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.
