Personal Injury News: Pick of Last Month: Jan-2019
Clarence Teacher Gets $750,000 in a Three-Vehicle Crash Suit
A Clarence High School Teacher won nearly $750,000 in a lawsuit filed against the Town of Amherst after a three-vehicle crash in 2011 left her with severe injuries, recurring headaches and shoulder injuries for which she underwent arthroscopic shoulder surgery.
On the morning of January 31, 2011, the woman was waiting on Wehrle Drive behind a vehicle to turn left when a town pickup truck hit her car from behind. The pickup driver told he tried to apply brakes before the collision but slid on ice. A few minutes later, another vehicle hit the town pickup vehicle from behind.
Her lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court stated she suffered from nausea, injuries to both the shoulders and painful headaches after the crash. The attorney who represented the town in the lawsuit asserted that a doctor testified that the crash was unlikely to cause her headaches and that her shoulder injury was degenerative and not fatal in nature. He even said the verdict was too high and was not supported by the evidence provided. A third driver involved in the accident reached for an undisclosed settlement with the woman even before the trial began.
The jury held the town employee 70% responsible for the woman's injuries and the other driver 30% responsible. The jury announced $748,663 to be paid by the town to the injured Cheektowaga resident.
On November 9, a Tampa jury awarded $2,576,069 to a Jacksonville CSX railroad conductor who got severely bruised when his freight train collided with a tractor-trailer at a Lakeland, Fla. railroad crossing. The final judgment was given out on November 14 by Circuit Judge Cheryl Thomas.
On November 19, 2015, the conductor was on a CSX freight train scheduled for Jacksonville when a tractor-trailer carrying new automobiles and driven by a Lakeland truck driver entered the rail crossing. As the truck driver approached the crossing, the oncoming train of five locomotives and 34 rail cars sounded its whistle with headlights on. As the engineer activated the emergency brakes, the conductor bent down on the cab floor to save his head from flying objects, and the impact jerked and twisted his body, striking his head. Initially, he suffered from back strain and head contusion, but later, he suffered chronic back pain. Eventually, unable to bear the pain, he quit his job after three weeks of joining again.
The lawsuit was filed against the truck driver and his employer on March 8, 2016, alleging negligent conduct and liability for the accident. In 2017, the conductor was implanted with a spinal cord stimulator device to treat his back pain, but the device was removed due to a serious sepsis infection.
Ahead of the trial, the court granted a summary judgment considering the truck driver and his employer 100% liable after he admitted driving without heed and ignoring the approaching train, and violating the company policy by talking on his cell during the drive.
Jury Awards $21.5M In A Boy's Drowning Death Case
On December 4, a Cook County Court awarded $21.5 million to the family of a 6-year-old boy who drowned in a Bridgeview Park District pool and lost his life in 2014.
The victim was one of the kids who participated in the Justice Park summer camp program on June 17, 2014, and later taken to the Bridgeview pool. He was found to be unresponsive at the main pool in Commissioners Park and was declared dead at Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.
The lawsuit alleged that the group of children was improperly supervised by Justice Park District counselors. The attorney who represented the family in the wrongful death lawsuit filed against both park districts, told the boy failed the swimming test conducted a week before by the Justice Park District before going to the Bridgeview Pool. The attorney asserted the boy instead of being in the wading pool, was in the deep main pool without any flotation device and was found 10 feet away from the pool edge.
According to a video circulated during the trial, the counselors who were in charge of monitoring the group of children were seen inside the pool's locker room. Jurors at the Cook County Court held Justice Park District 80 percent liable for the incident and the Bridgeview district 20 percent at fault.
An $11 million settlement verdict was announced for the thirteen-year-old boy's family for the lawsuit filed against Murrieta, California-based school district, as the boy was left brain dead after he slipped and fell into the school's pool and failed to receive timely CPR from the lifeguards.
The lawsuit, filed in September 2016, claims the incident occurred at a party on June 3, 2016, when the boy slipped and remained submerged for nearly 2 minutes, after which his classmates brought him to the surface. His parents allege that the chief swim and dive coach for the school is liable for not controlling the nine amateur lifeguards on duty and blame him for not conducting CPR to save the boy. The coach clarified that he assumed the students' lifeguards managed to save the boy.
Attorneys representing the family claimed when paramedics arrived and tried to revive the boy, he was already brain dead. He remained unresponsive and comatose in the San Diego Hospital, and his family decided to take him off life support on July 7, 2016. A later investigation revealed that the pool party was understaffed, and the lifeguards present, lacked the proper safety knowledge for handling such high-stress situations.
Though an out-of-court settlement was reached last month, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Angel Bermudez will officially dismiss the case on September 6, 2018, after a settlement briefing in the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta.
A Woman Who Lost A Toe in an Escalator Accident Gets $3 M
On December 5, 2018, a Pulaski County jury awarded $3 million to a woman who lost her right toe while on an escalator at Little Rock mall in Arkansas during a Christmas shopping trip in 2013.
The woman, who is a medical student, did not file the lawsuit until 2014. According to her attorney, on December 10, 2013, the woman's booted foot got lodged between the escalator steps at the Little Rock Shopping center and her toe was crushed and shredded as her foot was pulled into the moving staircase. The mall and the escalator manufacturer, Kone Inc. admitted negligent conduct for her lost toe ahead of the trial and allowed the jury headed by Circuit Judge Chris Piazza to decide on the damages. After two hours of deliberation, the jurors agreed that the woman was eligible to receive $3 million for her past and future medical expenses, loss of pay, pain, suffering, and disfigurement.
The woman underwent two surgeries amounting to six months of recovery, and her lawyer claimed her medical career is at stake as she is still recovering. The woman's attorney stated, “we still don't know if she is going to meet the physical requirements of completing her rotations, because they require long hours on your feet."
Costa Crociere S.P.A. Company, the owner of the cruise ship MS Costa Luminosa, was ordered by a federal jury in Florida to pay a little over a million to the plaintiff for negligence. In 2014, the plaintiff tripped and fell on a cleaning bucket aboard the cruise ship injuring her left arm and shoulder. The lawsuit demanded claims for a displaced proximal humerus fracture of her left non-dominant arm, a dislocated humerus head, torn left rotator cuff, and torn the left bicep tendon. Further, compensation included failure to properly maintain the ship in a reasonably safe condition, for the ongoing pain and difficulty in performing daily tasks, such as household chores.
The plaintiff had to undergo open reduction surgery, arthroscopic surgery, and have sutures to repair her condition, which further required six months of physical therapy. A strong safety expert opinion from the plaintiff's end pointed a violation of cruise ship industry standards and failure to provide warning signs of any buckets left in areas where passengers walk.
A Courthouse Elevator Crash Victim Awarded $20.5 M
A Philadelphia sheriff’s deputy who got paralyzed in a courthouse elevator crash case in 2016 was awarded $20.5 million.
He was working as a sergeant in the Sheriff's Office when the incident occurred on August 4, 2016. He was inside an employee elevator at the Criminal Justice Center at 13th and Filbert Street, when the elevator rocketed out of the 15th-floor’s ceiling and smashed into an equipment room. The crash left him with severe injuries to his head, rib, vertebrae, and chest, and he was taken to Hahnemann University Hospital in a critical condition.
The victim and his wife filed a lawsuit in January 2017 claiming negligence, improper elevator maintenance, and repair for the unfortunate incident. The defendants named in the lawsuit were the Philadelphia Municipal Authority, the U.S. Facilities Inc., ThyssenKrupp Elevator Corp., and Schindler Elevator Corp. Additional defendants added through amended complaints were Otis Elevator Co. of Farmington, Conn., and Amtech Elevator Services.
Earlier, in a typical slip and fall incident, a man who was rendered quadriplegic and suffered a partial vocal cord paralysis has won $7 million as compensation to be coughed up by the defendants.
The plaintiff sued Bank of America; CBRE, the building owner; a subcontractor, Brickman Group; and Best Landscaping, the company it hired to maintain the sidewalk, for not salting and maintaining the icy parking lot that caused his fall, resulting in him hitting his head and body on the parking lot, as he attempted to step onto a sidewalk to use the bank’s ATM. Since the incident in February 2015, the plaintiff regained the power to walk and drive a car after undergoing surgery and physical therapy but was unable to resume work.
This Middlesex County suit throws light once again that property owners have a duty to exercise reasonable care when it comes to maintaining parking lots or sidewalks outside of business areas and should be vigilant to promptly remove snow and ice to reduce the risk of falls and injuries.