ORIGINAL: bawanajim

Just a note. This happened near me.[:@]


A settlement has been reached in a lawsuit that alleged a defective tree stand and harness caused the 2002 death of an off-duty Pennsylvania state trooper who was hunting near his home in Elgin.

Terms of the settlement were sealed by the court.

The defendants were API Outdoors Inc., Outland Sports Inc. and Cabela's.

With such settlements, the defendants typically admit no wrongdoing.

The lawsuit stemmed from the Oct. 5, 2002, death of Timothy Bell, a 34-year-old trooper with the Corry barracks, who died of asphyxiation when a tree stand collapsed from underneath him and he became tangled in his safety harness.


Lawyers representing the defendants in the case could not be reached for comment.

Widow Tamara Bell's lawyer, Jaime D. Jackson, of Lancaster, said he declined comment out of respect for the Bell family.

Tamara Bell filed a lawsuit in 2004 in Erie County Court that charged the tree stand lacked an adequate pin to hold the foot platform in place and keep it from collapsing. She also said the safety harness did not have a mechanism to allow a user to lower himself to the ground or hang safely in the air in the event the stand collapsed beneath him.

The case charged that API Outdoors Inc. and Outland Sports Inc. -- the companies that made the API Grand Slam Shooting Star tree stand -- and Cabela's, the company that sold it, should have known the tree stand and its harness were defective and dangerous to those who used them.

Bell said the defendants were liable for her husband's death and for the damage and loss his death brought to her and the couple's two children.

API Outdoors Inc. was a subsidiary of Outland Sports Inc., of Tallulah, La.

Had the case gone to trial, the defendants planned to argue that the death occurred the first time that Timothy Bell used the tree stand, which belonged to his father.

They said the product was not defective and claimed that Bell did not use the tree stand properly.