14 DAY TRIAL // There’s enthusiasm and then there’s Sean Taras-type of enthusiasm. In 2011, the then-8-year-old boy got so psyched to see his favorite aunt, Jennifer Connell, at his birthday party, that he jumped into her arms, causing her to fall and break her wrist.
Because she could no longer hold a plate of hors d’oeuvres, she sued her nephew, asking for $127,000 in damages (€111,614) and earning for herself the online moniker of “worst aunt ever” or the “Auntie-Christ.”
Jennifer Connell speaks out, explains herself
The problem with that is that her case has been misrepresented in the media, she says on her first TV appearance since her story went viral a couple of days ago. Had she been given a choice, she would have never sued her own nephew, but as things stood, she wasn’t given that chance.
To sound even more convincing, she brought Sean along, so he could share his side of the story with the media as well. He says he loves his aunt a lot and that he knows she would never do anything to harm his family or himself.
As for that lawsuit (which Connell lost, by the way, because a jury awarded her a grand total of nothing), the aunt says that it was a technicality.
Basically, she couldn’t make a claim on his father’s homeowner’s insurance to pay for her medical bills unless she name an individual in her lawsuit, not an insurance company. She wasn’t asking for money from Sean or his family, but from the insurance company, and she was told that naming Sean in the suit was the way to get it.
Not the best experience
Connell insists that she was opposed to the idea from the start but ultimately felt like she had no other choice because she couldn’t cover the medical bills on her own. She also promises that she’d received assurances that this was just a technicality from her attorney.
She hesitates to say that she was given bad legal counsel and lays the blame with the legal system at large and how it’s set up. At the same time, Connell insists that the whole experience, including suing her nephew and finding herself trashed in the media and online, was horrible.
She is hurt and confused, and not exactly sure how her story became such a huge thing online. Nonetheless, she believes she couldn’t have handled things differently, even if she was awarded no money in the lawsuit.