The cinema company Vue Entertainment has to pay 750,000 pounds – almost 9.7 million kroner – after a cinema seat accident with a fatal outcome. It reports among others Sky News.
The incident happened at a cinema in Birmingham in England in March 2018. British Ateeq Rafiq (24) had a cardiac arrest when the legrest on a cinema seat narrowed down over his neck.
After the film, he is said to have bent down to pick up the phone and keys, when he was locked by the legrest which slammed down. The wife’s hand is also said to have been pinched when she tried to pull the legrest away from her husband’s neck.
The 24-year-old suffered serious brain injuries, and died at the hospital a week later.
Got tick shock
– Should never have happened
On Tuesday, judge Heidi Kubik said in court that the accident should never have happened. She concluded that the lack of safety measures was an important cause of the accident.
“Nothing I say can change the loss his wife and family have suffered,” Kubik said.
In May 2019, it became known that the cinema seat, which was of the luxury variant, was missing a part that could have released Rafiq easily, after he was locked.
At the time, a jury chairman concluded according to BBC with the fact that the cinema business had failed to carry out extensive security checks of the seats in the hall.
Vue Entertainment claimed that they had not received the missing parts from the manufacturer of the chairs, but during a hearing in April this year, the company pleaded not to carry out adequate safety checks of a number of seats with the same defect, writes The Guardian.
