Personal Injury News: Pick Of Last Month: Aug-2020

A construction site worker, employed by Brazuka Construction, was paid $1.2 million settlement after he was severely injured by electrocution at a residential work site.

According to the lawsuit filed in Essex County, the plaintiff was doing siding work on Woodward Street in Jersey City on March 11, 2016. The Plaintiff and other workers were taking down a scaffold when a metal pole came in contact with overhead electrical wires. He suffered an electrical shock and was thrown several feet.

The plaintiff, now 42, suffered a cardiac arrest and was hospitalized for a week at Jersey City Medical Center. He also underwent inpatient rehabilitation at Plaza Health Care and Rehabilitation Center for a week and was at Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation for three weeks. Currently, he has ongoing pain from the electrocution wounds, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, and double vision, and has also undergone outpatient physical therapy.

Siding contractor Mayfair Remodeling had subcontracted Brazuka to work on the site, and Prestige Building Co. was the general contractor on the job. The lawsuit claims that Mayfair improperly allowed scaffolding to be built closer to the power lines.

The defense agreed over the liability but argued over the damages asserting that the plaintiff's vision issue was not related to the accident.

A trial was scheduled for May 26, but the parties settled the claim on March 19, during mediation with Paul Vichness, a retired Superior Court judge with Mandelbaum Salsburg in Roseland. The court was notified of the settlement on March 26, and the amount was paid on April 24.

A similar incident took place on May 13, 2016, when a construction worker fell from a freight elevator shaft at Kean University. The victim was a safety foreman and retired from work due to serious injury ailments post the fall. He was awarded $3 million after four years for the injuries he suffered from the fall.

A Middlesex County auto accident case involving a motorist, who sustained shoulder and back injuries after his car was struck from behind by a truck, settled for $650,000.

The court records indicate that the accident happened on April 23, 2015, when the plaintiff was connecting onto Route 130 in South Brunswick from Ridge Road and a box truck that rear-ended his sedan. A lawsuit was filed against the truck driver and the owner of the box truck.

The victim sustained injuries and was diagnosed with a partial tear of the right supraspinatus tendon, of his dominant arm, a herniation at lumbar intervertebral disc L5-S1, and bulging in his cervical spine. He underwent treatment with chiropractic care, consulted an orthopedic surgeon and a pain management doctor, and received a series of epidural injections in his lower back for three years.

The plaintiff even claimed that he continues to experience pain and discomfort in his shoulder and lumbar spine, which interferes with his daily routine. He attempted to recover more than $200,000 in medical costs, plus damages for past and future pain and suffering.

The parties negotiated a pretrial settlement on February 14, and the defendant agreed to pay the settlement amount.

In December 2017, a similar lawsuit was settled when an Idaho company paid a settlement amount of $5 million to the daughters of the woman who died in a drunk-driving crash. The company's truck driver crashed into the lady's car that resulted in her instant death.

U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny awarded a plaintiff with $2.1 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit involving her late brother who was a U.S. Army veteran, and former long-haul trucker, who spent nearly four months in intensive care at the VA Medical Center in Buffalo before dying.

According to the 2010 lawsuit filed by the sister of the deceased, the executor of her brother's estate, the VA surgeons improperly installed a stent graft in one of her brother's arteries, which resulted in an irremediable loss of blood flow to his kidneys and ultimately leading to his death.

Plaintiff's lawyer claimed that due to the medical center's negligence, the U.S. Army veteran was hospitalized for 118 days, during which he was forced to undergo over fifty subsequent surgical procedures.

The federal judge, after a 17-day trial, held the surgeons responsible for the death, stating that either they or the mechanical device they operated failed when placing the stent graft. In his verdict, Judge Skretny noted that the army veteran consciously suffered pain for 69 days before his impending death. His sister had asked for $13 million in compensation but was awarded $2.1 million.

The U.S. Army veteran was 64 when he died and is left behind with four adult children along with his sister.

A hospital in Massachusetts was booked on similar medical malpractice charges when the authorities of the hospital failed to provide the necessary treatment to an 11-month-old infant. Even though the parents of the victim have been awarded $11.5 million, medical negligence resulted in lifetime ailments for the child.

The family of a female nursing student received a $22 million settlement over a lawsuit filed after she fell from the second-floor balcony of a Cleveland bar and suffered permanent, catastrophic brain injuries.

According to the court documents, the student's family had rented a hotel room downtown to celebrate Cleveland’s iconic St. Patrick’s Day parade. She was 20 years old when she went to the Spirits Bar, along with a group of friends. The group was dancing near the upstairs railing, on the second-floor bar of the restaurant which swung open, and the student landed on the floor after hitting the granite counter, as per the lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed by the student's family against the defendant.

The fall led to debilitating injuries, and the girl has been diagnosed with a seizure disorder and is anemic and requires multiple blood transfusions. She also had a stroke and was in a prolonged coma after suffering a traumatic brain injury and bleeding on her brain and has been intubated and ventilated. She has been recently brought to her home and requires 24-hour care.

The agreement finalized in April, where the defendant agreed to pay $20 million, and the bar and WD Downtown agreed to pay $1 million each. According to the settlement, approved by a probate court, the girl's mother and father will each keep $2 million and more than $8 million will be put into a fund to help cover her medical expenses.

A similar lawsuit was settled by the judge of Essex county where a man fell off from a defective apartment stairway. The man was awarded a $1.75 million settlement for the serious and life long injuries he suffered.

A 2016 lawsuit filed over a disastrous Ghost Ship warehouse fire has been settled for $32.7 million by the city of Oakland.

According to the court records, the incident happened on December 2, 2016, when an illegal music party was going on inside the cluttered 10,000-square-foot warehouse in Oakland’s Fruitvale district. 36 people lost their lives in the warehouse fire.

The settlement was authorized by the Oakland City Council on behalf of 32 of the 36 people. $23.5 million will be allocated to the families of the fire victims who lost their lives, and $9.2 million will be given to a plaintiff who survived the fire but suffered severe lifelong injuries and major medical expenses.

Last September, a criminal trial against Ghost Ship master tenant and co-defendant, the warehouse’s artistic director, ended with jurors deadlocked 10-2 in favor of convicting the tenant and acquitting the director of all charges.

The tenant is charged with 36 counts of involuntary manslaughter for the fire. The retrial of the criminal case against him is scheduled to begin in October 2020.

The family of a 32-year-old woman, who attempted suicide in a Pasadena jail in 2015 and suffered brain injuries, will receive an $8.5 million settlement from the city.

According to the lawsuit filed in June 2016 in the Burbank Superior Court, the woman was in the Pasadena city jail on Feb. 22, 2015, and the surveillance video showed that she was making preparations to hang herself.

She was hanging from a second-story railing for 26 minutes before the jail staff noticed. The loss of oxygen to the brain for 21 minutes left her with a permanent traumatic brain injury that paralyzed her from the neck down and made her bedridden, blind, and unable to communicate.

The lawsuit claims that the staff failed to follow the basic responsibility of watching inmates and protect them from self-harm. It further claims that the staff should have responded promptly and given her mental health treatment and aid after she was seen attempting to measure her neck with the bedsheet.

The family is taking care of the woman's daily needs and will receive the settlement amount to provide the professional nursing care that she needs. Following the incident, the jail has taken steps to help prevent suicides, which includes body-worn cameras, ongoing suicide crisis and prevention courses, rescue training, and in-house protocol drills, among other efforts.