Brachial Plexus Injury Lawyers Settle Difficult Case Before Trial for $525,000.00
At a private mediation, the brachial plexus injury lawyers at Frekhtman & Associates negotiated a settlement on behalf of an injured client for over half a million dollars. Emily Costanza was a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair who was further injured when her home attendant moved her from a stool into her wheelchair. Plaintiff alleged that defendant lifted her improperly with defendant’s hand slipping from plaintiff’s hip up to her rib cage and arm pit area. This improper transfer caused a brachial plexus injury. Ms. Costanza was previously confined to a wheelchair due to her medical condition of paralysis from the waist down.
As a result of the accident, Ms. Costanza was required to stay in a nursing home for six months of rehabilitation.
During litigation, defense attorneys and defendants’ insurance carrier did not believe the case had merit and refused to offer any settlement. However, plaintiff’s attorneys were able to show that the defendant home attendant had insufficient training of only two weeks with no prior experience transferring patients with the same or similar medical condition of Ms. Costanza. The home attendant had previously worked in unrelated jobs at Toys R US and Party City. To obtain her certificate, she simply watched a video and she admitted she received no training from defendant nursing home. Further, F&A injury lawyers retained two experts – a nurse who explained the standard of nursing care in transferring a wheelchair bound patient and a medical doctor who opined that trauma from the negligent transfer was the cause of Ms. Costanza’s injury to a reasonable degree of medical certainty.
The plaintiff’s brachial plexus injury to her arm effectively caused paralysis of the arm where previously she was paralyzed from the waist down.
During the litigation, defendants filed a motion for summary judgment asking the court to dismiss the case. However, plaintiff’s attorneys were able to submit opposition which raised questions of fact defeating this motion. This allowed the case to remain on the trial calendar. The court’s decision can be read here: https://decisions.courts.state.ny.us/fcas/fcas_docs/2015OCT/5100319142009100SCIV.pdf
After extensive negotiations, the matter was settled for $525,000.00 in May 2016. If the case had not settled, it would have been set down for trial in Supreme Court Suffolk County.