Multiple reports today about the lawsuit filed Friday against Home Depot by a man who says he was ignored after finding himself stuck to a toilet seat.
In the lawsuit, 57-year-old Bob Dougherty claims that he was in a Home Depot restroom in Louisville, Colorado, when he found he could not get up off the toilet seat. Apparently, a "prankster" had smeared it with glue, which Dougherty did not see before he sat down. The suit claims that Home Depot employees heard Dougherty calling for help but did nothing for 15 minutes, because they "believed it to be a hoax." Dougherty, who is recovering from heart bypass surgery, says he believed he was having another heart attack due to the stress from the gluing experience.
Eventually, employees realized Dougherty was really stuck, and called for an ambulance to unstick him. Paramedics apparently decided to have the separation done at a hospital, and so unbolted the seat and wheeled Dougherty and his new accessory out of the store. The complaint alleges that the fright and humiliation of this process were so severe that Dougherty passed out.
He now also suffers from "abrasions."
"This is not Home Depot’s fault," said Dougherty, not something that you normally hear a plaintiff say to the press about the defendant he has just sued, but apparently he means only the gluing itself. "I am blaming them for letting me hang in there and just ignoring me."