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May, 2004
Berney Kubetz successfully represented a Florida couple in a personal injury case against a Maine construction company in a recent Federal Court jury trial.
The construction company was working on a septic system at the home of our client's relative. The construction company dug an 8' deep hole in the ground and placed a 30 wide black, hollow pipe vertically in the hole. At the end of the work day on Friday, a black, hard plastic cover was placed on top of the pipe by the construction company. The work crew then left the job site for the weekend, with the top of the pipe and the plastic cover just above ground level.
Our client was visiting at the home where the construction site was located. Around 9:00 p.m., our client was walking a friend to her car and in the darkness, stepped onto the cover and feel through it to the concrete bottom of the pipe. She suffered severe soft tissue injury to her back, neck, shoulder and hips; her damages included medical bills totaling $17,000, permanent impairment, loss of earning capacity, pain and suffering and loss of consortium.
The jury found that the construction company was negligent in not using safeguards such as barricades, plastic tape, orange cones, signs, and/or lighting at the work site to protect pedestrians from being injured. Any one of these safeguards would have warned of the hazardous work site and returned a verdict in the amount of $600,000, reduced by 10% due to comparative negligence and an award of $100,000 for her husband's loss of consortium, also reduced by 10%.
Berney Kubetz successfully represented a Florida couple in a personal injury case against a Maine construction company in a recent Federal Court jury trial.
The construction company was working on a septic system at the home of our client's relative. The construction company dug an 8' deep hole in the ground and placed a 30 wide black, hollow pipe vertically in the hole. At the end of the work day on Friday, a black, hard plastic cover was placed on top of the pipe by the construction company. The work crew then left the job site for the weekend, with the top of the pipe and the plastic cover just above ground level.
Our client was visiting at the home where the construction site was located. Around 9:00 p.m., our client was walking a friend to her car and in the darkness, stepped onto the cover and feel through it to the concrete bottom of the pipe. She suffered severe soft tissue injury to her back, neck, shoulder and hips; her damages included medical bills totaling $17,000, permanent impairment, loss of earning capacity, pain and suffering and loss of consortium.
The jury found that the construction company was negligent in not using safeguards such as barricades, plastic tape, orange cones, signs, and/or lighting at the work site to protect pedestrians from being injured. Any one of these safeguards would have warned of the hazardous work site and returned a verdict in the amount of $600,000, reduced by 10% due to comparative negligence and an award of $100,000 for her husband's loss of consortium, also reduced by 10%.
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