Fall In Hole Leads To Stroke
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A general contractor which was working on an elementary school building renovation agreed to pay $700,000.00 to a 78 year old furniture delivery man who fell into a two foot square hole in the floor of one of the classrooms.
The victim was delivering furniture to the elementary school when he fell.
The general contractor had expressly agreed to provide for safety at the jobsite.
This two foot square hole had been used to access the subfloor area. Each subcontractor denied use of the hole on the day that the victim fell. The general contractor claimed to have secured the hole by covering it with a masonite board that was nailed to the concrete floor. However, various witnesses claimed that they saw the hole uncovered, saw the hole covered with cardboard, or saw the hole covered with plywood at different times both before and after the victim's fall.
The victim himself had no memory of the incident because two days after the fall, he had a stroke. This stroke left him with memory loss. Otherwise, he remains in good health.
The defendant claims that the stroke was unrelated to the fall and noted that the victim had a similar stroke 20 years before and that he had a history of high blood pressure. The experts hired by the claimant were prepared to testify however that the claimant's broken ribs and bleeding into his lungs required him to start taking aspirin and prevented the use of preventive clot enhancing drugs. The absence of these drugs and the trauma of the broken ribs set into motion events that led to the stroke. The defendant contractor claimed that a third party at the jobsite opened up the hole and also contended that the injured party's employer failed to adequately train or warn its employees against this type of hazard.
The medical bills incurred by the victim for these injuries totaled $290,000.00. The estimated cost of caring for the claimant for the remainder of his life was estimated at $664,377.00.