As a result of the accident, our client suffered multiple fractures of the pelvis, hips, and legs as well as internal damage to his bladder, ureters and the major nerves running through the pelvis and legs. The testimony described a truly horrific accident scene where our client’s mangled body lay wedged under the rear axel of a 14-ton truck while rescue workers debated whether they should attempt to pull him out or simply drive the truck off his body. It is difficult to imagine how this severely injured man stayed fully alert during this ordeal as he watched fellow workers become physically ill and vomit when they saw his pelvis splayed open like a book. After he was airlifted to the hospital, he underwent four surgeries within the first 14 hours. The severity of the injuries set him up for many medical complications over the four month period that he spent in the intensive care unit, including respiratory failure, life-threatening infections, a major bleeding disorder and kidney failure, to name just a few. In total, he underwent eleven different surgeries, including the amputation of his entire left leg from the level of the hip joint. The amputation was necessitated by an infection caused by the open wounds he suffered when his fractured left femur - the large thigh bone - was traumatically forced through his pelvis and out his lower back.

No one contested how the accident occurred, or even that the driver of the truck was negligent in how he backed up the truck in the work zone. The real issue in the case was determining who should be financially responsible for this tragic accident - the driver, the forestry company that employed him, the utility company or the injured worker himself? Because of the Workers’ Compensation Law, no legal action could be brought against his employer or the co-employee who operated the truck; no matter how negligent they may have been in causing the accident, or how severely our client’s injuries were.

What about the liability of the utility company that owned the lines and started the project that ultimately led to the worker’s injury? There are many people who would argue that this terrible accident was just an unfortunate or inevitable result of life in our imperfect world, and that everyone should take care of their own problems and stop looking to others for relief. But this view fails to look at the entire picture. When the job is done, the utility company benefits from the work done by the forestry company; the forestry company’s profits on the job are not affected by the injury because of the compensation insurance policy; all of the doctors and hospitals, who truly achieved a medical miracle by saving the life of our client, got paid by the compensation insurance company which, at least in theory, had already charged the forestry company an adequate insurance premium that was commensurate with the risk involved. Or, if not, you can be sure that premium rate increases across the board will occur within the near future. However, the full consequences caused by the injuries did not just stop with the injured worker. Remember, his true cost of living is being supplemented by public housing, a benefit we all pay for through our taxes. Furthermore, the cost to the compensation company is not passed on solely to the utility company; it is passed on to all employers in the same employment classification, no matter how safe their operations may have been during the preceding year. In reality, the injured worker is not the only one who suffers the cost of the injury. Many of us, who had nothing to do with, or to gain from, the clearing of trees and brush from these utility lines will suffer consequences as well. If this is a project that was initiated by the utility company for the benefit of its business why shouldn’t it bear the full cost of the project, including the cost of injury, rather than shifting it on to others?

At first glance, it makes sense that, from the utility company’s point of view, why should it be responsible for the forestry company’s negligence since it had hired a reputable company, with years of experience in the forestry service, in the belief that it would adequately and safely perform the job it was paid to do. Why should they, the utility company, be held responsible for an accident it had little control over?

Under general principals of our civil law, a company will not be liable for injuries caused to an independent contractor’s employees as long as the original company does not direct or control the work that is being performed. Since the question of control over the work can lead to factual disputes that require a trial, corporate attorneys have come up with a way to virtually eliminate liability to injured workers of the companies they outsource their work to. Within the contract to outsource the work, a provision is included that requires the independent contractor - in our case the forestry company - to not only acquire adequate liability insurance to pay the cost of any damages they or their workers cause, but to also list the hiring company - here the utility company - as an additional insured under the same policy. In this manner, if anyone gets hurt and a lawsuit is brought, the utility company will have free legal representation and liability coverage under the policy paid for by the forestry company. In essence, the utility is making the forestry company prepay for an insurance policy, just in case it is sued for an accident involving an injury caused to a worker.

We decided to bring a suit directly against the utility company. We argued that the utility company applied for and received permission from the New York State Department of Transportation to close down sections of the state highway adjacent to the utility company’s power lines in order to accommodate its line maintenance work, as long as the utility company provided a safe environment for all those on the roadway, including workers. Through this permit, we illustrated that if the utility undertook to have its work performed on   a public highway, which if not carefully done would result in creating a dangerous condition for workers, then the terms of the permit would be violated. Even though our client’s employer was in charge of the job site, it was the utility company’s non-delegable duty under the terms of its permit to make sure that the work was conducted in a safe manner. These laws are put in place to encourage owners and contractors to hire only financially responsible and safety-conscious subcontractors so that a high standard of care might be maintained throughout the entire work site. This was well-known to the utility company, who had already required the forestry company to purchase a liability insurance policy for it as part of the terms of the contract. This same insurance company is now proposing that it should not have to pay for the injuries because its client, the utility company, delegated all work to the forestry company, which it also insured but would not be responsible for, because of the protection against suits granted by the workers’ compensation laws. In the final analysis, it is not hard to see who the real beneficiary of this position is.

Before the trial even began, the Court granted part of the injured worker’s motion for summary judgment, finding that the utility company was indeed responsible for the lack of safety on the job, and instructing the jury to decide only whether our client’s actions contributed to his injuries and damages. At the end of the trial, the jury returned a unanimous verdict in favor of the injured worker. They determined that our client was in no way responsible for the accident or the injuries he received, and placed full blame on the utility company’s lack of safety precautions. They were forced to compensate our client in excess of five million dollars for past and future medical costs, pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, and loss of wages. What is most often overlooked in a large judgment such as this, is the fact that we all benefit from the jury’s decision. From the amount recovered, the worker must reimburse the workers’ compensation company, dollar-for-dollar, for all the lost wage benefits he received and, because the jury’s verdict included all future medical and lost wages that the client will incur, the compensation insurance company will no longer have to pay future benefits. Furthermore, all $360,000 in medical expenses that was paid by the compensation carrier, must be paid back to the insurance company, and the injured worker will have to pay all future medical expenses from his jury verdict. In the end, the compensation insurance company will be totally reimbursed, thereby reducing the amount of cost to be passed along to the rest of us through premium increases. More importantly, for the public at large, any public subsidies will also have to be reimbursed. From the remaining amount, the client will be able to ensure his future independence without any cost to the public in the form of social service benefits, Medicare or Supplemental Social Security benefits.

If left to the meager amount of income provided by workers’ compensation, our client would have endured endless hardships in even the simplest of daily tasks. While it is true that no amount of money will ever change what happened, and it will never make our client forget who he once was, the dollar sum was never the most important factor at stake. Our client gained something more than just a means to support himself. By winning this case, he recaptured his dignity, respect and self-worth, something that large corporations like the utility company involved in this case, will never be able to marginalize.

Even though the technicalities of the legal profession may seem confusing and sometimes appear to be counterproductive, our legal system has the flexibility to deal with all conceivable forms of arguments or circumstances. Because most of us never suffer the large losses that can and do occur, people have very little experience in dealing with these situations. However, through the long history of our legal system and the laws enacted by our government, the common working individual can rest assured that, when necessary, the courts stand ready to hold all persons or companies, no matter how big or powerful, accountable for their actions, using as a guide and as the greatest measure of fairness, a jury of our peers.