Articles Posted in Work Injuries

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The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago has reversed a district court judge’s decision in a case involving an indemnification clause in a contract.

Robert Krien was an employee of Riley Construction.  Riley was the general contractor on a construction project located in Wisconsin.  Riley in turn, hired Harsco Corporation to supply the scaffolding for the construction work.  Krien was injured when he fell from the scaffolding after a plank broke beneath him.  The parties settled Krien’s injury claim for $900,000.

Before the settlement, Harsco had filed a third-party complaint against Riley seeking indemnification for any damages Harsco might pay by way of judgment or settlement.  Then the parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment, and the district court judge granted Riley’s motion.  Harsco took this appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago.

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Brian Crompton worked as a railroad employee for BNSF Railway.  On April 24, 2011, Crompton worked on a locomotive that was to travel from Paducah, Ky., to downstate Centralia, Ill.  Crompton was severely injured during the trip from Paducah when he was knocked off the train by a door that flew open when he was throwing a switch.  Crompton brought a lawsuit against BNSF under the Locomotion Inspection Act and the Federal Employment Liability Act (FELA) claiming that BNSF chose not to keep the locomotive and its parts in good working order.

BNSF moved for summary judgment on both counts of the complaint, which was denied by the U.S. District Court judge who found that Crompton had presented sufficient evidence to suggest that the door latch on the front cab door was defective and thus the case could go to the jury for its determination of the facts.

After the jury trial, BNSF was found negligent, and Crompton was found to be contributory negligent.  The jury found that 70% of the fault for Crompton’s injury could be assigned to BNSF and 30% to Crompton.  Because the Locomotive Inspection Act is a strict liability statute, BNSF was required to pay the entire amount of Crompton’s damages, which totaled $1.6 million.  BNSF appealed to the U.S Court of Appeals in Chicago.

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In August 2008, 30-year-old Kevin Harrison was working for Norfolk Southern Railway when he was exposed to acid fumes from a leaking barrel at Norfolk’s rail yard in Hammond, Ind.  The acid had been shipped from Michigan in an inter-modal container owned by the defendant K Line America, which is a subsidiary of a Japanese company.

One day earlier, the driver for the defendant trucking company, Mason Dixon Intermodal, had selected the K Line container from those available at the Mason & Dixon’s Lines Inc. yard in Dearborn, Mich.

The Mason Dixon Intermodal driver inspected the interior of the container and then drove it to the loading dock of Beaver Packaging & Crating, where Beaver employees loaded 40- to 55-gallon polymer drums filled with 30 percent strength acetic acid into the inter-modal container. 

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On Oct. 12, 2004, Clinton Haywood, 47, was working as a Metra signal maintainer. He was unloading a 123-pound joint box from a rat bed sliding platform on the back of a truck when the rat bed unexpectedly slid into the truck. This caused the box to start to drop. Haywood bent and twisted his body to prevent the box from falling onto him.

Haywood was first diagnosed by Metra physicians with just a back sprain for which he received conservative medical treatment.

However, three years later, in 2007, Haywood was testing a signal when he fell over a fence that had been knocked down and was partially covered with snow. This incident exasperated his original back strain injury.Haywood was diagnosed with a herniated L5-S1 disk injury.  This injury was aggravated by the second work injury resulting in a one-level lumbar fusion in 2012.  Haywood attempted to return to his job after the surgery, but was not able to work after May 2013.

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 A Lake County, Ill., jury returned a verdict of $257,800 for Joseph Briski, a truck driver who tripped and fell in a pothole after parking his trailer-truck at National Gypsum’s plant in Waukegan, Ill.  This incident occurred on Feb. 2, 2008.  Briski was walking toward the rear of his truck to undo the air lines when he fell.  He landed on both knees. 

Briski contended that the parking lot in which truck drivers park their tractors and trailers was filled with numerous potholes and depressions hidden by snow and slush.

Briski, 49, suffered an acute rupture of the left quadriceps tendon and fractured his kneecap. The quadriceps repair surgery two months after the incident failed. It resulted in permanent chronic quadriceps rupture, which is a very disabling condition; permanent significant impairment of leg extensions; inability to continue working as a truck driver and potential future left knee arthritis. 

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Leonardo Davila, 65, was working for a security company that was hired by Premium Assets Inc. Premium was hired to provide security to an office building. While Davila was working near the building loading dock one evening, an unknown assailant attacked him.

Davila suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result of the assault and is now blind. He was earning $30,000 annually.  His medical expenses were approximately $450,000. Davila brought a lawsuit against Premium Assets, claiming that it chose not to secure the loading dock with a fence despite knowledge of vagrancy and drug activity in that area. The jury was persuaded that the management/ownership of the building, Premium, had knowledge that working near this building was a risk because of the prior criminal activities in the area.

The jury’s verdict of $25 million included $3.25 million in punitive damages.  Davila was represented by Robert C. Hilliard and Thomas J. Henry.

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A Cook County jury returned a verdict for $1.5 million for Teodoro Ramirez, who was injured while moving roofing materials above a warehouse. The defendant construction company, FCL Builders Inc., requested on appeal from that verdict that the appellate court grant a new trial. FCL argued that the Cook County circuit court judge gave erroneous jury instructions that made the verdict unfair.

The appeals court found that the jury instructions did include error, but the court affirmed the ruling and verdict on the ground that the defendant did not suffer from the error.  In other words, the error was harmless.

It was an 84-page opinion written by appellate court Justice Robert E. Gordon. In conclusion, the appeals panel ruled that the jury instructions would not have affected the outcome of the case.

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Leroy Walker Jr. was working as a flagman for Curran Contracting on May 1, 2008. He was directing traffic on Route 173 near Lorelei Drive in Zion, Ill.  Walker was standing in front of a construction site where a new Super Wal-Mart store was being built.

The defendant, Steven Kruglar, was driving westbound on Route 173 when Walker stopped traffic to allow construction vehicles to enter and exit the driveway to the construction site.

Walker alleged in his lawsuit that Kruglar accelerated without being given permission to proceed and attempted to go around a semi-truck turning into the entrance.  At that time, Kruglar’s vehicle struck Walker’s right wrist and arm.

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Adam Nowak was installing electrical equipment at an energy plant when a crane hook fell about 60 feet from an overhead crane, which struck and killed him. Mr. Nowak was an electrician working for Matrix Service Co., and he was installing electrical equipment at the Veolia Energy’s Schuylkill Steam Plant. 

The lawsuit for the wrongful death of Mr. Nowak was brought by his wife, Michele Nowak, and filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. The defendants in the case included Veolia, which owned the crane, and Permadur Industries, which was contracted to do repairs and annual inspections of the crane. Another defendant in the case, Kenny Construction Co., was the contractor of Mr. Nowak’s employer. 

The lawsuit alleged that Veolia was negligent for choosing not to correctly maintain the crane’s limit switch, which was designed to prevent “two-blocking,” a design feature that is used when a crane hook is raised too high. In this case, when the crane hook was raised too high, the cable holding the hook snapped and the hook fell to the ground, killing Mr. Nowak. 

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The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has found five safety violations that carried a proposed penalty of $158,015 against an Illinois roofing company.  The company, Affordable Roofing and Exteriors, Inc. of Trenton, Ill., was cited after inspections at three job sites where workers were improperly using fall protection during the installation of shingles on residential roofs. Since 2009, Affordable Roofing has been cited in five inspections for similar violations by OSHA.

The inspections were carried out in 2013 in Granite City and Belleville, Ill.

At each job site inspection, OSHA found that there were willful violations for failing to ensure that workers used fall protection while doing their work on residential roofs. 

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