thedrifter
10-22-07, 07:29 AM
Too real?
Former Marine sues training contractor for wounds, PTSD
By Gidget Fuentes - gfuentes@militarytimes.com
Posted : October 29, 2007
SAN DIEGO — Jesse Klingler joined the Marine Corps to serve his country and fight the bad guys. But his enlistment as a rifleman was cut short after he was wounded in a super-realistic 2004 training exercise at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar’s Camp Elliott, during which he was taken hostage, tied and bound. Then, a hired actor — playing the role of an insurgent — pointed a very real AK47 assault rifle near then-Pfc. Klingler’s thigh and fired the hot gases from two blank rounds into his flesh.
Klingler, now 21 and medically discharged from the Corps, said he suffers post-traumatic stress from the incident and constant pain that he fears will prohibit him from a normal working life.
“I wanted to [serve] my country and be in the infantry. I wanted to fight on the ground and kick in the door,” he said, adding that his dream “was stolen from me.” In a civil suit filed in San Diego Superior Court, Klingler places the blame on the actor, Rocky “Ali” Mohsen, and the local training and production companies contracted by the Marine Corps to assist with urban combat training.
But to Strategic Operations Inc., Klingler is an opportunist and a malingerer: a young man with a slight wound who exaggerated his injury, found a way out of the service and now is suing the contractor for several million dollars.
“It was an accident. It shouldn’t have happened,” said Michael I. Neil, a San Diego attorney representing Strategic Operations and Stu Segall, a Hollywood producer whose production company owns the movie studio lot that houses the tactical training.
On the eve of the trial’s launch, being heard before a 12-member civilian jury in the downtown courthouse, company officials admitted that their and Mohsen’s actions were negligent during the impromptu interrogation scenario, which was not part of the battalion’s training plan that day. But officials deny causing Klingler harm and contend the former Marine doesn’t rate any financial damages.
Strategic Operations provides the actors and other hired role players, as well as pyrotechnics, props and other Hollywood effects, to add more realism to military training scenarios for battalions and other military units.
“What we are talking about here is an unfortunate accident. There’s no question,” Neil said in opening arguments Oct. 17. The actor “made a mistake when he discharged the AK47 so close to his leg. He shouldn’t have done that.”
The company asserts that overall responsibility for running and overseeing the day’s training and scenarios fell on the Marine Corps. “We had a role to play. The Marines are in charge of their exercise,” said Neil, a retired Marine brigadier general.
Units that train at the Miramar base site, as well as at Stu Segall Productions’ movie studio lot a few miles away, retain command and control of the training, Neil argued. “The Marines can monitor what’s going on. They’re able to control what’s going on,” he told the jury.
The battalion’s training plan the day of the AK47 incident didn’t include a hostage and interrogation scenario, but Strategic Operations accommodated the impromptu request, which was approved by the on-scene captain, he said.
Corps not party in suit
While the defendants have pointed a finger in the Marine Corps’ direction, the Corps is not a party in the suit.
The Feres Doctrine prevents service members and their families from suing the federal government for injuries sustained during military service, but the protection has not applied to military contractors. A federal appeals court this month upheld the distinction in a lawsuit filed by families of three soldiers killed in the 2004 crash of a contracted aircraft in Afghanistan.
Klingler, who was assigned to Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines, doesn’t blame the Corps. “The Marines saved my life,” he said, noting how a sergeant stopped Mohsen just as the actor put the AK47’s barrel to Klingler’s head.
“We don’t feel the Marine Corps has any responsibility,” added his attorney, Robert Gaglione. “I’d like to see a fair trial and a fair judgment.”
Klingler’s battalion investigated the incident, which happened Sept. 18, 2004, Lima platoon’s first training day at the makeshift Iraqi village at Camp Elliott.
In a short report, the investigator, Capt. Thomas Lami, faulted Mohsen but didn’t recommend any disciplinary or administrative action and noted that instructors weren’t able to properly supervise the impromptu scenario because they went off to plan the next one.
“I believe the incident was preventable had one instructor been assigned to provide continuous, undistracted supervision,” Lami wrote.
The Marines who tied up Klingler used “realistic” but “excessive” restraint, the investigator wrote, adding that “under no circumstances should a Marine be bound, gagged and blindfolded, putting the Marine in a defenseless position and no way to ‘tap out,’ if necessary.”
He said, they said …
The jury of six men and six women will determine the next step in the case, setting up early on to be a battle of the experts.
Klingler’s attorney argued that the young Marine received limited medical treatment, was hospitalized when 3/3 deployed overseas and was medically separated from the Corps and discharged in September 2005. He has since been diagnosed with PTSD and depression because of the interrogation incident.
“There was real pain. It was not imagined,” Gaglione told the court. “He’s not a malingerer.”
Klingler is seeking damages for medical and rehabilitative expenses, lost future earnings and pain, suffering and emotional distress. “He lives in pain every single day,” Gaglione said.
Attorneys for Strategic Operations, Segall and Mohsen planned to counter Klingler’s assertions with their own set of expert testimonies.
The defendants argue that Klingler’s injury, while real, isn’t as extensive as he and his attorney would have the jury believe.
“What this case is about is money — a lot of money,” Neil the court.
Klingler, he said, has a history of depression and anxiety predating the incident, and didn’t report to his doctors for more than a year that he had any serious pain or depression associated with the injury.
But in early 2006, Neil said, Klingler’s attorney sent a letter to Stu Segall “demanding $3 million.”
For Klingler, the scenario was a nightmare, something more akin to what service members endure at highly specialized prisoner-of-war training.
One minute he was manning a vehicle checkpoint, the next he was grabbed, tied up and hooded. Mohsen, according to a Marine Corps command investigation, hit Klingler several times as he lay on the ground. The actor then pulled the trigger of the AK47 and fired into his right thigh.
It wasn’t exactly what Klingler expected when he heard he’d be the hostage.
“Up until that point, where the first round was fired in the right thigh, I felt it was just training,” said Klingler, who underwent two surgeries to clean the leg wound. “I didn’t know really what to think about it. I was very scared and trying to fight for my life. I thought I was going to actually die.”
His family and fiancée, who live in Tennessee, joined him in the courtroom for the case. Klingler, now a full-time student at Middle Tennessee State University, said the incident “changed everything,” but he hopes for a good future.
“I would like to see the defendants take responsibility for what their employees’ actions were,” he said, on a break outside the courtroom Oct. 18. “I’m hurt for the rest of my life, and I don’t think it’s fair to let them off the hook.”
Ellie
Former Marine sues training contractor for wounds, PTSD
By Gidget Fuentes - gfuentes@militarytimes.com
Posted : October 29, 2007
SAN DIEGO — Jesse Klingler joined the Marine Corps to serve his country and fight the bad guys. But his enlistment as a rifleman was cut short after he was wounded in a super-realistic 2004 training exercise at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar’s Camp Elliott, during which he was taken hostage, tied and bound. Then, a hired actor — playing the role of an insurgent — pointed a very real AK47 assault rifle near then-Pfc. Klingler’s thigh and fired the hot gases from two blank rounds into his flesh.
Klingler, now 21 and medically discharged from the Corps, said he suffers post-traumatic stress from the incident and constant pain that he fears will prohibit him from a normal working life.
“I wanted to [serve] my country and be in the infantry. I wanted to fight on the ground and kick in the door,” he said, adding that his dream “was stolen from me.” In a civil suit filed in San Diego Superior Court, Klingler places the blame on the actor, Rocky “Ali” Mohsen, and the local training and production companies contracted by the Marine Corps to assist with urban combat training.
But to Strategic Operations Inc., Klingler is an opportunist and a malingerer: a young man with a slight wound who exaggerated his injury, found a way out of the service and now is suing the contractor for several million dollars.
“It was an accident. It shouldn’t have happened,” said Michael I. Neil, a San Diego attorney representing Strategic Operations and Stu Segall, a Hollywood producer whose production company owns the movie studio lot that houses the tactical training.
On the eve of the trial’s launch, being heard before a 12-member civilian jury in the downtown courthouse, company officials admitted that their and Mohsen’s actions were negligent during the impromptu interrogation scenario, which was not part of the battalion’s training plan that day. But officials deny causing Klingler harm and contend the former Marine doesn’t rate any financial damages.
Strategic Operations provides the actors and other hired role players, as well as pyrotechnics, props and other Hollywood effects, to add more realism to military training scenarios for battalions and other military units.
“What we are talking about here is an unfortunate accident. There’s no question,” Neil said in opening arguments Oct. 17. The actor “made a mistake when he discharged the AK47 so close to his leg. He shouldn’t have done that.”
The company asserts that overall responsibility for running and overseeing the day’s training and scenarios fell on the Marine Corps. “We had a role to play. The Marines are in charge of their exercise,” said Neil, a retired Marine brigadier general.
Units that train at the Miramar base site, as well as at Stu Segall Productions’ movie studio lot a few miles away, retain command and control of the training, Neil argued. “The Marines can monitor what’s going on. They’re able to control what’s going on,” he told the jury.
The battalion’s training plan the day of the AK47 incident didn’t include a hostage and interrogation scenario, but Strategic Operations accommodated the impromptu request, which was approved by the on-scene captain, he said.
Corps not party in suit
While the defendants have pointed a finger in the Marine Corps’ direction, the Corps is not a party in the suit.
The Feres Doctrine prevents service members and their families from suing the federal government for injuries sustained during military service, but the protection has not applied to military contractors. A federal appeals court this month upheld the distinction in a lawsuit filed by families of three soldiers killed in the 2004 crash of a contracted aircraft in Afghanistan.
Klingler, who was assigned to Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines, doesn’t blame the Corps. “The Marines saved my life,” he said, noting how a sergeant stopped Mohsen just as the actor put the AK47’s barrel to Klingler’s head.
“We don’t feel the Marine Corps has any responsibility,” added his attorney, Robert Gaglione. “I’d like to see a fair trial and a fair judgment.”
Klingler’s battalion investigated the incident, which happened Sept. 18, 2004, Lima platoon’s first training day at the makeshift Iraqi village at Camp Elliott.
In a short report, the investigator, Capt. Thomas Lami, faulted Mohsen but didn’t recommend any disciplinary or administrative action and noted that instructors weren’t able to properly supervise the impromptu scenario because they went off to plan the next one.
“I believe the incident was preventable had one instructor been assigned to provide continuous, undistracted supervision,” Lami wrote.
The Marines who tied up Klingler used “realistic” but “excessive” restraint, the investigator wrote, adding that “under no circumstances should a Marine be bound, gagged and blindfolded, putting the Marine in a defenseless position and no way to ‘tap out,’ if necessary.”
He said, they said …
The jury of six men and six women will determine the next step in the case, setting up early on to be a battle of the experts.
Klingler’s attorney argued that the young Marine received limited medical treatment, was hospitalized when 3/3 deployed overseas and was medically separated from the Corps and discharged in September 2005. He has since been diagnosed with PTSD and depression because of the interrogation incident.
“There was real pain. It was not imagined,” Gaglione told the court. “He’s not a malingerer.”
Klingler is seeking damages for medical and rehabilitative expenses, lost future earnings and pain, suffering and emotional distress. “He lives in pain every single day,” Gaglione said.
Attorneys for Strategic Operations, Segall and Mohsen planned to counter Klingler’s assertions with their own set of expert testimonies.
The defendants argue that Klingler’s injury, while real, isn’t as extensive as he and his attorney would have the jury believe.
“What this case is about is money — a lot of money,” Neil the court.
Klingler, he said, has a history of depression and anxiety predating the incident, and didn’t report to his doctors for more than a year that he had any serious pain or depression associated with the injury.
But in early 2006, Neil said, Klingler’s attorney sent a letter to Stu Segall “demanding $3 million.”
For Klingler, the scenario was a nightmare, something more akin to what service members endure at highly specialized prisoner-of-war training.
One minute he was manning a vehicle checkpoint, the next he was grabbed, tied up and hooded. Mohsen, according to a Marine Corps command investigation, hit Klingler several times as he lay on the ground. The actor then pulled the trigger of the AK47 and fired into his right thigh.
It wasn’t exactly what Klingler expected when he heard he’d be the hostage.
“Up until that point, where the first round was fired in the right thigh, I felt it was just training,” said Klingler, who underwent two surgeries to clean the leg wound. “I didn’t know really what to think about it. I was very scared and trying to fight for my life. I thought I was going to actually die.”
His family and fiancée, who live in Tennessee, joined him in the courtroom for the case. Klingler, now a full-time student at Middle Tennessee State University, said the incident “changed everything,” but he hopes for a good future.
“I would like to see the defendants take responsibility for what their employees’ actions were,” he said, on a break outside the courtroom Oct. 18. “I’m hurt for the rest of my life, and I don’t think it’s fair to let them off the hook.”
Ellie