A 19-year-old employee of a Lane County grass seed farm was part of a team bringing in the grass seed crop, using specialized tractors that cut the grass and pushed it through augers to form windrows. ...A co-worker, whose machine became jammed, had placed an unplugging wrench on the machine before the 19-year-old was sent over to help get that tractor running again. A supervisor soon arrived and sent the young man back to his own tractor. The supervisor did not realize that a wrench was on the jammed machine and started it up, causing the wrench to fly up into the air and down into the young man’s head, resulting in severe brain injury.
Medical malpractice
Hospital System Failure
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OUTCOME: Jury verdict for $12 million
Hospital system failures in managing medications for the operating room resulted in a patient being given 18 times the standard dose of a powerful heart medication. The overdose caused the man's heart... to quiver, which meant that blood was not being pumped throughout his body. The brain is the organ most sensitive to oxygen deprivation. Within a short time, the man's brain suffered irreversible major damage.
Car accident
Worker Injured in Highway Construction Area
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OUTCOME: $2,8 million jury verdict. Within a short time after the trial, truck mounted attenuators could be seen at highway construction sites all over, and that practice has continued.
Highway construction work is one of the most hazardous jobs in the country because cars regularly drive into work zones. As a result of that long-recognized hazard, the highway construction industry d...eveloped the use of temporary crash barriers to protect workers. These barriers are placed between the workers and the open roadway to physically stop an errant car before it enters the work zone. The kind of barriers to be used in these temporary construction zone situations are essentially heavy trucks with a crash device hitched to the rear (called a truck mounted attenuator).
We tried a two-week jury trial in Marion County for an ODOT inspector who suffered massive orthopedic injuries when a car drifted into a highway construction job site that did not have truck mounted attenuator and, because of that, ran into the inspector.
The inspector was on the Kuebler Blvd job site just off Interstate 5 near Salem at night, helping a subcontractor move plastic traffic control markers back to the fog line to re-open a lane of traffic that had been closed for road striping. There were no physical barriers to prevent drifting cars from entering the work zone. A young driver apparently fell asleep and drifted off the road, squarely hitting the inspector and grazing another worker.
Although these crash safety devices were in the bid documents for this job, the contractor elected not to use them here. The inspector ended up with fractures to his leg and pelvis that required over a third of a million dollars of medical care to date, with further medical care, disability, and shortened work life expectancy ahead.
Personal injury
Dangerous lawn mower design amputates toddler's leg
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OUTCOME: $12.25 million jury verdict
A toddler was two-and-a-half-years-old and happily playing with her cousins during a family get-together. In an instant, her left leg was caught up in the blades of a riding lawnmower. Her leg was mang...led, and chopped off, leaving her a lifelong amputee.
How could this have happened? Who was responsible? The manufacturer argued it was lack of supervision by her father and by her cousin, who had been charged with watching the younger children while the adults were preparing for the family gathering. The manufacturer also blamed her father for not paying more attention as he was mowing with children around the house.
Investigation uncovered that the case was really more about an unsafe product design. When many thousands of children are injured in riding lawn mower “accidents” every year, the reasons begin to point squarely to the manufacturers. Evidence revealed that inexpensive changes to riding lawn mowers would spare many children. In this case, the manufacturer knew about the product defect for over two decades and failed to fix it.
The money from the jury verdict will help pay for the numerous prosthetics the survivor will require and an estimated 14 more surgeries she’ll need, along with life-long physical therapy and living assistance.
