Personal Injury News: Pick of Last Month: Sept-2019

A Corona man was awarded $51.8 million by Queens Supreme Court jury in a verdict who was injured in a car crash in 2017. The verdict was one of the largest verdicts recorded in New York City auto collision lawsuit.

The 44-year-old plaintiff was rear-ended on the Long Island Expressway and experienced numbness in his hand caused by a herniated disk in his neck with his meniscus shredded in the collision, and the injuries required multiple surgeries.

The plaintiff’s insurance company offered a sum of $225,000, which was woefully inadequate to cover the extent of plaintiff’s injuries. Justice Joseph Esposito presided at the trial. The award included $5 million for past damages, $36 million for future damages, and $5 million for future medical expenses, a total of $46.1 million. The overall total includes 9 percent judicial interest from the summary judgment in February 2018.

In a similar train-truck collision at a Lakeland, Fla. railroad crossing 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. Circuit Judge Cheryl Thomas gave the final verdict on November 14.

 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.

Kansas Jury awarded $6 million to a family against Wesley Medical Center which resulted in one of the largest verdicts in Kansas history. 

The woman was 35 weeks pregnant and had a panic attack when she went to Wesley's emergency room (ER). The doctors in the ER decided to go with an emergency C-section. Following the birth of her child, she struggled for hours and started choking on her fluid.

The woman's husband stated that there was chaos in the ER when she was having breathing problems, which the family believes was due to pulmonary edema, the building up of fluid in lungs, and a few minutes later the doctors told that she has passed. 

According to plaintiff attorney, the death was easily preventable, as the nurse delayed in reporting the woman's breathing problems to the doctors. The jury saw through and realized that the nurse failed to do her job correctly, which resulted in the woman's death.

A similar medical malpractice lawsuit was filed by a couple in California Supreme Court. The incident occurred in November 2017, when the women had to undergo an emergency C-section without anaesthesia. The couple went to the hospital for the delivery of their child. 

As per the court documents, the woman was awake and alert at the time of the admission. The problem started when the woman's blood pressure dropped and the doctors called for an emergency C-section. The anesthesiologist on call was paged multiple times, but he did not respond. The woman was strapped by the surgical team to the operating table and was cut open after paging within nine minutes. The woman could feel unbearable pain as the facilities did not use anaesthesia. The woman screamed out due to pain and eventually died.

Allegations also include loss of consortium, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and assault and battery. The medical center and the anesthesiologist are confident that the care provided was appropriate under the circumstances.

Sonoma County is appealing against a verdict of $1.9M awarded to a woman, who was severely injured in a rural, cratered road while riding her bicycle.

On July 10, 2016, the woman was riding her bicycle with a friend at the south of Sebastopol, near the Canfield Cemetery at Bloomfield and Canfield roads. While riding, she struck with a 4-foot by 3-foot pothole, landing hard on the asphalt. She suffered severe injuries to her head, face, teeth, and shoulder, including a concussion and brain damage. A lawsuit was filed against the county and officials connected to its Department of Transportation and Public Works, claiming medical expenses and time off of work.

She was awarded $1.85 million in December, along with another $200,000 for her medical bills. Sonoma County has appealed the jury’s verdict.

The county has paid nearly $8,000 in similar claims since 2013, and the sum could grow by nearly $2 million if the county loses its appeal.

The estate of a plaintiff was awarded $2.3 million from Lackawanna County Judge Terrence Nealon in a hit-and-run case.

The accident took place on August 28, 2016, when the defendant who was driving a  2003 Chevrolet Tahoe on South Main Avenue in the northern direction crossed over the southbound lane onto the western sidewalk, hitting the decedent's bicycle and dragging him ahead.

The lawyers for the plaintiff claimed that the defendant had consumed drugs, alcohol, and some other substances which made him incapable to drive a motor vehicle which resulted in the crash. The accident resulted in severe injuries for the plaintiff that eventually caused his death.

The driver was imprisoned at Lackawanna County Prison. Plaintiff's estate also sought to get insurance coverage from the defendant's insurer, CSAA General Insurance Co.; however, the company claimed it was not their duty to insure the defendants.

The plaintiff who suffered spinal injuries in a multi-car wreck has been awarded $4.2 million by a Fulton County jury after an insurer refused to settle the case for $100,000 nearly a decade ago.

According to the court filings, the plaintiff, now 60, was sandwiched between two cars when the defendant hit the last vehicle in line at a stop on Old Malton Parkway in Alpharetta in March 2010. Plaintiff's Nissan Sentra was destroyed in the collision, and he complained of pain in his leg, back, and neck. He already had some preexisting spinal problems which worsened by the wreck. Defendant and another driver were taken to the hospital where the blood tests revealed that she had taken “multiple sleep and/or psychotropic drugs” including Ambien, diphenhydramine |LS|Tylenol PM|RS|, Xanax and Paxil, an antidepressant that belongs to a group of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

The plaintiff was diagnosed with a herniated disk in his neck a year-and-a-half later. Plaintiff’s attorney demanded the defendant's insurer, USAA, for her $100,000 policy limit, where the insurer offered to pay $14,500. The plaintiff declined the offer and filed a suit in Fulton County State Court; another offer by plaintiff's attorney of $1.75 million under Georgia’s Unliquidated Damages Interest Act was also declined.

On August 15, the Fulton County jury awarded $3 million in compensatory damages, $1.2 million in attorney fees, and $5,555 in litigation expenses for a total of $4,251,555.

On Aug 23, 2019, Tallahassee, Fl. jurors hit two Florida bars with a $30.8 million verdict over brain damage suffered by a woman in a hit-and-run case, which was followed after a night of underage drinking.

According to the court documents, the defendant, then 20, left Potbelly’s, a bar near the Florida State University campus, while the victim, then 18, had left Cantina 101, another bar nearby. Seconds after leaving the bar, she was struck by a speeding car driven by the defendant. The collision left the victim with severe brain damage, unable to communicate verbally or take care of herself, whereas the defendant who fled the scene, was arrested and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison.

Cantina 101 admitted account for the incident. However, Main Street Entertainment, the owner of Potbelly’s, contended that the defendant was not drunk when he hit the victim.

A Louisiana family has been awarded $280 million for a fatal 2016 truck crash by a jury in Muscogee County, Georgia, and it is considered to be the largest jury verdict ever against a trucking company.

According to the court documents, on July 18, 2016, the plaintiffs' family was traveling in their 2014 Nissan Rogue, which was hit head-on by a Schnitzer truck, killing five members of the family. The mishap took place on U.S. Highway 80 between Ladonia and Crawford in Alabama.

A lawsuit was filed in 2017, in Muscogee County, Ga., against Schnitzer Southeast and Schnitzer Steel by the plaintiffs. The suit alleged that the driver was fatigued and had fallen asleep, crossed the centerline of Highway 80 in Alabama, slamming into the SUV.

The report states that the verdict was the largest award ever handed down in Muscogee County. Schnitzer Southeast has indicated that it has plans to appeal the decision.