fall hazard to which everyone – after the accident – agreed existed when he almost met his death.’
Personally, I’m not sure any amount of money would convince me to take that fall. That’s not to say that sometimes when I’m walking in New York I don’t fantasize about falling through a street grate, breaking a couple legs, and living comfortably in the Caribbean for the rest of my days. But when push comes to shove, I’m a huge pussy.
[h/t Daily Mail]